Harold Bloom was mocked and attacked for declaring a Western Canon of dead white men authors to a diverse audience of politically correct persons. These detractors believe in cultural relavitism which means one cannot say what literature is best. Merit is not as important as "diversity" which upon reflection simply means "none of the above" when it comes to dead white males. Chihua Achebe's rather ordinary work--written in Nigeria by one educated in English schools--is deemed of equal standing and import as Chekov, Faulker, Proust.
Not all works of art are equal because not all cultures and people are the same. Margaret Thatcher said not all people are equal because they have unequal ability. Some excel and lift up the rest of us. One of these exceptional perons in Shakespeare whom Bloom says is equivalent to God and Christopher Hitchens the atheist said he is not of this world. What possible other writer has entire sections of the bookstore devoted for onceself going on 500 years now. The ephemeral Lady Gaga does not have the same staying power as Bach. Some things just rate better that others and will endure.
Anyway a friend asked me what story stories he should be reading and I told him the best short story writer bar none is Anton Chekov while a modern David Foster Wallace and an antique Thomas Mann should also be on the list of what is required to read if one wants to have read the best. So what is the best? Having red many I say these are the books you must have read if you want to be considered well read (or at least enough of them to round out the summer):
novels
Franz Kafka, The Trial----what will be your fate when summoned to appear before a justice system that you cannot locate?
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain---learn secular humanism from Herr Settebrini the pendant while dining at the table in the white snow of a Swiss tuberculous sanitarium with an illicit lover and patients who can whistle from their chest through the remaining half of their lung.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita--sex with a minor whose distracting sexual appeal and youth gave rise t0 the very word "nymphet". If a great work of art must upend the emotions this is it.
plays
Shakespeare--there are 28 plays. Some rhyme. Others do not. As Bloom said not of this world.
short stories
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice--a gay writer longs for a golden haired boy.
Frank Kafka, Metamorphosis--what to do when a member of the family turns into an insect?
Anton Chekov, The Kiss--a soldier who is not lucky at love wanders into a darkened room at a party and into the embrace of a female who was expecting someone else.
science
David Foster Wallace, Everything and More---wrote down the greatest ideas in math from the geometry of Euclid to the irrational numbers and infinite sets of Cantor then hung himself contemplating an unfinished novel explaining how boring it is to work at The Internal Revenue Service. (This is too creepy given my current employment.)
essay
Vaclav Havel. Disturbing the Peace--"samizdat" meaning banned literature is known by this Chech word. Read the Chech president playwrite Vaclav Havel's account of the writing and signing of the charter of 77 human rights document in a nation had that had none then explains how that document and other samizdat literature was smuggled to the west.
poems
Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece---subtle to the point that the act of coitus here is suggested by snuffing out a candle.
William Worldsworth, Ruth----lost her child and her mind.
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