Today’s the last list. It covers several genres, each with just a couple of suggestions. The last list starts with drama, which is probably where the first list should have began. A play is, by definition, a one-night entertainment.
Drama
The possibilities are near endless, and, yes, I’m aware that Shakespeare, Moliere, Shaw and the gang are not on this list.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Sophocles, Oedipus
Euripides, Hippolytus
Ibsen, The Wild Duck
O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, My Dinner with Andre, a film that records a conversation over dinner.
Dialog
• Plato: Apology of Socrates
• Interviews. Dialogs have become interviews. If you are interested in writing, the interviews with writers published by The Paris Review are part of your education.
Sayings and aphorisms
• Diogenes — A collection of his sayings is in 7 Greeks, translations by Guy Davenport.
• Antonio Porchia, Voices.
Letters
• Seneca, “On Noise,” “Scipio’s Villa”
• Roy Bedichek — all the letters by this neglected Texas writer are good, but try to find the one in which he gives directions for making a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.
• Charles Lamb — all are good, but try to find the letter in which he apologizes to a hostess for having enjoyed himself too much and having to be carried home.
• Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet. Part of a writer’s education.
Sports
Bernard Darwin’s essays on golf and Eduardo Galeano’s essays on soccer are wonderful.
Others
• Ecclesiastes
• Jesus Ben Sirach, Ecclesiasticus
• Sufi Tales: “Little Fatima.” Idries Shah published several collections of these tales.
• Tao Te Ching
• Gilgamesh
• Kabir, Songs
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