10 fiction books to rebuild culture

Plantgirl asks:

What 10 works of fiction would you want after the apocalypse when these are going to be the only (fiction) books available to your surviving population of 1000 people until new ones start getting written?

The idea is "to explore what fictional works deserve to be the foundation of a new culture." (You can count a Complete Works Of X volume as a single book if you like, though ideally X would be someone whose complete works would fit in one volume.) So the point isn't to list Practical Useful Books like Robinson Crusoe. You can put together a separate nonfiction list if you like, for books to use in rebuilding civilization and/or forming the basis of a future science, but I think that list would be highly dependent on the specifics of the physical environment of the survivors, and for that matter on who the survivors are.

You can make lists of music or other kinds of art if you prefer.

While you're thinking about the relationship between art and the personal, you might consider the experiment of choosing a work of art (if you need a more specific category, make it a painting) which best represents you. Name the work and the artist, link to a photo of it online if possible, and explain why you picked it.

11 Responses to “10 fiction books to rebuild culture”

  1. Twig

    Oooh, goody! I’m excited to see how people respond.

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  2. Vardibidian

    Well, I’ll give a try to the work of art that best represents me (the ten works of fiction will take longer, but I’ll try to come up with something by next week). I’m tempted to go with Robert Arneson’s 1972 Classical Exposure, which gives you an idea of my sophisticated and urbane sensayuma, but I think I’ll go with something grandiose, pretentious, serious but hard to take seriously, and fundamentally smoochy, which means Claes Oldenburg’s Clothespin.
    I’ll add that neither of the works are my favorites, even my favorites by their artists (although Clothespin may be my favorite Oldenburg-without-van-Bruggen), but you weren’t asking for favorites. Also, by ‘represents’ I inferred the work should represent my sense of who I am, rather than what I look like.
    Oh, and if you ask me tomorrow, I’ll likely come up with an entirely different work; that’s inherent in the question, too, isn’t it?

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  3. Vardibidian

    Oops. The Clothespin link is wrong up there. Perhaps Jed can fix it, in his copious spare time.

    Also, the Arneson might conceivably not be work-safe, although the photo is blurry as hell, so the cranky boss would have to be paying pretty close attention. And, of course, it’s art…

                               ,
    -Vardibidian.

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  4. Jed

    Cool! Yup, you interpreted “represents” as I intended it (though other interpretations are also fine), and yep, changing your mind later is fine too. …But I’m curious as to what you meant by “smoochy” in regard to Clothespin.

    …And I hadn’t realized that Cupid’s Span, which I’ve seen several times recently, was by the same artist as Clothespin (plus another artist), which is one of my few memories of visits to my grandmother in Philadelphia when I was a kid. In case anyone else is interested but unfamiliar with their work, there’s an Oldenburg/van Bruggen gallery online.

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  5. Vardibidian

    Thanks for fixing my link. Oh, and Clothespin is (and I think is meant to be) a picture of two people embracing and kissing. Once I saw it that way, I’ve seen it that way every time I’ve seen it, and also every time I’ve seen an actual clothespin of that design. The singles left when, for instance, a toddler pulls the pieces apart always look particularly bereft…

    I adore the Cupid’s Span piece, from the photos, and have been wanting to see it since it went up. I also really like the Torn Notebook and the Toppling Ladder, which I’ve also never seen in person. In fact, I can’t recall seeing Clothespin in person; I know I have, but I can’t remember actually doing it.

                       ,
    -V.

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  6. Jess

    How can you ask that question? 10 works of fiction to survive the apocalypse? I’d want the compilations of the world religions included–Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, Egyptian Book of the Dead, etc.–but those shouldn’t count as “fiction”, I think. So leaving religious stuff out–

    Til We have Faces, C.S. Lewis
    Tigana, Guy G. Kaye
    The Lorax, Dr. Seuss
    The Iliad, Homer
    The Decameron, Boccaccio
    The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien (I’m going for all 3 and counting them as one)
    Lysistrata (are we allowing plays?)
    Romance of the Rose
    Once and Future King, T.H. White
    The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas

    Ok, now why did I pick those: I wanted to include a record of the breadth of human emotion–what are we like, how have we dealt with it over the centuries, what are the ups and downs of humanity. Those are a mix of vaguely historical and mythical and flat-out fantasy, which I think is important to see. Some of them are short (Lorax, Lysistrata, the short stories of the Decameron) so the new population is encouraged to read for fun, and an oral tradition can start up. There’s a breadth of style, from ancient poetry to Dr. Seuss.

    I think the list may be weighted toward the too heavy, but I wanted to include stories of drama and hope–I love Tigana and the Count of Monte Cristo for their heartwrenching aspects, Til we have faces for its redemption, Once and Future King for its depth and values. The Decameron shows the humor and lust of humanity (if they’re heavier than I remember, substitute Chaucer’s Tales). The Iliad, the Lord of the Rings, and Lysistrata show various approaches to war (should I have included War and Peace? :). They may not be the best examples–I was pretty bored by the Iliad when I read it in school–but I wanted something to address why humans war and how we’ve responded to it.

    Thanks for asking–still thinking about the art question…

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  7. Fran

    I couldn’t do fiction; I was too aware of what I hadn’t read, so …
    Fran’s list of 10 works of art:
    I tried not to do a history of art so there are gaps (you only get 10?!?). It’s also rapidly clear that it isn’t just about what you like. In no particular order:

    1. The Pantheon, Rome, ca. 125 C.E. (interior)
    Although it isn’t representative of Roman temple building, it is a great building for showing you the possibilities of concrete architecture. It has the set-up of the Greek style portico before the sweeping space of the interior dome on circular drum. There’s a fabulous attention to proportion: the sense of a sphere inside meant to symbolize the sphere of the planets; the ceiling the dome of heaven. The consistency of the concrete balances the dome and the coffering adds design (ah, if only the bronze rosettes remained). And you have to sense that spot of light passing across the interior heavens. Plus, iconographically, it’s dedicated to all gods and let’s encourage religious tolerance in our remnant.

    2. Borobudur, Java, 8th c.
    It’s a mandala and a stupa! It’s got galleries lined with art which teach you about the Buddha and then as you move upward, you burst from the constrictive space into the upper courts to the funerary stupas. I imagine it as a heady pilgrimage.

    3. Rembrandt’s Self-portraits (1606-1669)
    I couldn’t think of anyone who I feel better captures the sense of looking at one’s own self and I also couldn’t pick only one.

    4. Picasso, Guernica, 1937
    Its grisaille treatment of this ghastly bombing from the Spanish Civil War brings out that modern art can be expressive and moving. Plus naturalism is over-rated.

    5. The Rothko Chapel, Houston, 1971
    Another non-denominational spiritual experience; you have to take it as a whole, including the Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk in the reflecting pool out front and Rothko’s rich inky paintings which draw you in to the contemplation of the intimate. The best of abstraction as far as I’m concerned.

    6. Claude Monet, Waterlilies, 1903-9
    I wanted to include a landscape but I also wanted to remind our remnant that landscape isn’t necessarily only description of what’s there. Another series, but it explains landscape better to me than Turner’s The Slave Ship, 1840, or Van Gogh’s Starry Night, 1889. Plus I like Monet thinking about the changing world around him and wanting a place of quiet and retreat in the midst of it. And also the post-modern idea that if you can’t find what you want in nature, go out and make it—nature made better.

    7. Constantin Brancusi, Bird in Space, 1928 (MOMA)
    Abstract again, the sense of flight and smooth movement come alive for me in this bronze. Almost chose Barbara Hepworth instead, for her use of materials and biomorphic forms that look warm and alive.

    8. The Bayeux”>http://hastings1066.com/baythumb.shtml”>Bayeux Tapestry, ca. 1080
    Not a tapestry (it’s an embroidery). Made by anonymous artists, probably women. As strong and direct a narrative as one might wish for, complete with all the Norman biases of the event. I like it too because it’s historical—trying to capture a series of events—but filled with all kinds of other undercurrents (Halley’s Comet, swearing oaths on reliquaries, Aesop’s fables in the margin). I like the interplay of margin to center, of word and image, of display and audience.

    9. The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch, ca. 1500
    Gorgeous when closed. Wacky. Beautifully executed. Attractive in the sense that it attracts the viewer. Even if you, like most of us, don’t get exactly what HB was on about.

    10. Velazquez, Las Meninas, 1656-1657
    Who’s watching whom? A complex layering of the relationships of artist and patrons, children and parents, wealthy and attendants. And Velazquez creates beautiful brushwork—streaks of color in a single stroke, building up to make that blonde confection of the Infanta.

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  8. Jed

    Excellent! Thanks for the lists and the explanations.

    …I don’t think I’d ever seen the Garden of Earthly Delights closed; I agree that it’s gorgeous. And Las Meninas is way cool; another one I’d never encountered (like several on your list).

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  9. Jess

    Las Meninas is one of my favorite works of art–I think the work of art I was going to pick as “mine” (as it were) was one of Dali’s takes on it (the title is Velazquez painting the Infanta Margarita with the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory). He played with that idea a lot–check out “Dali from behind painting Gala from behind” (don’t know if the post will work). [edited by Jed to attach links to words, to avoid line-wrap problems]

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  10. David Moles

    • Barthes, Empire of Signs
    • Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths
    • Calvino, Invisible Cities
    • Delany, Tales of Neveryon
    • Gorodischer, Kalpa Imperial
    • Guadalupi/Manguel, The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
    • Le Guin, Always Coming Home
    • Lem, Imaginary Magnitude (or A Perfect Vacuum)
    • Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
    • Stoppard, The Invention of Love

    (Needless to say, it would be ideal if the survivor population were ignorant of history and geography, and if no books of non-fiction were to survive. Failing that, it would probably suffice if no other surviving books were discovered for two or three hundred years, to give our new intellectual tradition time to set.)

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  11. David

    – Gilgamesh (the oldest written story of our world, Babylonia)
    – Alice in Wonderland, C. Lewis
    – The Iliad + the Odyssey, Homere
    – Invisibles Cities, I. Calvino
    – Antigone, Anouilh
    – Spleen, C. Beaudelaire
    – Hamlet, W. Shakespeare
    – Sandman (1-75), N. Gaiman
    – Hyperion + Endymion, D. Simmons
    – Le Petit Prince, A. Saint-Exupery

    by David E., architecte, Paris, France.

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