Lost Classics

Brick, a Canadian literary journal invited some of its longtime contributions to tell their stories of books they loved and lost or that they considered overlooked and underread for a special issue on “Lost Classics” (number 61) in 1998. This material was later expanded into this book. Not all the titles were selected based on their merit. Michael Turner, for example, writes of The Bells of Russia, “I have never read the book–nor has anyone else in my family.” The three times he tried to read it, his mother grabbed it away from him. When he looked for it a fourth time, his mother “told me my father took it with him when she kicked him out. Haven’t seen it since.”

• Address Unknown, Kressmann Taylor — selected by Nancy Huston
• All About H. Hatterr, G.V. Desani — selected by Githa Hariharan
• The Amateur Poacher, Richard Jeffries — selected by Sean Virgo
• The Bells of Russia, Alexander Moskoyov — selected by Michael Turner
• Bernadette, French girl’s annual — selected by Carole Corbeil
• Beyond the Pawpaw Trees, Palmer Brown — selected by Sarah Ellis
• By the Sound, Edward Dorn — selected by Sharon Thesen
• Capital of Pain, Paul Eluard — selected by Natalee Caple
• Classics Revisited, Kenneth Rexroth — selected by Brian Brett
• Codex Seraphinus, Luigi Serafini — selected by Christian Bok
• Confessions of an Un-common Attorney, Reginald Hine — selected by Dougles Fetherling
• The Cruise of the Cachalot, Frank Bullen — selected by Derek Lundy
• The Dead Seagull, George Barker — selected by Cassandra Pybus
• Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Soderberg — selected by Margaret Atwood
• Down and Out in the Woods: An Airman’s Guide to Survival in the Bush, — selected by Sarah Sheard
• Far Away and Long Ago, W.H. Hudson — selected by Alan Lightman
• The Fish Can Sing, Halldor Laxness — selected by Murray Bail
• Fishes, Url Lanham — selected by Erin Mouré
• The Five Nations, Rudyard Kipling — selected by Karen Connelly
• Fobidden Territory, Juan Goytisolo — selected by Colm Toibin
• A Fool’s Life, Akutagawa Runosuke — selected by Lawrence Sutin
• Frost, Thomas Bernhard — selected by Murray Bail
• The Gate of Horn, G.R. Levy — selected by W.S. Merwin
• Genoa, Paul Metcalf — selected by Joanna Scott
• Geraldine Bradshaw, Calder Willingham — selected by Leon Rooke
• Glimpses of World History, Jawaharlal Nehru — selected by Roo Borson
• The Good Soldier Svejk, Jaroslav Hasek — selected by William Humphrey
• The Granite Pail, Lorine Niedecker — selected by Eleni Sikelianos
• The Greenlanders, Jane Smiley — selected by Steven Heighton
• Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets, Alun Lewis — selected by Philip Levine
• Handbook for William (Liber Manualis), Dhouda, translated by Carol Neel — selected by Anne Carson
• The Headmaster’s Papers, Richard A. Hawley — selected by John Irving
• The Highwayman, Alfred Noyes — selected by Rudy Wiebe
• A History of Newfoundland, D.W. Prowse — selected by Wayne Johnston
• How I Became One of the Invisible, David Rattray — selected by Robert Creeley
• I Served the King of England, Bohumil Hrabal — selected by Siri Hustvedt
• I Want to Go to School, Yu-pao Gao — selected by Anchee Min
• Islandia, Austin Tappan Wright — selected by Isabel Huggan
• Jigsaw, Sybille Bedford — selected by Eleanor Wachtel
• The Journey of the Stamp Animals, Phyllis Hay — selected by Helen Garner
• Jungle Peace, William Beebe — selected by Wayne Grady
• The Junior Classics: The Young Folks’ Shelf of Books, — selected by Lola Lemire Tostevin
• Lependu, Don McKay — selected by Michael Redhill
• Life of Monsieur de Moliere, Mikhail Bulgakov — selected by Greg Hollingshead
• The Life of Rossini, Stendhal — selected by David Malouf
• The Log of a Sea-Waif, Frank Bullen — selected by Derek Lundy
• Lost Horizon, James Hilton — selected by Esta Spalding
• Malina, Ingeborg Bachman — selected by Robert Boyers
• The Mouse and His Child, Russell Hoban — selected by Bill Richardson
• N by E, Rockwell Kent — selected by Michael Winter
• The Name and Nature of Poetry, A.E. Housman — selected by Susan Musgrave
• The Newfoundland Journal of Aaron Thomas, 1794, Aaron Thomas — selected by Wayne Johnston
• The Old Wives’ Tale, Arnold Bennett — selected by Wendy Lesser
• On Being Blue, William Gass — selected by Sam Solecki
• On Growth and Form, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson — selected by Harry Mathews
• The Peterkin Papers, Lucretia P. Hale — selected by Jane Rule
• The Pilgrim Hawk, Glenway Wescott — selected by Jeffrey Eugenides
• Pincher Martin, William Golding — selected by Ronald Wright
• Play Ebony Play Ivory, Henry Lee Dumas — selected by George Elliott Clarke
• Russian School Primer — selected by Janice Kulyk Keefer
• The Private Diaries of Stendhal, Stendhal — selected by Murray Bail
• Put Money in Thy Purse, Micheal Mac Liammoir — selected by Caryl Phillips
• The Quest for Sita, — selected by Diana Hartog
• Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence , Pam McAllister, ed. — selected by Anne Holzman
• The Saddest Pleasure, Moritz Thomsen — selected by Pico Iyer
• The Salt Ecstacies, James White — selected by Jim Moore
• Anonymous Smut — selected by C.K. Williams
• Some Chinese Ghosts, Lafcadio Hearn — selected by Laird Hunt
• The Story of Harold, Terry Andrews — selected by Edmund White
• The Ten Thousand Things, Maria Dermout — selected by Linda Spalding
• The Tenants of Moonbloom, Edward Lewis Wallant — selected by Leon Rooke
• They Feed the Lion, Philip Levine — selected by Michael Helm
• The Third Policeman, Flann O’Brien — selected by Charles Foran
• Too Late to Turn Back, Barbara Greene — selected by Russell Banks
• Treatise on Style, Louis Aragon — selected by Darren Wershler-Henry
• The Twilight of Briareus, Richard Cowper — selected by Eden Robinson
• The Wabeno Feast, Wayland Drew — selected by Gordon Johnston