Reading the so-called “Western Canon” of classic literature informed my lyric writing and tremendously enriched my life. Below is a list (kind of a trophy case, but also will hopefully help me identify major gaps) of books I’ve read. Also listed are two books of criticism that really helped me orient myself to classic literature. Haven’t read literature in awhile, so might take me awhile to recall enough to flesh out this list…

Criticism:

• The Western Canon – Harold Bloom
• Sexual Personae – Camille Paglia

“Western Canon”

• Epic of Gilgamesh
• Bible (about half)
• Quran (about half)
• Analects of Confucius
• Gawain and the Green Knight
• Dante’s Paradiso
• Shakespeare (about half)
• Don Quixote
• Paradise Lost (parts)
• Moby Dick – Herman Mellville
• The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• The Great Gatsby
• Ulysses – James Joyce
• Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
• Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
• Point Omega – Dom Delillo

Targeted:

• Thomas Pynchon – Gravity’s Rainbow?
• Hadji Murad – Tolstoy
• Lolita – Nabokov