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