[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC here live on Thanksgiving. Still with Kenneth C. Davis, known best as the historian and author of the Don't Know Much About series of books, including the original one, Don't Know Much About History. He has a new book. It's not about history at all, except in a fictional sense. It's called Great Short Books: A Year of Reading—Briefly. This book introduces us to 58 other books, the criteria, they have to be novels of 200 pages or less. Perfect for today's attention span, I guess, though many of these books are quite old.

The list includes classics like The Great Gatsby and Lord of the Flies, and books by George Orwell and Solzhenitsyn and Toni Morrison and Stephen King and Richard Wright, and many lesser-known authors and books as well. Let's see what Ken is up to here and name some names of books and authors, most of whom as it happens, have been targeted book banning at one time or another as well. Ken will read a first paragraph or two or three of books that he chose from this collection. Ken, people know you as a historian, what's up with the book about novels?

Kenneth C. Davis: Well, most people know me for my work in history, Brian. The truth is my very first book, which was called Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America was published in 1984. I can't even believe that that's possible, but it's true. I've been doing this for about 40 years. I have lived a life in books. I grew up in a town just outside of New York City, Mount Vernon, New York, which had no bookstores, as many towns did not in that time. I had a great public library, we had the book Mondial. I was a true child of the library. On Thanksgiving, I always say I'm thankful for librarians and teachers for giving me the books that I was given.

During the darkest days of the pandemic and, Brian, we've talked about the pandemic because I wrote a book about the pandemic called More Deadly Than War, I was really in the same place a lot of people were, depressed, anxious, tense, sleepless. I discovered that reading and reading fiction, in particular, was a good release from that, especially at the end of the day.

Not as an escape from the reality that we're going through as we doomscrolled through the news, but as an antidote. I started reading one tale a day from Boccaccio's The Decameron. The Decameron was also written during a plague in the 1300s in Florence. He had 10 characters each tell a story, one each for 10 days, 100 stories that he called novellas. I realized that Boccaccio was onto something. I'll read you very quickly.

During an earlier plague, the Italian writer Boccaccio understood this basic truth, short is beautiful. As the Black Death struck Florence in 1348, Boccaccio began writing a series of stories he completed in 1353. Boccaccio's The Decameron is a collection of 100 brief tales, each called a novella. In this masterpiece, 10 characters, seven women and three men each tell a story every day for 10 days as they seek refuge from the plague in a villa near Florence.

A combination of parables, adventures, and love stories, some quite body and he skewering the church and the priesthood. Boccaccio's work was composed in the vernacular Italian, it remains a foundational text in Western literature. Boccaccio was on to something, short is beautiful. I started to read short novels of 200 pages or less to, again, relieve myself from the stress and anxiety that we're going through. Many of these books then opened up the way to insight and inspiration and truth.

Brian Lehrer: That is beautifully set. Of course, these days people read in 100 to 200 characters, never mind 100 to 200 pages. Considering some of the A-list authors included here, does this bust the myth that perhaps to write the great American novel the book has to be long?

Kenneth C. Davis: Oh, I think absolutely that breaks that myth. I write in the introduction that there is a critical question of what I described as literary sizeism, that if it's short, it can't be really very good. I've included in this collection of 11 Nobel Prize winners, a number of Pulitzer Prize winners, so there's no question that short can be wonderfully literary, and in fact, Ian McEwan, who's booked on Chesil Beach is included in this once said that he believed that the novella was the perfect form of writing because the writing must be compressed. You have to get a lot into it. Every word becomes more important.

That's why I included for each of the entries of these 58 short books, the first lines. I think the first line is about novels, especially a short lot novel, really grab us and pull us in. Let me explain briefly as I do in the introduction, if I can, why short books? A short novel is like a great first date. It can be extremely pleasant, even exciting and memorable. Ideally, you leave wanting more, it can lead to greater possibilities, but there is no long-term commitment.

That's why I focused on short novels. As you'll see from many of the books that I've included, these are some classics. As you mentioned, more than half of the 58 writers were suppressed or censored in some ways. Several of them had their books burned, including the oldest writer in the collection, who's Voltaire, written in 1759 is candied. I have to say, it is as fresh and funny as if it were written yesterday. That's why literature is truly timeless. Great literature is timeless.

Brian Lehrer: With Kenneth C. Davis talking briefly for a little while longer about his new book called Great Short Books: A Year of Reading—Briefly. You've chosen a few of these openings. I should say the book has a format for each of these books you describe. Is it first line or first paragraph of the book?

Kenneth C. Davis: It's usually more than just the first line, it's maybe the first four or five sentences. Again, to give a flavor of the book but also to lure you in as one of my favorites in there does it with this, Where's papa going with that axe? That's eight-year-old Fern in Charlotte's Web. Now people are going to say Charlotte's Web, that's a kids book. Yes, it is a kids book that I believe it's a perfectly written book. It's a book about friendship, love, and sacrifice, some of the great themes of literature. I reread Charlotte's Web almost every year to myself or to my wife and I always weep.

Brian Lehrer: I'm sure you have the first lines of the book, then a quick plot summary, a quick bio of the author. You've chosen a few more. You just gave us one example from Charlotte's Web. You've chosen a few more of these openings of these great short novels to read for us. What you got?

Kenneth C. Davis: Well, here's one of my other favorites. I was studying Italian before the pandemic at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, part of CUNY. Having a great experience there being this old man sitting amongst a lot of 20-somethings and we had a great time together. I really miss that experience since the pandemic closed me out of school. One of the novelists I was introduced to by one of my professors is Natalia Ginsburg. I included her book, The Dry Heart, and these are the first lines. "Tell me the truth," I said. "What truth?" He echoed. He was making a rapid sketch in his notebook and now he showed me what it was.

A long train with a big cloud of black smoke swirling over it, and himself, leaning out of a window to wave a handkerchief. I shot him between the eyes." If that doesn't grab you as a first opening page of a book, I don't know what can. She then goes on to describe why this young woman shoots her husband between the eyes. It's not a mystery. It's a wonderful psychological unrolling of a woman who is a very, very unfulfilled person, a theme that emerges in quite a few of the books I've included such as The Awakening or The Lost Daughter by another Italian writer, Elena Ferrante.

Brian Lehrer: Want to do one more?

Kenneth C. Davis: Oh, sure. I could go quite crazy with all of this. This is true poetry as far as I'm concerned. "In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City golf course, there was once a neighborhood that stood in the hills above the valley town of Medallion and spread all the way to the river. It is called the suburbs now, but when Black people lived there, it was called the bottom, one road shaded by beaches, oaks, maples, and chestnuts connected it to the valley. The beaches are gone now, and so are the pear trees where children sat and yelled down through the blossoms to passersby." It's the opening to Sula by Toni Morrison.

One of the reasons I included these short books and talked about them is that I think many of them are a good stepping stone or entry point to reading other works by these great novelists. Toni Morrison, of course, the author of Beloved, a book that is increasingly among those controversial books in our culture right now. Sula is, to me, written in 1973, a wonderful way to be introduced to this extraordinary poetic voice of Toni Morrison, and perhaps much easier to grow into than taking on the challenge of reading Beloved, which is a challenging book.

Brian Lehrer: Great Short Books: A Year of Reading—Briefly. Ken Davis, thanks for doing a two-parter with us for this Thanksgiving, I think it was really special, including your dialogue with [unintelligible 00:11:25] Oaks, from the North American Indigenous Center of New York, in your two-parter the nonfiction part back there and the fiction part just now, this was great.

Listeners, I want to mention that Ken will be doing an event related to the new book, [unintelligible 00:11:43] books, that's at the Jefferson Market Library in Greenwich Village. That'll be Monday, December 5, at six o'clock. You want to say anything about that? Are you going to do the same kind of reading, and do you have any others coming up in our area?

Kenneth C. Davis: Well, one thing I want to say, that's my chief first reading in New York, and I'm so thrilled having lived in the West Village for more than 45 years. The Jefferson Market Library has a special place in my heart. As I said, I'm a child of the library. I've spent many hours in the catacombs in the bottom of the Jefferson Market Library. It's a thrill for me to be able to speak there. It's a beautiful landmark building, of course, in the West Village.

I think that the only thing I'd like to add, Brian, is my thanks to you for what you do, and thanks for this opportunity to share my work with people. I am not a literary critic. I am not an academic, I am what Virginia Woolf once called the common reader. To me, there is a pleasure in books and there is also that glimpse of truth for which we have forgotten to ask. I think that's what all of these books I've written about will provide to readers. I'm looking forward to having not a lecture at the Jefferson Market Library, but a conversation with readers about great short books.

Brian Lehrer: On Monday, December 5, at six o'clock. The Uncommon Kenneth C. Davis. Thanks a lot. Really appreciate it. Happy Thanksgiving.

Kenneth C. Davis: Same to you, Brian. Thanks so much.

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.