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The Reading Room

Novels That Argue With Themselves

Books whose form is the objection to their own content. Set in this order, they teach a term on their own.

a list by Theodore Pike7 books

  1. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

    “Begin here, because everything after is a footnote to it.”

    Laurence Sterne

    Shelve
    1
  2. Middlemarch

    “A narrator cleverer than everyone and generous to all of them.”

    George Eliot

    Shelve
    2
  3. The Remains of the Day

    “A narrator who cannot afford to be clever about himself.”

    Kazuo Ishiguro

    Shelve
    3
  4. Gulliver’s Travels

    Jonathan Swift

    Shelve
    4
  5. Beloved

    “Where the withholding is not a technique but a moral position.”

    Toni Morrison

    Shelve
    5
  6. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

    “The joke version. Still a serious book.”

    Italo Calvino

    Shelve
    6
  7. Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

    “The contemporary entry. Four accounts, one fortune, no arbiter.”

    Hernan Diaz

    Shelve
    7