The Beinecke Library has an interesting web exhibition about the American history of the Utopian dream, from the establishment of New Haven in 1638 to modern sustainable communes like Twin Oaks.

The exhibit has a comprehensive list of the most important “utopian” communities in the US¹, with manuscripts and documents from the library’s collections.

Also included are short lists of Utopian and Dystopian literature from the collection².  It’s a neat set of images and facts, if you’re interested in the subject and haven’t seen an overview of it presented in such a way.

Two nitpicks that I have, though: 1) The sentence “the goal of removal from the heart of civilization to the wilderness” in the intro text is misleading as a blanket statement – More’s original Utopia was one of social and political perfection, rather than one based on any pastoral or nature-based ideals; and 2) it would be nice if all the manuscript/ephemera page images enlarged into higher-res versions.

“Wow, I never imagined you’d read something like that,” they said almost in horror, as though I’d just admitted to a world-class sommelier that I drink Lambrusco straight from the bottle.

I love really good literature, obviously. But I don’t have a lot of time for leisure reading, and when I do, I don’t necessarily reach for a Cormac McCarthy or Kazuo Ishiguro.

I don’t choose books that I think will impress friends or colleagues or strangers in a café.

I don’t care if you gasp when I admit I didn’t like a certain “classic” novel by default simply because it is a classic.

I don’t care if you turn your nose up at me because I’m not reading whatever sneering deconstructionist tome you’re slogging through—dripping with semiotic snobbery and hoary lit crit nonsense—and pretending you’re enjoying it.

Basically I want to read a fucking story.

I want to read about places I haven’t seen, full of people I’ve never met, involved in something fascinating and perhaps just a tad over the threshold of plausibility.

I want to read about people doing things. If most of the verbs in the book are variations of thought or said or felt, forget it.

Give me some characters with faults. Give them important, wonderful things. And then yank them away. Let me see the wind knocked out of them so I can watch them react and see what they’re made of. What do they do?

If I find a work of fiction that gives me that, I’ll likely read it, no matter what lasting literary “value” it may have or the cachet it displays when I pull it out of my bag.

Neil Gaiman: Coraline, illustrated by Dave McKean. HarperCollins, 2002, 1st edition, 1st printing

(for Faruk)

James Gunn: The Listeners, Scribners, 1972, 1st edition, 1st printing

Gunn’s novel is a fictional account of first contact, co-dedicated to Carl Sagan and based on his early use of radio telescopes in the search for extraterrestrial life.

A direct antecedent to—and inspiration for—Sagan’s novel, Gunn’s The Listeners is still an amazing work of speculative fiction and is a must-read for anyone who enjoyed Contact and for sci-fi fans in general.

Stephen Fry – The Hippopotamus – Random House, 1994, 1st edition, signed by the author

Bertrand Russell - Why I Am Not a Christian – Simon & Schuster, 1957, 1st edition

Things Wot Are On My Shelves – RIP John Keel edition

“Our Haunted Planet” – 1971, 1st paperback ed.

Infinite Jest is an enormous yet rewarding read, and is one of my top five favorite novels.

Yes, it looks intimidating, but as Jason Kottke explains in his excellent forward to the project:

It is a fact that Infinite Jest is a long book with almost a hundred pages of endnotes, one of which lists the complete (and fictional) filmography of a prolific (and fictional) filmmaker and runs for more than eight pages and itself has six footnotes, and all of which you have to read because they are important. So sure, it’s a lengthy book that’s heavy to carry and impossible to read in bed, but Christ, how many hours of American Idol have you sat through on your uncomfortable POS couch? The entire run of The West Wing was 111 hours and 56 minutes; ER was twice as long, and in the later seasons, twice as painful. I guarantee you that getting through Infinite Jest with a good understanding of what happened will take you a lot less time and energy than you expended getting your Mage to level 60 in World of Warcraft.

So, go out and get a copy right now, and dig in. You won’t be sorry.

Ahem.

Atlas Shrugged is a novel, and a tedious one at that. It is tortured fiction, and nothing more. It is not an effective societal blueprint for pouty glibertarians who are still angry that their mommies never let them stay out past their curfew, they didn’t get the toy they really really wanted for their 12th birthday, and their fraternity of choice didn’t let them into the pledge class freshman year.

Grow. The fuck. Up.

Thank you. Now, back to the snark.

Things Wot Are On My Shelves #4

David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, first edition and rare 1st-state printing.