The Book Tower

In a couple of his recent posts, Simon over at Inside Books has started me thinking about the books I studied whilst at school. Were they good choices? Did I benefit from them?

O Level Texts

From memory, these are the texts forced onto me aged 14-16:

• Travesties by Tom Stoppard
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
• Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift
• The poetry of Edward Thomas
• The Nun’s Priest’s Tale by Chaucer
• The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare

Stoppard is always a syllabus favourite, from this level right up until graduate. It’s his cleverness that excites the exam question setter. Tricks with words and plot, time and memory, Travesites – in its archness – tied in neatly with Wilde as a man with a failing memory (who once acted in a production of Earnest ) finds his reality slipping in and out of Wilde’s drama. Clever stuff. More than two decades on, Tom Stoppard still continues to irritate me.

I really enjoyed Shakepeare because you can discuss him endlessly but he’s not obviously trying to be clever. It’s achievable to argue from both sides of an argument because his plays are so rich.

A Level Texts

Aged 16-17, although bearing in mind I made my own choice to stay on at school:

• Hamlet and Measure for Measure by Shakespeare
• The Spire by William Golding
• Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
• The White Devil by John Webster
• The Millers Tale by Chaucer
• Professional Foul by Tom Stoppard
• Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

More Stoppard. Why not Pinter, Orton or even Arnold Wesker?

Shakespeare and Beckett had the most effect on me here. Shakespeare for the same reasons as above. Beckett was just strange, none of us had ever encountered anything like this before. I’ve realised since that – oddly – the closest thing to it we did know was Shakespeare. Scenes from The Tempest are very pre-Beckett Beckett, although we didn’t know that at the time. Anyway, we were excited by Waiting for Godot. The humour, depth and, as I’ve said, strangeness of the play.

Golding – again a favourite of question setters. The Spire provided perfect examples of symbolism that you could discuss until you’re blue in the face. Unfortunately it’s a boring novel.

Chaucer? Well, you just get used to him. When I returned to my books as a mature student years later he was there waiting for me. As were Shakespeare, Hardy and Beckett. And – dammit – Stoppard.