Marginal Revolution: Law and Literature reading list, Spring 2009

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Law and Literature reading list, Spring 2009

The Five Books of Moses, edited and translated by Robert Alter.

Billy Budd and Other Tales, by Hermann Melville.

The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka.

Smilla’s Sense of Snow, by Peter Hoeg.

The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? By Francisco Goldman.

In the Belly of the Beast, by Jack Henry Abbott.

Borges and the Eternal Orangutans, by Fernando Verrissimo.

Glaspell’s Trifles, available on-line.

Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy, by Leo Tolstoy.

Sherlock Holmes, The Complete Novels and Stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, volume 1.

Out: A Novel, by Natsuo Kirino.

I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov.

Moby Dick, by Hermann Melville, excerpts, chapters 89 and 90.

Year’s Best SF 9, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov.

Blindness, by Jose Saramago.

We also will view a small number of movies -- most of all Sia -- and perhaps I will add a Henning Mankell novel as well.

Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 30, 2008 at 06:47 AM in Books, Law | Permalink

Comments

I can't believe you left out Bleak House!

Posted by: Peter Petto at Nov 30, 2008 9:30:51 AM

Oh, and I can believe you left out A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis; but it's a very good one that you should take a look at.

Posted by: Peter Petto at Nov 30, 2008 9:48:00 AM

Tom Bell has a song about the Belly of the Beast.

Posted by: Nathanael Snow at Nov 30, 2008 9:58:50 AM

I can't read about "The Metamorphosis" without thinking of Zero Mostel reading play treatments in "The Producers". It was perhaps the most bitting ironic line in the movie.

Posted by: Bill Nichols at Nov 30, 2008 10:02:33 AM

What other flicks? Sia sounds awesome. Battle Royale was. Any others?

Posted by: burger flipper at Nov 30, 2008 10:13:47 AM

Kafka seems to be increasingly relevant.

Posted by: Mercutio.Mont at Nov 30, 2008 12:45:41 PM

Hmm, why not the Everett Fox translation?

Posted by: Macneil at Nov 30, 2008 3:09:53 PM

Pale Fire is Nabokov's finest work imo (also one of my favorite books), Blindness is very good (I think there is a movie now), and Borges and the Eternal Orangutans is one of the most intricate mystery novels I have read.

I think I read a bunch of these last year when you posted this course's reading material for 2008. It seems like a very strange list to me, but they are good books.

Posted by: lt.milo at Nov 30, 2008 3:32:31 PM

Smilla’s Sense of Snow: The first third is moody and excellent. But the author seemingly didn't know where he was going and lost the thread and in desperation switched to a pulp science-fiction plot from the days of Bug Eyed Monsters ...

Posted by: Robert Ayers at Nov 30, 2008 3:57:27 PM

My favorite (in a guilty pleasure sort of way) law and literature novel is Songs from the Stars, 1980 science fiction novel by Norman Spinrad. I'm pretty sure it's out of print but easily available used through Amazon affiliates. I e-mailed recommending it for your course some years ago, and am taking the liberty to repeat. While the book, on the whole, is no better than a superior satirical science fiction novel, it contains one of the most chilling, in the plot context, sentences in all of literature.

The first half concerns a trial in a hippie/ecofreak society that arises in California (of course) a century or so after a conventional science fiction nuclear holocaust/ecological disaster destroys modern civilization. Spinrad presents his hippie/ecofreaks as caricatures, but takes their values seriously.

The hero of the book is "Clear Blue Lou," a charismatic judge who rides circuit in his solar powered hang glider. The case in the book presents a couple of jurisprudential dilemmas:

1. Consistent with the values of his society, Lou believes that any decision not consistent with spontaneous feelings is suspect, and thus a questionable basis for justice. On the other hand, he also recognizes that the judicial role requires a degree of objectivity, or, at least, the appearance of objectivity.

2. Lou's society places strict quasi-religious, quasi-legal restrictions on the use of technology. (E.g., no nuclear energy or fossil fuels.) As a well-socialized citizen, Lou agrees with these principles. However, he also recognizes that the economic functioning of his society requires some bending of the rules around the edges. Moreover, he also believes that his society has avoided socially destabilizing cognitive disonance only by avoiding any close examination into the questionable business activities at the edges of the technology rules. Unfortunately, the case before him appears to require a serious inquiry into these matters, creating a conflict between norms of honest adjudication and broader concerns of social stability.

So as not to mischaracterize the analytical level of the book, I should note that Lou's efforts to resolve these antinomies (to use a good old Critical Legal Studies term) involve lots of sex,drugs, and rock and roll.

Posted by: Martin at Nov 30, 2008 7:17:46 PM

Too many books for one class. Encourages superficial examination and analysis. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Posted by: Doug at Nov 30, 2008 7:17:56 PM

too much to read for one class. is it possible to just read the first couple letters of each word?

Posted by: babar at Nov 30, 2008 8:04:00 PM

what would you include on the reading list if you were teaching an economics and literature course?

Posted by: anon at Dec 1, 2008 8:27:58 AM

How about Death Note (デスノート)? Its a manga series that has also been adapted to anime. Think Crime and Punishment if Raskolnikov really was an Übermensch. Worth checking out if you haven't yet.

Posted by: db at Dec 1, 2008 7:58:50 PM

I also teach Law & Lit but have never tried the Alter/Moses. Taught Faulkner's *Intruder in the Dust* last spring for the first time and it was very successful! Less so was *Native Son,* but I'll give it another try this semester. Have you taught it?

Posted by: HR at Jan 6, 2009 10:13:46 AM

I agree with Doug and Babar that there are way too many books on this list. With the amount of time you're going to be able to spend on each, the analysis and discussion is only going to skim the surface of the texts. You can probably get as much out of a Wikipedia summary. I would say five books should be the maximum for a course like this.

Posted by: Mike at Jan 6, 2009 10:53:06 AM

Great list. Probably would check some of this soon.

Posted by: wow gold at Mar 20, 2009 1:34:43 PM

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