Cracks in Pomo Reading List
A Syllabus for Cracking Postmodernity
Top 10
1. Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia
2. A Secular Age, Charles Taylor
3. Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics, Michael Novak
4. Females, Andrea Long Chu
5. Decadence and Catholicism, Ellis Hanson
6. The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp
7. The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew Crawford
8. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
9. Life of St. Teresa of Avila
10. Au Rebours, JK Huysmans
For a deeper dive…
The Crisis of Modernity, Augusto Del Noce
An Anxious Age, Joseph Bottum
Why Liberalism Failed, Patrick Deneen
Notes on Camp, Susan Sontag
Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault
The Myth of Religious Violence, William T. Cavanaugh
Torture and Eucharist, William T. Cavanaugh
Theology and Social Theory, John Milbank
The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day
Freedom From Reality, D.C. Schindler
What's Wrong with the World?, GK Chesterton
Dignity, Chris Arnade
The Sickness Unto Death, Soren Kierkegaard
Birth of the Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche
The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
Nothing Personal, James Baldwin
The Day is Now Far Spent, Robert Sarah
Introduction to Christianity, Joseph Ratzinger
The Sabbath of History, Joseph Ratzinger and William Congdon
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber
Sun and Steel, Yukio Mishima
The Cornel West Reader
Fantasyland, Kurt Andersen
Shop Class as Soul Craft, Matthew Crawford
Music: A Subversive History, Ted Gioia
Sexuality
The Erotic Phenomenon, Jean-Luc Marion
Profondeur des Sexes, Fabrice Hadjadj
Uranism and Unisexuality, Marc-Andre Raffalovich
Same Sex Desire in Victorian Religious Culture, Frederick Roden
Erotism, George Bataille
Free Men, Free Women, Camille Paglia
Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla
History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault
Harlots of the Desert, Benedicta Ward
Fiction, Cultural Commentary, and Poetry
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
Collected Poetry of St. John of the Cross
Franny and Zooey, JD Salinger
Fire Sermon, Jamie Quattro
The Light in the Piazza, Elizabeth Spencer
Thanks for the Light, F. Scott Fitzgerald
120 Days in Sodom, Marquis de Sade
Mariette in Ecstasy, Ron Hansen
The Secret History, Donna Tart
Flowers of Evil, Charles Baudelaire
Fuccboi, Sean Thor Conroe
Lord of the World, Robert Hugh Benson
La Bas, En Route, La Catedral, L’Oblate, JK Huysmans
Arts and Entertainments, Chris Beha
Enigma Variations, Andre Aciman
Call Me By Your Name, Andre Aciman
Drown, Junot Diaz
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
Dominicana, Angie Cruz
The Novelist, Jordan Castro
Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi
Series of Self-Destructive Acts, Chris Beha
Blood Wedding, Federico Garcia Lorca
Poet in New York, Federico Garcia Lorca
Duty of Delight, Dorothy Day
Reggaeton, Wayne Marshall, Raquel Z. Rivera, Deborah Pacini Hernandez
Acts of Worship, Yukio Mishima
They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurraqib