Jed posts (via Plantgirl (at least that seems to be the Plantgirl in question))
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?See Jed’s post for more details.
It’s a toughie; I’d have to jettison most of my favorite books (not just because there are only ten allowed, but because many of my favorites wouldn’t fit the category). The useful cheat is that a Complete Works is OK, so the Riverside Shakespeare is in ... unless playwriting doesn’t count as fiction. And while I’m at it, the Riverside Chaucer. After that, it gets difficult. I’d like to include something imaginative, to encourage the poor saps in the remnant to dream big, but should that be The Hobbit or The Wizard of Oz? I’ll want something a bit experimental, but Ulysses or If on a Winters Night a Traveler? Something to show the possibilities of pictures, but Watchmen or In the Night Kitchen? And a book about the idea of making this list (because that’s the po-mo guy I am), but Fahrenheit 451 or A Canticle for Leibowitz? And surely I want something showing what I consider to be valuable character traits and social values, but what books show those persuasively? Or would I be better off showing the negatives?
This’ll take some thought. I hope the apocalypse can wait...
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-Vardibidian.
Hi, I just posted about this and referred to you ( here) and I thought I’d say so.
Do you think Watchmen would work well if you weren’t familiar with superhero comics? It seems kind of meta in that commentary-on-its-genre way.
I’m pretty sure that Watchmen was the first superhero comic that I read (for some definition of ‘read’). It worked very well for me, in part because American culture is so steeped in the awareness of superhero comics and the conventions thereof that I could pretty easily grasp the substance of the meta-commentary if not all of the particulars.
I’m almost done with a journal post about comics, myself. Should be up in a day or so.