Summer Reading 2010: Our Most Ambitious Plan, Ever.

I maxed out in 2008, when I somehow managed to go through 25 or so books.  Last summer I read around half as much, which has pained me for a while until now, when I can make it all better.  In an effort to avoid gazing at bookshelves wondering what to read next, I’m going to give my summer reading a little more structure.  Fiction reading is going to be at an all time low, and with an emphasis on the bizarre and grotesque.  Reading will center around classical and medieval text and histories, but a few contemporary philosophers are on the to-read shelf.  I’ll plow through Jon Meacham’s biography of Andrew Jackson as well.

I’ve already finished Rémi Brague’s Legend of the Middle Ages, my first real achievement of summer reading.  The rest of the list (of ridiculous hugeness) consists of the following:

1. Boccaccio.  The Decameron.  Some friends run a book club titled Athenaeum and this will be the July reading.  Like a number of other books on the list, it’s there because it’s just something everyone should read.
2. J. M. Coetzee.  The Life and Times of Michael K.  Inspired by Coetzee’s talk and a recent reading of Kafka’s The Trial.
3. William Faulkner.  Light in August.  Started twice, left unfinished twice.  I hope the third time’s a charm, because I’m starting to feel like a literature school dropout here.
4. Cormac McCarthy.  All the Pretty Horses + Other Border Trilogy works, optional.  It’s not a summer in Texas without McCarthy and some Spanish dialogue.
5. Fyodor Doestoevsky.  Crime and Punishment.  Also started twice, put down twice.  I already feel nervous enough about Light in August and the level to which I could take my self-loathing should I not finish both of these is absolutely stratospheric.
6. Thucydides.  History of the Peloponnesian War.  My first classical classic, and another new one to me.  When I finish it I’ll probably be irritated at my teachers for not making me read this earlier.
7. Herodotus.  The History.  Same thing.
8. Peter Brown.  The Body and Society.  Peter Brown is the best, and if you say anything besides that, my friends and I will ban you from our blogs.  We’re a fan club, with the tenacity of a union.
9. Carolyn Walker Bynum.  The Resurrection of the Body.  While this list isn’t so much a strict progression of how I’ll read these books, I’ll be following Brown with Bynum because of their similar subject matter, and I’d like to do a post on that sometime in the future.  Expect more reading and blogging when the temperatures start spiking over 100.  I’ll be contrasting Brown and Bynum with Brague’s essay on “The Flesh,” I imagine.
10. R. W. Southern.  The Making of the Middle Ages.  I have a Tom Tweed inspired affection for classic historiographical texts that aren’t used much anymore, at least pedagogically.  Which might be all the more reason to read these kinds of works.
11. Marc Bloch.  Feudal Society:  The Growth of Ties of Dependence. I’ve read selections from this first volume of his legendary publication, and will compare it with Southern’s treatment of similar subjects.
12. Bloch, The Historian’s Craft.  Another crucial writing from Bloch.  I turned it open to a random page and read a wonderful critique of the “common sense” school of historical interpretation.  We can’t rely on saying “That kind of stuff just doesn’t happen” to suggest that it never did.  Especially with the really weird stuff.
13. Diogenes Allen.  Philosophy for Understanding Theology.  The introduction kicks off with Allen knocking around some heads of folks who like to take the Hebrew-way-or-the-highway hermeneutic to the Bible.  But Allen argues that an interest in theology as such is an inherently Greek disposition that transforms merely Hebrew content into something different in important ways.  Will be reading this one earlier.
14. Leo Strauss.  Natural Right and History. I don’t know what to think about Strauss so I guess he’s a good place to start.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up looking appreciatively on him, but not necessarily acceptingly.  If Brague doesn’t think it’s important to be a Straussian . . .
15. Allan Bloom.  The Closing of the American Mind.  A Straussian after Strauss.  I’ve read portions of this one and enjoyed some (the chapter on the “Nietzscheization of the Left, or Vice Versa” stands out) and not cared for others.  I’m expecting a mixed bag.
16. David C. Carter.  The Music Has Gone Out of the Movement: Civil Rights and the Johnson Administration, 1965-1968.  I’m already 50 pages into this one and loving it.  And not only because Dr. Carter was a significant figure for me during my time in Auburn.
17. Catherine Pickstock.  After Writing:  On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy.  Equally, it wouldn’t be a summer reading list without a little Radical Orthodoxy peppered in.  I loved James K. A. Smith when I read him in ’08, and a few of Pickstock’s articles really grabbed my attention.  It will be nice to read some RO without any Reformed mediation.
18. Dominick LaCapra and Steven L. Kaplan, eds.  Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives.  I hope this book is going to be as useful as LaCapra is influential.  Foucault is mentioned around a million times, judging from the index, so I might get a clue about the narrative of deconstructionism’s and poststructuralism’s entries into the historical realm.  Hell, I better.
19. Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins.  A Short History of Philosophy.  I heard if you’ve lived in Austin for over  three years and haven’t read Solomon/Higgins, then you’re banished.  I’ve got a couple months left.
20. Alison K. Frazier.  Possible Lives: Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy.  Frazier is another huge figure for my intellectual life, and has encouraged, motivated, and facilitated further liberal arts study.  When I found myself memorizing declensions, I made straight for her office so she could diagnose my illness.
21. C. S. Lewis.  The Discarded Image.  I love scholarly Lewis, and this is his most successful work in the area of medieval literature.
22. Denis de Rougemont.  Love in the Western World.  A quick flip reveals a first page Kierkegaard quotation, which immediately puts Rougemont in the Walker Percy orbit.  I’ll use it to follow Lewis.
23. Richard McKeon, ed.  Selections from the Medieval Philosophers. I’ve already read portions of this book, which despite its age (1929) is still potently informative.  McKeon has stitched together fifteen medieval treatments of epistemology from Augustin to Albert Magnus.
24. Etienne Gilson.  History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages.  Gilson, like Southern and Bloch, is a medieval historiographical giant.  And I want to know why.
25. Jaroslav Pelikan.  The Christian Tradition, Volume 3: The Growth of Medieval Theology. I’ve not read much of Pelikan, but I’ll contrast this volume with Gilson’s text.
26. Wayne Meeks.  The First Urban Christians.  I don’t want to do anymore guessing on this subject, and Wayne Meeks remains one of the more reputable sources for this kind of information.  Even though I’ll be highlighting particular affinities or discrepancies between texts, I imagine Meeks’ treatment of early Christianity in a historical fashion will enable deeper comments on most of my summer readings.
27. Pelikan.  Christianity and Classical Culture.  I’ll probably read this one fairly soon in the list to use it as a backdrop for other readings, particularly Gilson and the other Pelikan reading.  It will be a healthy historical complement to Allen’s philosophical-theological examination similar time periods.
28. Heiko A. Oberman.  The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought.  If Pelikan’s treatment of classical culture and Christianity and Meeks’ treatment of early urban Christianity form one book end to a particular avenue of my summer reading, Oberman will form the other.  I’ve already read a few articles from this particular publication, which has some absolutely fascinating discussions of major problems in late medieval and Reformation history.
29. Jon Meacham.  American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.  I need to get myself together on reading presidential biographies.  Although I can’t explain why, it strikes me as a very important thing to do.

I’ll be ecstatic if I can finish two-thirds of this reading list.  While some texts will go incredibly quickly and others can be broken down into constitutive parts (books of essays and articles, the McKeon volume, etc.) I doubt it will make it any more likely.  I’ll probably just finish a book, drink a celebratory mint julep, and fall asleep as I begin the next book.

Self, step your game up.

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