Readalongs I wish someone else would organize - Cuban literature, August Wilson plays, and many more

The glory days of book blogs were full of “challenges.”  I hosted several: Scottish literature, Italian, Austrian, Scandinavian, Portuguese, always limited to the 19th century and earlier to keep the scope manageable.  The idea was that I read a lot, while others were invited to join as they found useful.  I found every one of these “challenges” to be highly useful, intellectually, meaning I read a lot of interesting books and learned a lot about the literary tradition.  Plus every time I attracted new, thoughtful, knowledgeable readers to the blog, people who did not necessarily care so much about Victorian literature but were excited about one of these other traditions.  I have even met some of these people in so-called real life.

So I occasionally think of some kind of readalong that would be exciting to me and I would hope to others.  Who knows, maybe someone else will want to borrow one of them.  I would happily read along with any of them.

My most neurotic idea is to read the ten most important American books that I have not read.  Beloved easily tops the list academically; To Kill a Mockingbird popularly.  The Woman Warrior, Ceremony, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, like that.  In 2017 or so I looked up, in the MLA International Bibliography, the 20th century American works most cited in academic writing.  I had not heard of Borderlands/La Frontera, a pioneering work of Chicana literature, I am told.

This one is a bad idea because it is too much about me, about what I happen not to have read.  Who cares.  But I would sure feel well-read if I did it.  Temporarily well-read.  That feeling never lasts.

Better ideas: contemporary plays.  Or within the last fifty years.   Or just read 21st century plays. Say ten or a dozen plays, once every two weeks.  They would mostly be American, British, and Irish, just based on the availability of texts. 

I have been testing this idea.  In the last year I read Women of Owu (2006) by Femi Osofisan (a Geeek adaptation), Cherokee Family Reunion (2012) by Larissa FastHorse (interracial family comedy) , The Ferryman (2017) by Jez Butterworth (family comedy mixed with The Troubles), and The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda (2019) by Ishmael Reed (a surprisingly gentle lecture).  Enough to see there is a lot to enjoy out there. 

Shakespeare is the center of the English tradition, yet contemporary plays seem increasingly distant from any literary discussion I see.  I do not know why that is.  The playwrights seem to be doing their jobs.

An obvious readalong would be to work through August Wilson’s ten play “Pittsburgh Cycle,” Fences and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and so on.  This one practically organizes itself.

My preference, though, is to work on a tradition, not an author, often one about which I know little. I thought about a year of reading Caribbean literature, meaning islands; the United States is a Caribbean country.  Wilson Harris, Derek Walcott, V. S. Naipaul, Dany Laferrière, Maryse Condé, for example.  Wouldn’t that be interesting.

Poking around, I soon saw that Cuban literature would make a great readalong on its own.  Something like this, one book per month for ten months:

First two novels by Alejo Carpentier, maybe The Kingdom of This World (1949) and The Chase (1956) on the basis that they are short.  I have a prejudice that readalong books should mostly be short.

Then:

Paradiso (1966) by José Lezama Lima

Hallucinations (1966) by Reinaldo Arenas, although his memoir Before Night Falls (1992) is the more obvious choice

Three Trapped Tigers (1967) and A View of Dawn in the Tropics (163) by Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Cobra (1972) and Maitreya (1978) by Severo Sarduy. Do these ever sound weird.

Everybody Leaves (2006) by Wendy Guerra, or Revolution Sunday (2016), or both.

Plus a poetry month to try Dulce María Loynaz or Nicolás Guillén.

Lots of strange, baroque books.  Sounds fun.  Since I drew up a plan, I might as well provide it.

I would like someone else to organize a readalong of postwar Italian literature, of Hungarian literature, of Sanskrit classics, of Arabic poetry, of contemporary American poetry, for that matter.  I suppose I could not join all of these, really.

The August Wilson plays, though, that is a sire thing.  You just have to decide on the order.  Easy.