Aegis 2015
84
Book Review >>> Rachel Scherzer
The Shelf: Adventures in Extreme Reading Rose, Phyllis. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014. 263 pp.
As a literary critic, college professor, and nonfiction writer, Phyllis Rose has spent her life immerged in the world of literature. In both her personal and professional reading, however, she has felt that her choices have been dictated by what is considered canonical or popular, choices that are almost always dictated by others, which has left out a variety of books and authors from her reading lists. Thus, Rose devises an experiment that will allow her “to sample, more democratically, the actual ground of literature” (1). She challenges herself to read through an entire randomly selected shelf in the New York Society Library. To ensure variety, Rose devised several rules that limited the number of books by each author, eventually leading her to the LEQ to LES fiction shelf. Rose’s chosen shelf allows a variety of books from different time periods, different genres of literature, and different geographic locations, allowing for a broad range of exploration through the pages of the novels. Phyllis Rose presents this reading adventure through the shelf by engaging with the books from both her personal background as a lover of literature and from her professional background as a college professor, literary critic, and writer. The examinations of each novel, allow the reader to journey alongside Rose as she goes through the process of reading, from the struggle or ease of reading, to the background research each book inspires and the unique stories that develop from her experience of reading the particular combination of novels present on the shelf. Reading A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, for example, Rose approaches a Russian classic with high hopes of a transformative literary experience. Her reading becomes complicated over the issue of translations, especially when she chooses to start with the strongly opinioned and over researched translation by another Russian literary great, Vladimir Nabokov. Her journey continues by reading Gaston Leroux, which allows Rose to experience the breadth of his literary career, reading early detective novels and The Phantom of the Opera, examining how a relatively unremarkable novel spawned numerous works for stage and screen. In the work of Rhonda Lerman, Rose finds a new personal favorite author, as well as questions about what makes an author choose to stop writing or publishing. The work of Margaret Leroy and Lisa Lerner allow the examination of women in literature, especially in regards to literature about motherhood. Several authors bring forward the question of national literature versus universal literature, while the massive work Gil Blas by Alain Le Sage explores early picturesque literature that focused on adventure and creates a story with massive scope. Using the detective fiction by John Lescroart, Rose explores the most lucrative and popular form of literature and what about it appeals to it massive following of readers. Finally, Rose reads what she considers truly bad literature by William Le Queux, whose massive output of text never reached the level of great literature,
