LP Hartley's The Go Between has one of the most famous opening lines in literature: "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." This classic novel is one of some 300 books that have been given a chance at a second act by the publishing arm of the New York Review of Books. Their classic series is an eclectic mix of 19th-century novels, reportage, cult favourites and established classics. Some of the work, according to the NYRB is "literature high, low, unsuspected and unheard of", the kind of work one gets recommended by a bookish friend and then remembers for life.
Neglectedbooks.com is a website devoted to reviving interest in books that have been ignored or forgotten due to changes in critical or cultural taste. Here is an amazing repository of books that have languished for decades or centuries, unread and unappreciated, literary wallflowers stranded on the dusty shelf. Stoner, by John Williams, was first published in 1965 but was barely noticed until resurrected like a vintage wine found in a dark corner of a cellar.
John McGahern's exquisite introduction to the 2006 NYRB's edition of Stoner lauded "the passion of the writing masked by a coolness and clarity of intellect". This recommendation by a literary great was echoed by Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes and Colum McCann, and their championing of its merit led to its becoming the publishing sensation of 2013.
Samuel Johnson knew the vagaries of the literary lottery and the arbitrary nature of fame when he wrote, “no place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.” Shakespeare was an exponent of the poet-as-god theory and boasted: “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments / Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.”
In Those Who Write for Immortality by HS Jackson, literary fame is attributed to a writer's talent and genius being kept alive by the ministrations of biographers, editors and scholars who brave the icy winds of cultural change and the mutability and the transience of literary taste. With the recent explosion in the amount of books printed traditionally and as ebooks, there is a gargantuan glut of printed matter. There are at least two million novels in the vaults of the British library. Is it a given that most will remain unsung by the readers of the future because that powerful brand of immortality that was possible for Keats, Wordsworth and Austen is no longer possible in such a crowded milieu? Will posterity still champion writers or will the heroes of future generations be the creatives who pioneered technology?
Reading off-piste
Recently an author recommended After Claude by Iris Owens, which had been reprinted and was also available as an ebook by NYRB classics. It was a joy to discover this gem, and like all curious readers I enjoy reading off-piste and find I am increasingly drawn to authors who have disappeared off the radar. Persephone Books reprint forgotten fiction and non-fiction by mostly women writers of the mid-20th century and managed to give a lease of literary and cinematic life to Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day by Winifred Watson. Faber Finds is another publishing house that restores to print great writing from more than 1,000 writers including Sean O'Casey.
These kindly publishers sprinkle fairy dust on forgotten books, allowing readers to enrich their reading experience and relish vintage finds from that other country – the past.
Anne O’Neill blogs at ofselfandshelf.com
