Forgotten Treasures: A Symposium

I wish I could have replied to the interesting question put by the Los Angeles Times Book Review, but it seemed to present (at least for me) an insoluble contradiction: considering the books which I treasure most, I realize that all of them are already well-known. This, after all, is quite natural; for, when a piece of writing has genuine value or beauty, it is unlikely that it will remain ignored for long or that it may ever fall into oblivion.

Still, here is my little selection--even though it does not abide by the rules of the game (since these books are justly famous already; yet, for various reasons, they are perhaps not reaching now the wider readership they obviously deserve). In chronological order:

* G.K. Chesterton: “The Man Who Was Thursday” (1908): The only novel in the entire history of fiction which ever managed to introduce God as a plausible character!

* Natsume Soseki: “Kokoro” (1914) (in E. McClellan’s translation): I know of no other novel written in our century that possesses such mysterious simplicity--such subtle and heartrending purity.

* F.A. Worsley: “Shackleton’s Boat Journey” (1931?): An extraordinary narrative of survival. There are desperate physical trials which can be overcome only by the will of man--no animal would survive them!

* C.S. Lewis: “The Abolition of Man” (1943): A less-known essay by an otherwise famous author, yet perhaps his most important work. In a sense, it also deals with survival (a theme worth pondering as we enter the new millennium): Can modern man survive the moral collapse of his culture?