Kenneth C. Davis - Dont Know Much About Literature: What You Need to Know but Never Learned About Great Books and Authors

Of making books, there is no end.

E CCLESIASTES

I cannot live without books.

T HOMAS J EFFERSON

W HAT YOU DONT KNOW , the somewhat obscure English writer Sydney Smith (17711845) once noted, would make a great book.

And what you dont know about great books would make a really great book!

So here it is: what you need to know about the worlds great books and writers but never learned. Using the quick-quiz format that was the hallmark of the New York Times bestseller Dont Know Much About Anything , this book offers a fun and entertaining way to learn about those books and authors you were supposed to read in high school and collegebut probably never did. While serving as a quick refresher course, the book may also introduce you to some writers and works that might not be familiar but should be.

A compendium of fun and fascinating quizzes that will stimulate and inform, Dont Know Much About Literature is aimed at reintroducing you to some of the most important writers and their works; explaining what you need to know about hundreds of great books, plays, and poems; exploring less-familiar writers that everyone should know about; and generally rounding out the literary education of readers who have an appetite for learning, but want to have fun doing it.

Emphasizing the household names from literary history, these quizzes focus on major writers and their works, along with some notable books that helped change historyworks by Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Byron, and Joyces Ulysses among them.

Downbeat about the Beats?

Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Dont know your Keats from your Yeats?

The book you hold will see you through your most Kafkaesque literary nightmares.

Whats more, the book provides fascinating fodder for reading groups and sparkling chatter at cocktail parties. Fills in some gaps in your readers rsum. Helps out on that literature question in Trivial Pursuit. Inspires a more ambitious summer reading list. Dont Know Much About Literature will do all of these things while also providing a challenging quiz that will test even the sharpest know-it-alls.

Theres no question about it. Many of us love to read. Like Jefferson, we cannot live without books. And whats more, we love to talk about reading. This is a book that will have book lovers gloating as they prove just how much they knowor have them sheepishly heading back to the stacks to round out their literary educations.

Do you remember your first books? I do. They were mostly Golden Books, and they filled the foot of my bed. Or do you remember the first book you really loved? Can you remember learning to recite a poem? I had a terribly hard time in sixth grade memorizing Blakes The Tyger. (Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night, / What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?) Did you ever fall in love with a fictional character? Or weep when you finished a book? What book kept you up all night reading?

Of course, if you are what you read, it can be a bit dangerous. When we were compiling this book, an article about books and romance was published in the New York Times Book Review . As Rachel Donadio put it, These days, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, listing your favorite books and authors is a crucial, if risky, part of self-branding. When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. One woman, a book critic, told Donadio, I did have to break up with one guy because he was very keen on Ayn Rand (Its Not You, Its Your Books, New York Times Book Review , March 30, 2008).

The other story that caught our attention as we compiled our quizzes was a story out of Vermont, where I live and work part of the time. It seems that a few dozen teenagers had been caught partying and vandalizing a small cottage in the Vermont woods. Their doings probably would have gone unnoticed except that the cottage once belonged to Robert Frost. In June 2008, as part of their sentences, the teens were all required to attend a classtaught by the novelist and Middlebury College professor Jay Pariniabout the great American poet.

Of course, cynics might laugh and say, Yes, poetry is punishment. But at the heart of this sentence is a much grander notion. We read to change our lives and our minds. Of course, we read for many reasonssimple pleasure, excitement, a whiff of romance. But at the bottom, I think we read because books can change people. I was a voracious reader as a child, but I clearly recall the change in my way of looking at the world back in the summer of 1968 when I read Upton Sinclairs The Jungle and Dalton Trum-bos Johnny Got His Gun . Both books were crucial in opening my eyes to the fact that the world could be very different from the tidy vision I had been working with. Those books accomplished what the brilliant Joseph Conrad once said was the writers task: To make you see.

I dont know if this book will bring you to such truths. But I do hope that you will have some fun and get pointed in the right direction. After all, as Jimmy Walker, the colorful Jazz Age mayor of New York City, once put it, No woman was ever ruined by a book.

Just one note before you start reading and proving how smart you areor how much you need to learn. You will find very few references to Shakespeare in this collection. Its not that we dont like the Bard. In fact, we doso much so that we thought the guy deserves his own book. So next up on the schedule of the Dont Know Much About series is a book dedicated to the life, times, poetry, and plays of William Shakespeare.

And yes, we are certain that lots of your other favorite authors or books are missing from this collection. I know I had to leave out some of my favorites (sorry to the late Mr. Updike, who merits only a passing reference). Is there somebody or some book that you think deserves a quiz of ones own? Let us know at our Web site DontKnowMuch.com or search Kenneth C. Davis on Facebook.

So sharpen your pencils and get ready to test your literary wits.

S INCE YOU CANT judge a book by its cover, the first line had better be good. Would Herman Melville have reeled in readers if Moby-Dick had not begun with the immortal words, Call me Ishmael? See how many of these famous first lines you can identifyjust be careful that you dont get hooked.

1. It was love at first sight.

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

3. Wheres Papa going with that ax?

4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aure-liano Buenda was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

5. One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous, verminous bug.

6. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

7. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo

8. You better not never tell nobody but God.

A NSWERS

1. Joseph Heller, Catch-22 .

2. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice .