Parlour game time! The Literary Canon is an intimidating thing at the best of times but these days it’s becoming grotesquely bloated. It could do with losing some weight. So, in that spirit, it’s time to think of what books could safely be ditched without causing too much pain or guilt. The Second Pass starts the game by choosing ten books that (they think) your life might be improved by ignoring:
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos
Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
At The American Scene Noah Millman suggests this isn’t quite fair, and that it’s too easy to pick on someone’s lesser works (Tale of Two Cities or Jacob’s Room for instance) while also wondering if anyone really reads John Dos Passos anymore*.
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