Whatever about the heady debates surrounding hyped "books of the moment" and the praise or derision they invariably engender, a true sense of excitement accompanies those furtive exchanges during which one reader tells another of a book that simply must be read. Such conversations can develop into verbal tennis matches, with authors and book titles being volleyed back and forth, to the sound of "How do you spell that name?"
Few routes lead you closer to the mind and possibly soul of another than their individual response to a book. Many of the titles celebrated and re-discovered in this charming, rather personal volume are neither lost nor forgotten. Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier is justifiably revered - but far from neglected.
In fairness to Siri Hustvedt, she does admit that her choice, Czech writer Bohumil Hrabel's I Served the King of England, is "not truly a forgotten book", but she adds: "I have discovered that the name of this writer means nothing to most people." I doubt that. Also strange is seeing Pulitzer prize-winner Jane Smiley included. It is true her epic The Greenlanders is her least-read book, but it is hardly forgotten. Nor is Golding's Pincher Martin "lost". Many of the contributors tell us, some with a confessional abandon, far more about themselves than about their chosen book. In truth, Lost Classics could easily have been called "favourite books".
Still, it is pleasing to see a case being made for Arnold Bennett's masterpiece The Old Wives' Tale. Caryl Phillips offers a cooly ironic account of Irish actor Micheal Mac Liammoir's hilarious diary of a bewildering year spent working with wayward genius Orson Welles, "the winged gorilla". It should inspire most readers to track down a copy of Put Money in Thy Purse - and quickly.
Though Booker short-listed as recently as 1989, veteran English writer the late Sybille Bedford's unusual quasi-continental autobiographical novel, Jigsaw, is a highly unusual, evocative performance, well deserving of inclusion here.
I have to admit I was familiar with more of the books mentioned than of the participating contributors - there are several unknown names included among the famous. In some cases, such as with the fine American writer Russell Banks and the equally superb Australian David Malouf, both describe their nominations so well they've left me feeling I want to reread those books. Banks's choice, Barbara Greene's Too Late to Turn Back (1936), is particularly clever. It was written when she was only 22 and, as Banks writes, "a slightly ditzy, naive and utterly charming Londoner" and socialite some eight or nine years younger than the "dour, somewhat secretive literary cousin" she agreed to join on a walk from Sierra Leone "across the vast uncharted jungle of Liberia". That cousin was none other than the novelist Graham Greene. His version of the events that followed, Journey Without Maps, is far more famous yet nothing like as engaging as her candid account, which is not only an astute piece of travel writing but also proves a shrewd portrait of the restless Greene.
As is evident from his wonderful memoir, 12, Edmondstone Street, David Malouf writes well on any subject. His entry on Stendhal's lively life of composer Rossini is delightful.
"Rossini is surely the most natural genius who ever lived, music bubbled out of him as from a spring . . . Stendhal knows that it is Mozart who is the supreme master. Pensive, melancholy, Mozart's music deals with real emotion, and that of the highest; Rossini knows nothing of these . . . but Mozart is German, Rossini the apotheosis of all things Mediterranean."
Malouf's affection for this gentle biography is obvious, as is his cautionary candour: "This is not a book for purists", he writes.
Although I would dispute Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman being described as forgotten, Charles Foran has cleverly adapted the brief given in order to present a telling outline of the Irish writer's unhappy life.
Should there be a prize for style among the contributors, it should go to Australian writer Helen Garner for her urgent recollection of Phyllis Hay's marvellous yarn The Journey of the Stamp Animals. "It was the story of four Australian animals who somehow got off the stamps on which they were printed, and set out on a long and difficult journey." Garner recalls her efforts to track down Hay and the book. "But everyone looked blank." Long years passed, but an elderly woman eventually wrote to her. "She was excited," writes Garner, "she wanted me to know she was the writer of the book." It is also pleasing to see Alfred Noyes's dramatic poem The Highwayman included. Best of all, due praise is given to Russell Hoban's The Mouse and his Child, the story of a clockwork mouse and his son in search of a home.
Anyone who has read Elizabeth Smart's agonising By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept might well like to endure the other side of the story. The Dead Seagull, published some five years later, in 1950, is poet George Barker's version of the obsessive, messed-up romance that kept Smart and Barker locked in a mutual hell that passed for a relationship.
Alan Lightman's beautiful salute to W.H. Hudson's Far Away and Long Ago, a childhood memoir written by Hudson as an old man dying in England, recalling his South-American boyhood of some 60 years earlier, is fascinating. As is the discovery of Reginald Hine (1883-1949) described as "a bookish lawyer and amateur antiquary" and the author of what sounds like an original and atmospheric autobiography, Confessions of an Un-Common Attorney. Books claiming to have collected the best of anything invariably stimulate disputes and literary show-downs. Lost Classics should achieve the ultimate goal of any book - to inspire readers to new discoveries.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
