The New Lifetime Reading Plan

Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939, Selected Works, including The Interpretation of Dreams, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, and Civilization and Its Discontents 225

George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Selected Plays and Prefaces 227

Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, Nostromo 229

Anton Chekhov, 1860-1904, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, Selected Short Stories 232

Edith Wharton, 1862-1937, The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth 234

William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, Collected Poems, Collected Plays, Autobiography 236

Natsume Soseki, 1867-1916, Kokoro 238

Mareei Proust, 1871-1922, Remembrance ofThings Past

240

Robert Frost, 1874-1963, Collected Poems 243

Thomas Mann, 1875-1955, The Magic Mountain 245

E.M. Forster, 1879-1970, A Passage to нndia 247

Lu Hsьn, 1881-1936, Collected Short Stories 249

James Joyce, 1882-1941, Ulysses 251

Virgнnia Woolf, 1882-1941, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves 253

Franz Kafka, 1883-1924, The Trial, The Castle, Selected Short Stories 255

D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love

257

Tanizaki Junichiro, 1886-1965, The Makioka Sisters 260

Eugene 0'Neill, 1888-1953, Mourning Becomes Electra, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey into Night 262

T.S. Eliot, 1888-1965, Collected Poems, Collected Plays 264

Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963, Brave New World 266

William Faulkner, 1897-1962, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying 268

Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961, Short Stories 269

Kawabata Yasunari, 1899-1972, Beauty and Sadness 270

Jorge Luis Borges, 1899-1986, Labyrinths, Dreamtigers 272

Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977, Lolita; Pale Fire; Speak, Memory

274

George Orwell, 1903-1950, Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Burmese Days 276

R.K. Narayan, 1906- , 77ie English Teacher, Vendor of Stveets 278

Samuel Beckett, 1906-1989, Waitingfor Godot, Endgame, Krapps Last Tape 280

W.H. Auden, 1907-1973, Collected Poems 283

Albert Camus, 1913-1960, Tfte Plague, Stranger 285

Saul Bellow, 1915- , T/ie Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, Humboldfs Gift 288

Aleksander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, 1918- , Firsн Circle, Cвncer Ward 290

Thomas Kuhn, 1922-1996, Structure of Scientific Revolutions 292

Mishima Yukio, 1925-1970, Confessions of a Mask, Tfte Temple of the Golden Pavilion 294

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1928- , One Hundred Years of Solitude 296

Chinua Achebe, 1930- , Things Fali Apart

298

GOING FURTHER 301

100 additional 2oth-century authors, briefly annotated

BIBLIOGRAPHY 325

INDEX 363

PREFACE

The Lifetime Reading Plan was first published in 1960; the sec- ond and third editions, with revisions and amplifications, appeared in 1978 and 1986. Those editions, in the distinctive voice of Clifton Fadiman, distilled and shared the reflections of a lifetime dedicated to reading. With this fourth edition of the Plan, Mr. Fadiman for the first time has a co-author; and I feel greatly honored to have been asked to join him in this enter­prise. I will say more below about how we divided the work of preparing this edition.

Readers familiar with earlier editions of The Lifetime Reading Plan will notice several significant changes in this new version. The changes begin on the title page—the book is now The New Lifetime Reading Plan, to emphasize that this edition has been very substantially revised and enlarged. The most pervasive, and most significant, change is that the material rec- ommended for reading has been broadened to include works from the literatures of the whole world. As recently as a decade ago it was reasonable to construct a program of guided reading that included only works in the Western tradition, while acknowledging that a time might come when a shrinking world, and improvements in various communications media, would make familiarity with ali of the world's literary traditions a requirement for the well-educated and well-read person.