When I first read that indie-pop sensation Sufjan Stevens was planning to record a 50-cd project devoted to each of the 50 states, I had a little shiver of recognition - partly because I once had the same idea, way back in my dewy basement four-track indie rock days, and partly because I recognized he'd never finish it. Stevens has since offered up Michigan and Illinoise [sic] during the past six years (Illinoise is the keeper). While he insists on taking the project seriously, and hints at its eventual conclusion, I suspect there will be some flurries in hell before Sufjan fans own all 50 jewel cases.
I have my own unfinishable project - perhaps even more daft than Sufjan's, although more private and less open to public scrutiny. And that is the "Literary Note Card Project," first undertaken sometime in 2003 while living in New York. The premise is simple, the means of achieving the goal less so. Utilizing an excellent graduation present from my in-laws, Merriam Websters's Encyclopedia of Literature, I would carefully pore over each and every page and all entries to select those authors, poets, essayists and works deemed "essential" for any self-respecting person of letters (including those I'd read before - great works often require multiple visits), and fill a note card with the selected entries. Your average note card holds about 10 entries. Then, I would seek out the items, using bookstores, libraries, Amazon, etc. Each would be marked off after reading, and when the card was fully marked off, the cycle would begin again. This method kept me from burning out on one particular author and making sure my own highly selective opinions didn't keep me from experiencing equally worthy works.
At some point, it became clear that I was never going to get to Zola. Now on my ninth note card and still at "AR-" - (Antonin Artuad, since you asked, and page 74 of the encyclopedia's 1,236), it's becoming clear that I may never reach Euripides. Blame my erring on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion; blame a growing devotion to film alongside the printed word; blame moving from New York to Southern California and the subsequent multi-year drought of new note cards. But I'm back on track, I hope, and ready to once again immerse myself in the treasures of world literature, and pester local librarians for hard-to-find volumes and editions (I may even seek out local academic libraries and look into getting a resident fee-based card, seeing how my demands sometimes outstrip the public library's capacity).
Looking over my list of 70 or so completed items, I'm struck by the consistent quality of the works - I can think of only a few duds, Rudolfo Anaya's 1972 Bless Me, Ultima one of them, unfortunately, which was a blow to my attempt to craft a multi-cultural approach, although after spending several years nearer the Southwest region, perhaps I'd be more open to it now.... I also admit to skimming Milton's Areopagitica, and having hardly any memory of S.Y. Agnon's short stories. But the wonderful discoveries I stumbled across are legion. And if the project itself will, in all likelihood, never come close to being realized (my eyes will likely give out before my heart does), there's definite pleasure partaking in the folly.
The following list of completed volumes in the project is less a badge of honor and more a reminder to myself of how far I've come and how far I've yet to go. No matter how impressive the list, all I can think is....nice start, kid.
Kobo Abe, Woman in the Dunes
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise
Abhijnanasakuntala (The Recognition of Sakuntala), Kalidasa
Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
An Account of My Hut, Kamo Chomei
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Ada, Or, Ardor, Vladimir Nabokov
Adam Bede, George Eliot
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
Joseph Addison
Theodor Adorno, Notes to Literature
Aeneid
Aeschylus, Oresteia
Aesop, Complete Fables
After the Fall, Arthur Miller
Against the Grain, Joris-Karl Huysmans
James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
James Agee, A Death in the Family
The Age of Anxiety, W.H. Auden
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
S.Y. Agnon, Short stories
Conrad Aiken, Short stories
Ajax, Sophocles
Anna Akhmatova, Poems
Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Other Stories
Alan-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes
Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Alcestis, Euripdes
The Alchemist, Ben Jonson
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick
Nelson Algren, The Man with the Golden Arm
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Isabel Allende, Portrait in Sepia
All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
All's Well That Ends Well, William Shakespeare
All the King's Men, Robert Penn warren
The Ambassadors, Henry James
American Buffalo, David Mamet
American Notes for General Circulation, Charles Dickens
Amerika, Franz Kafka
Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim
Ammianus Marcellinus, Chronicles of Events
A.R. Ammons, Poems
Anatomy of Criticism; Four Essays, Northrop Frye
Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton
Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima
Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tales
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
Androcles and the Lion, George Bernard Shaw
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Annabel Lee, Edgar Allen Poe
Anna Christie, Eugene O'Neill
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Another Country, James Baldwin
S. Ansky, The Dybbuk
Antic Hay, Aldous Huxley
Antigone, Sophocles
Antony and Cleopatra, William Shakespeare
Guillame Apollinaire, Calligrammes
Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica
Appian, The Civil Wars
Lucius Apuleius, The Golden Ass
Areopagitica, John Milton
Ariel, Sylvia Plath
Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
Aristophanes, Complete Plays
Arms and the Man, George Bernard Shaw
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