Bible, Book of Exodus
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
Ambler, Eric, A Coffin for Dimitrios
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
Saramago, Jose, Blindness
Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast
J.M. Coetzee, The Life and Times of Michael K
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Kafka, Franz, Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories, translation by Neugroschel
Verissimo, Luis Fernando, Borges and the Eternal Orangutans
Year’s Best SF9, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
White, T.H. The Once and Future King
Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy, Perennial Library edition
Glaspell’s Trifles, on the web
Moby Dick, excerpts, on the web, the parts of the common law of whaling
Javier Cercas, Soldiers of Salamis
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Depending on time we will view some movies, start by buying Double Indemnity.
The reading list is much changed. There are fewer classics, more genre fiction, and more Latin fiction. On the plane back from Miami I reread Eric Ambler’s Coffin for Dimitrios; few people know this novel but it is one of the best spy/detective stories, period.
I will add Frederico Garcia Lorca’s wonderful plays like “The Shoe Maker’s Prodigious Wife”, “Butterfly’s Evil Spell” and the like.
I love your inclusion of Ambler. And Jack Henry Abbott! I thought that everyone but me had forgotten him. There are many who write excellently about sociopathy, but try to find a sociopath who writes excellently…
I’m glad to see the inclusion of the Coetzee book. Sections from _Waiting for the Barbarians_ or _Disgrace_ could also be used. I Just finished _Michael K_ recently and found it, like all of Coetzee I’ve read, to be very good and quite depressing. It’s especially interesting how it’s never clear with whom or why the war is being fought.
Eric Ambler is superb. For some reason, I thought his classic
Turkish book was called The Mask of Dimitrios.
Bastiat’s “The Law” is quite good, but I dont know that it quite qualifies as literature.
I’d be interested to know what stories from “Year’s Best SF 9″ are being used for the course.
Sofia: If it helps your cultural self-esteem, Saramago is a big favorite in my social circle in college. Everyone who hasnt read him yet ends up getting a novel for their birthday or Christmas.
I recommend John Grisham, in particular such classics as the Pelican Brief or The Firm.
Nirai is right – the original title is The Mask of Dimitrios; A Coffin for Dimitrios was the American edition title.
The most suitable O’Brian book would probably be The Reverse of the Medal, which involves a trial for fraud on the Stock Exchange.
Bleak House would be great, or its densely plotted modern homage, Quincunx, by Charles Palliser, which features the untangling of the entailed codicil to a will (or something) in Dickensian England.
Other possibilities:
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
Perhaps an entry from detective literature: Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, or a novel of Rex Stout, such as The Rubber Band or The League of Frightened Men.
The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Woulk, ends with a court-martial.
There’s a very good short memoir of JAG defense service in Vietnam: Those Gallant Men, by John Berry. But it seems to be out of print.
How could a student manage a reading list like that? I am a slow reader. Iam scared.
I’m sure the professor has thought through these ideas, but mine didn’t, so anyway: Having taken a poorly planned course of this nature in law school, it will be helpful in composing a reading list, making suggestions, facilitating discussion by distinguishing between the distinct concepts of 1) Law in Literature (MobyDick, Billy Budd) 2) Law as Literature (Torah, Koran) 3) Law as influenced by Literature (many Biblical cites as implied “authority” in published opinions), etc.
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