Carl Wells Books

I am being exiled to a desert island. I can take along the complete works of only ten fiction writers. (As a bonus, I can take along any non-fiction books they wrote as well.) Who should I take?

For me this turned out to be a fairly easy exercise. I had only a couple tough choices to make. For the most part I really knew who I wanted. Here they are, in alphabetical order, with a few honorable mentions at the end–the ones who were squeezed out by the hard reality of the number ten.

1/Jane Austen (1775-1817). English. Begin with Pride and Prejudice, which may be her most sparkling work, but she wrote five other novels. A genius. She is very clever, yes, but also she gives us hope that there can be more than chaos in the world, that there can be a sane, Christian, mature, thoughtful way to live.
2/Charles Dickens (1812-1870). English. David Copperfield is deservedly famous, but he wrote a lot of great books. The Old Curiosity Shop was my entry into his longer novels. That turned out to be a perfect place to start for me.
3/Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881). Russian. Crime and Punishment is a strong candidate for the best novel ever written, but he wrote many valuable books.
4/W.W. Jacobs (1863-1943). English humorist wrote a lot of short stories and a handful of novels. Many Cargoes, a book of short stories, is a good place to start.
5/C. S. Lewis (1898-1963). English. My first father in the faith. His Space Trilogy is a good place to start. So are the seven volumes of the Chronicles of Narnia, which are for children but excellent for adults as well.
6/Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn 1918-2008). Russian. The Cancer Ward is one among many excellent works of fiction. Also a superb non-fiction writer, with The Gulag Archipelago heading the list.
7/Anthony Trollope (1815-1882). English. Prolific. The Eustace Diamonds will let you know if you are going to like his stuff or not.
8/Mark Twain (1835-1910). United States. Lots more good writing beyond The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Pudd’nhead Wilson, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer are examples. Tom Sawyer Abroad may be the most perfect novel of humor ever written.
9/P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975). English humorist. Wrote a lot, with varying quality, but his best writing is hard to beat. The Jeeves/Wooster novels and short stories are my favorites. The Code of the Woosters might be a good entry into his work.
10/Zack/Gwendoline Keats (1865-?). Who? Forgotten English novelist and short story writer deserves to be rediscovered. Her first book, Life Is Life: And Other Tales and Episodes, is the one I always recommend as a start. Warning: heavy Devon dialect in some of the stories. But a large handful of these stories are among the best ever written. That’s my opinion, of course. I have written a book about her writing, which includes as much as I can find out about her life: By Noble Things She Stands: The Fiction of Gwendoline Keats/Zack.

The tough choices were in regard to Jacobs and Wodehouse. Did I really want to take along their books, and leave someone like Leo Tolstoy behind? I did. There will be some gloomy days on my desert island, and Jacobs and Wodehouse will cheer me up. There are always trade-offs.

I go into greater depth on these ten writers in Chapter 16 of my forthcoming book, The Way to Do a Thing Is to Do It: Essays. Expected date of publication: late 2016 or early 2017.

Here are a few honorable mentions: Anne Bronte, William Faulkner, Franz Kafka, J. D. Salinger, Leo Tolstoy. There are lots of other good writers, of course.

Which ten fiction writers will you be taking with you, if/when you are exiled?

Recently Chuck Baldwin, the well-known Christian pastor, commentator, and one-time candidate for president on the Constitution Party ticket, wrote a column entitled “Ten Worst U.S. Presidents.” He said the first eight were the worst of the worst, whereas the last two were potentially interchangeable with other bad presidents. Here is his list, with #1 being the worst, #2 being the second worst, and so on. He gave plenty of commentary explaining why he made the choices he did. Check out his column.

1/Abraham Lincoln
2/Woodrow Wilson
3/Franklin Delano Roosevelt
4/Lyndon Baines Johnson
5/George W. Bush
6/Barack Obama
7/Bill Clinton
8/George H. W. Bush
9/Ulysses S. Grant
10/Richard Nixon

What made this of particular interest to me was that in my book Inconvenient Opinions, published in 2011, my Chapter 30 was “The Ten Most Disastrous People in U. S. History.” I didn’t limit myself to presidents, and I also explained the reasons for my choices. Here is my list, also in descending order of infamy, with the worst of the worst listed first.

1/Abraham Lincoln
2/Woodrow Wilson
3/Franklin Delano Roosevelt
4/George W. Bush
5/Barack Obama
6/Lyndon Johnson
7/Martin Luther King, Jr.
8/Harry S. Truman
9 & 10 (a tie)/you and me

I was delighted to see that Mr. Baldwin and I agreed almost completely in the first six choices. In fact our first three were exactly the same, and in the same order. The next three were also exactly the same, but in different order. Only on the last four did we differ, and even there I am in sympathy with at least three of his choices. I don’t know enough about the presidency of Grant to consider him for a “worst,” but certainly Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Richard Nixon are honorable candidates for worsthood. I found our agreement on the first six to be encouraging–a prominent Christian commentator was in large agreement with me.

Consider making your own list of the worst U.S. presidents or most disastrous U.S. people; you will find it a stimulating exercise. “And do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them” (Ephesians 5:11). I think we need to be doing some exposing.

Leopold Kohr’s The Breakdown of Nations first appeared in 1957. That was after four years of rejection by American publishers, Neal Ascherson tells us in his foreword to the excellent Green Books edition of The Breakdown of Nations which first appeared in 2001. The book had little impact. It is almost 60 years later, and the book still has had little impact. I suspect most people have never heard of the book. I know I hadn’t until about 4 1/2 years ago.

So almost nobody has read the book. It has attained a measure of attention, but a very small measure.

That may be about to change. It is a book whose time has come.

Leopold Kohr (1909-1994) was an Austrian Jewish economist/thinker who escaped Hitler, finding refuge in various places, including Canada, the U.S., Puerto Rico, Wales, and England.

Kohr, in sprightly and good-humored prose, has given us a theory we need to be thinking about: things, especially including countries, can be too big. Bigness is the “one cause behind all forms of social misery” (p.21). The book gives us many prophetic insights. Here is just one. Writing as an American citizen, he said, “Our empire being as huge as Russia’s, and requiring the same continuous state of preparedness, will need as much centralization and direction and, though we may call our brand anti-communism or, perhaps, the mood of the age, it will be communism just the same” (p.216). He was right. What we have in this country is no longer truly a free market system, although of course it retains elements of the free market. Call it communism, fascism, crony capitalism, or “the mood of the age,” we have indeed moved toward a centralized economy directed from above.

Kohr, writing as a Jewish believer in God, was very respectful of Christianity. Two of his heroes are Aristotle . . . and Augustine.

The thought-provoking insights in his book are almost countless. I have dealt with some of them in Chapter 9 (27 pages) of my book Getting Ready for Secession. (My book is dedicated to Kohr.) Buy my book, of course. Then, persuaded by Chapter 9, go on to read Leopold Kohr’s The Breakdown of Nations for yourself. We need to be thinking about the kind of issues he raises.

The break-up of the United States may occur in the not too distant future, for many reasons including financial bankruptcy. Kohr shows us why such a break-up may be a very good thing. We don’t want to lose our savings, starve to death, or be victims of violence, and such things could happen if the break-up happens in too rocky a manner. But after the break-up, violent or peaceful, a new and better world with smaller, less powerful nations, may be coming. Leopold Kohr gives us considerable hope that smaller can be much better.

Soon, or more likely eventually, I will be putting up (with a little help from my computer guru friend) a website devoted to the books of Gwendoline Keats/Zack.

Gwendoline Keats (pen name Zack) was an English author born in Devonshire in 1865. She died in . . . well, we’re not sure. It may have been 1910, or possibly as late as 1934. She stopped publishing books after 1903.

She wrote five books: Life is Life: And Other Tales and Episodes; On Trial; The White Cottage; Tales of Dunstable Weir; and The Roman Road.

Don’t wait for the website to find out more about her and her books. Any of the first four are excellent books. The Roman Road is not her best work, and it is the least characteristic of her books. I always recommend that someone start with Life Is Life: And Other Tales and Episodes. All five of her books can be read for free on the Internet, as well as purchased for reasonable prices at the usual places.

Warning: Devonshire dialect is heavy in some of her work. It can be slow going until you catch on.

Semi-full disclosure: I have written a book about her books, and included as much information as I can find out about her life. The title is By Noble Things She Stands: The Fiction of Gwendoline Keats/Zack.

This is a writer who needs to be rediscovered by people who like books. A word to the wise is sufficient.