I’ve officially given up on Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers. Not particularly proud of myself, but it had brought my Modernist summer reading to a near standstill, and it’s too early in the summer for that to happen. I’ll have to return to Lawrence at some point, but a friend of mine thought I might have better luck with The Rainbow. Anyhow, I’m treating myself to some Evelyn Waugh to keep the summer reading moving forward.
Here’s the list of Modern Brit. fiction that I’m drawing from, with the things I’ve already read underlined:
- Beckett, Samuel. One of the following: Murphy, Watt, Molloy
- Bennett, Arnold. Clayhanger
- Bowen, Elizabeth. The Heat of the Day
- Butler, Samuel. The Way of All Flesh
- Chesterton, G.K. The Man Who Was Thursday
- Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness AND two of the following: Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes
- Ford, Ford Madox. The Good Soldier
- Forster, E.M. Howards End, A Passage to India
- Galsworthy, John. The Man of Property
- Greene, Graham. One of the following: Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory (read May 2008), The Heart of the Matter
- Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World
- Joyce, James. Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses
- Kipling, Rudyard. Kim
- Lawrence, D. H. Two of the following: Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, The Rainbow, The Plumed Serpent
- Lewis, Wyndham. Tarr, manifestos in BLAST 1
- Mansfield, Katherine. “Prelude,” “At the Bay,” “The Garden Party,” “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” (in Collected Stories)
- Orwell, George. Animal Farm, 1984
- Wells, H. G. One of the following: Ann Veronica, Tono-Bungay, The New Machiavelli
- West, Rebecca. The Return of the Soldier
- Waugh, Evelyn. One of the following: Vile Bodies, A Handful of Dust, Brideshead Revisited (read May 2008).
- Woolf, Virginia. Three of the following: The Voyage Out, Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, Between the Acts
Yeah, I’ve got a long long way to go before those exams.
3 Comments
May 13, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Hey Laura! Your blog is great! I’ve been enjoying your romps through Mod Brit Lit and other such goodies. I think I too am going to test in Mod Brit and have started my reading list as well. I can say this about Lawrence, I much prefer the first 100 pages (as far as I’ve gotten having just started it) of The Plumed Serpent to even two paragraphs of Sons and Lovers. And I’ve heard good things about Women in Love as well. The Rainbow, however, looks really good… hmmmm. The choices!!
May 17, 2008 at 11:04 am
I’m about 50 pages into Molloy and am finding it a challenge. The form of the whole piece is a bit confusing–the second paragraph is 100 pages long–and I’m finding Lawrence a walk in the park in comparison. It’s interesting, though, in an “I’m not sure what’s going on” sort of way. It’s interesting to note the differences from what Prof. Palmer referred to as the “first wave” of modernism with the second wave…
May 17, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Davo – I forgot that you are our resident (well, when I pretend I still live in Indiana) Lawrence expert! I’m gonna be hitting you up for some Modernist wisdom!