"neglected"? "masterpiece"?

Robert McCrum lists a few "neglected masterpieces," among them, oddly, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address and Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener." Or perhaps not oddly: perhaps this is just an indication of the difference between American and British schooling. Generations of American schoolchildren would have loved to neglect old Bartleby, but didn't get the chance.

I have always been uneasy with the term "neglected masterpiece" — such a thing is really quite rare, whereas the phrase isn't. There aren't many books that genuinely deserve to be called "masterpieces." Also, what counts as "neglected"? Often books so designated aren't neglected at all, but rather are just given less attention, and less universal attention, than they deserve.

However, I will admit that "neglected masterpiece" has a certain flair to it that "pretty good book that hasn't gotten the attention it deserves" lacks.

And I will say this: the best historical novel I have ever read, and one of my very favorite books, is almost completely forgotten now, less than thirty years after its publication: The Succession, by George Garrett.

forgotten, remembered

The notion of a "forgotten literary treasure" is a complicated one. No such book is forgotten by everyone, so when we say that a forgotten book shold be remembered, what we really mean is that, however well-known it happens to be, it ought to be much better known.

With that caveat in mind, let me mention two (relatively recent) novels that I think are so wonderful that we should have parades for their authors.

The first is Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day, a heartbreakingly beautiful about memory, loss, and the love of family. The paragraph near the end of the book that contains the title phrase is one of the loveliest and most memorable I know. I have read the book several times just to get to that gentle epiphany again, and to feel the full warmth and sweetness of it.

It's generaly acknowledged, I think, that War and Peace is the greatest historical novel ever written. Well, then, the second greatest is George Garrett's The Succession. And I totally mean that. That there aren't ten copies of this book in every bookstore in the country is a source of grief to me. The book is just magnificent, a full and rich evocation of a full and rich world, that of the Elizabethans.