Ten Books Everyone Should Read

An assault on political spin and hypocrisy, this comic epic is topical and entertaining as well as philosophical and moral.

I first read Lord Byron’s poetic masterpiece, Don Juan, when I was 16. Tackling this comic epic – a poem as long as most novels – was a way of demonstrating, to myself and others, that I was serious about reading literature. I carried the paperback around for months, like a badge of allegiance to art. Even saying the title out loud was a kind of shibboleth. Those in the know pronounced it joo-an, in the knowledge that Byron rhymed his hero’s name with “new one,” “true one,” and “woman.” Only those who hadn’t read the poem pronounced its title in the Hispanic fashion, hwan.

Don Juan changed everything I thought I knew about poetry. For a start, it was funny. At times I laughed out loud, but the comedy is still there even when the poem’s at its most serious. And then it was long and digressive and easy to read and the whole thing was narrated by this wonderful, witty, laid-back raconteur, who both was and was not Byron himself. The beginning of the poem is full of digs at Byron’s estranged wife and topical comments on the politics of his time, and has none of the abstract, rarefied atmosphere that we often associate with poetry. Byron’s Juan isn’t the callous seducer portrayed by Mozart and others – instead he’s usually the one who gets seduced by a series of designing women.

It’s not too extreme to say that Don Juan changed my life, although I didn’t know it when I first read the poem. It didn’t happen all at once, of course. It was several years before I felt ready to write about the poem at any length, but eventually I wrote a book about Byron, and Don Juan has pride of place in the final chapter. More than any other book, Don Juan set me on course to become a literary critic. I still read it and share it with my students, and it still seems as funny, as lively, and as accomplished as ever.

Every literature student at university should read Don Juan, not only because it’s endlessly entertaining, but also because it’s a deeply philosophical, political, and moral poem, even if it sometimes conceals its seriousness under a mask of irony. Byron himself insisted, only half facetiously, that his poem was a “great moral lesson.” In a world where our public political discourse is all too often shallow, polarized, and shrill, Don Juan assaults “cant” in all its forms. “Cant” is Byron’s word for the meaningless, insincere jargon that he sees poisoning the political debate of his day. His poem attacks political spin, hypocrisy, and doublespeak on behalf of the virtues of clear thinking and plain speaking. There’s still plenty of cant around today, which ensures that Don Juan continues to be startlingly topical.