Of old hardbacks about to be garage-saled:
105 Living Authors Present the World’s Best,
Edited and introduced by Whit Burnett.
Peculiar collection, exemplary of an era
When social science enjoyed a brief ascendancy,
The whole thing put together by balloting,
As if voting and quantification made it scientific.
In the immediate wake of World War II,
457 names of then-living authors were circulated
To themselves and to other living authors,
Not one of them living anymore, I shouldn't guess,
To the officers of European and American PEN,
To the editors of the Columbia Dictionary
Of Modern European Literature, to dozens
Of U.S. magazine editors, bookstore personnel,
Librarians, college presidents, public figures,
And subscribers to The Saturday Review
Of Literature. 643 completed ballots were returned.
Mr. Burnett then attempted correspondence
With each of the top vote-getters, requesting
Them to recommend a selection of their own
They would prefer to see in the anthology,
Which was awfully decent of him. Shaw,
Who ranked number one, was prickly when
The project was described to him as a quest
To find the 100 best living writers. Replying
On a penny postcard, he protested. “You class
Me as one of the HUNDRED BEST. I am
Humiliated. I thought I was in the top ten.”
Even when the exact tally was relayed to him,
And he was told his name led all the rest,
He did not relent. The anthology’s proclaimed
Greatest living author of 1950 was not, in the end,
Contained in its index. The others were mostly
More congenial, and some were clearly flattered
Among the 93 men and 12 women represented.
There’s nothing like an old anthology compiled
By some weird methodology to render a snapshot
Perspective on an obsolescent canonicity.
By lamplight in the evening, I went spelunking,
Enjoying an odd essay by Lin Yutang, a story
By Dinesen I hadn’t previously read, a Nehru
Piece on prison, the scene of the Duchess
Dressing for dinner by Vita Sackville-West.
But the excerpt from an autobiographical
Novel by Sigrid Unset, author previously unknown
To me, who had only barely managed to slip
Her choice of her own work into the volume
Just ahead of her death, summed things best:
“She seemed to see it all—men dying and dying,
They had gone on dying through all the thousands
Of years, and among all those forgotten dead
There had always been some whose loss
Their nearest and dearest thought irreparable
And of whom they said: ‘Few better will come
After.’ And then they went on living.” Rest
In peace, Sigrid Unset, among the literary dead.
No comments:
Post a Comment