Read By: Jennifer Egan
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Jennifer Egan on her selection:
The House of Mirth was the first literary classic that I picked up entirely on my own, without prodding from a teacher or a parent, and adored.\\u202f I read it as a teenager, during a stifling summer visit to my grandparents, when my literary tastes were unsophisticated (Archie comics were high on my list).\\u202f I recall the experience as my coming-of-age as a reader\\u2014when I learned, years before discovering that I wanted to write, what transformative power a work of fiction can have.\\u202f Because my attachment to The House of Mirth is so personal, I tend to reread it with slight trepidation that the magic may have fled.\\u202f But each time, I find the novel\\u2019s tragic power intact, even as the nature of the tragedy seems to shift\\u2014from the perils of living by one\\u2019s looks (teenage reading) to the cruelty of the world toward women (young adult reading) to the struggle for personal freedom in a money-obsessed culture (adult readings) to my most recent (middle-aged, I\\u2019ll reluctantly call it) appreciation of the novel as an artifact of the Gilded Age that lays bare that era\\u2019s pathologies.\\u202f All of which moves me to assert that Edith Wharton\\u2019s second novel is a masterpiece, a pinnacle of American letters that remains electrifying and relevant in our 21st Century.
The House of Mirth with an introduction by Jennifer Egan at Bookshop.org\\xa0
Music: \\u201cShift of Currents\\u201d by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
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