Classic Penguin

From the editors of Penguin Books and Penguin Classics

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It’s official: we’ve found the winners of our second annual Penguin Classics Essay Contest! Congratulations to Emma Browning, Caroline Lopez, Gina Petruzziello, Juliana Phan, and George H. Smith, whose insights on Of Mice and Men were fascinating and astute. Click to read the winning essays that deftly explore, among other things, the complex relationship between George and Lennie, the viability of the American Dream, and the broader implications of the novella’s disturbing ending. Click the names of each winner to read their essays.

The Penguin Classics Essay Contest is an opportunity for 9th and 10th grade students (or homeschooled students ages 14–16) to engage with a classic text for the chance to win a $1,000 scholarship prize and a Penguin Classics Deluxe Library for their school or local public library. Our 2018–2019 contest over Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is open now!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. US Residents, 9th and 10th grade students or 14–16-year-old homeschooled students. Ends April 26, 2019. Official Rules.

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We at Penguin would like to congratulate our very own Beena Kamlani on her thirtieth anniversary at Viking/Penguin! Beena, editor, teacher, mentor, and friend—only some of the titles she’s earned throughout her storied career—is a brilliant, inimitable force in the publishing industry, and we’re so proud to be celebrating this milestone with her!

Beena has edited authors such as Blanche Wiesen Cook, Terry McMillan, Diane Middlebrook, Sir Peter Medawar, Simone Beck, David Leavitt, Jiang Rong, Paul Beatty, Robert Kanigel, Reinaldo Arenas, Bob Shacochis, Alex Gilvarry, Kristopher Jansma, and Saul Bellow, and worked with Robert Fagles on his masterly translations of The Odyssey, The Iliad, and The Aeneid. She taught book editing at NYU for eighteen years, winning an award for teaching excellence during that time, and now teaches self-editing at Hunter College, CUNY. Read her anniversary speech about her publishing journey, her love of editing, and the importance of books below:

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Thanks to Kathryn and Michael for hosting this evening and to all my colleagues, new and old, for making it.  I’ll keep this brief. No amount of words can describe what these thirty years have meant to me—from the many interesting personalities who’ve crossed my path, to the books, the hundreds of books, that became part of my waking life. And it’s gone so fast. Blink, there’s ten years. Blink again, another ten, or twenty.

When my niece was five, she asked me why I read so many books. I said, because when I read a book, I live another life. It’s true also of being an editor. Through the books we edit, we inhabit our authors’ characters and stories, and their lives, their ups and downs, intersect with ours. That multiplicity of experience, compressed and lived so many times, is also why time tends to go by so fast. It is a job unlike any other, because it is rooted in the successful management of dialogue, of communication, of ensuring that what you and the author have to say to each other will end up revitalizing and not jeopardizing the work. It relies on sensitivity and diplomacy, humor and skill. It is always poised on the razor edge of friendship and professionalism. In the end the book must be served, and we are all in its service.

I came to Viking back in 1988; it was a small company then and housed all of us, and the mailroom, in two floors on 40 West 23rd Street, home to the Home Depot now. In the thirty years I’ve been here, the company has grown to become the largest book publisher in the world. It’s been quite an arc, and it’s been a privilege to be part of that growth, to see it go from strength to strength. The company has always been a magnet for talent and it has nurtured it well. A company is its people and if longevity is a marker of its ability to draw and sustain talent, here alone is evidence of it. As I look around this room, I see people with even longer histories here than mine. Kathryn, Leigh, Paul, Hal … It’s been such an honour to learn from all those who came before me, and a true pleasure to pass on what one’s learnt to those who have come after me.

For me personally, that arc began with the legendary Peter Mayer, who had just brought Bellow back to Viking the year I joined. It was a bright celebratory moment in Viking’s history. His booming voice filled our corridors and his energy was infectious. We began growing steadily as a company, becoming larger by the minute. I began working with Bellow from his first offering to us, A Theft, until his last novel, Ravelstein. Kathryn and I first worked together when Bob’s Iliad was delivered to the house in 1988. We continued working with him, completing his trifecta—the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Virgil’s Aeneid—and our collaboration with him led to a friendship that continued until his death in 2008. There have been so many others—team efforts with Andrea, Pam, Wendy, Carole-- each one a landmark on the way.

This fabulous journey would not have been what it has without all of you, my wonderful colleagues. Working with you has been a joy. We’ve all been on this road together, a team devoted to making the best books possible. I look forward to continuing the journey with all my newer colleagues—Brian, Elda, John, Patrick, all of you. I am as excited about what’s to come as I was thirty years ago when I first walked in through Viking’s doors. And to Kathryn, who has been a friend, a mentor, and an inspiration since I joined, I can only say thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks for being there from the beginning and for bringing us all together this evening.

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"Steinbeck stood as America’s moral compass, pointing to Americans’ virtues and lapses...The freedom to critique one’s country, he felt with increasing urgency, was the role of an artist in a free nation.” 

—Susan Shillinglaw on John Steinbeck, who was born on this day in 1902.

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Our Penguin Classics summer intern, Delia Taylor, wrote a beautiful ode to her favorite classic and “staff pick” The Odyssey, detailing how Homer’s legendary epic shaped her — from early childhood, to high school, to adulthood — and has influenced her both as a storyteller and a navigator of the sea of life. Read the full essay, below.

Myth made its way into my life early on. In second grade, we did a brief unit on the Greek gods with each student assigned a god to study. I was given Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. I quickly became obsessed with her and everything she embodied, every story she was a part of, and yes, all of her interests including archery. The world that she was a part of-- one where vengeful gods come down from the heavens and cause mischief-- was my own form of fairytale.  The older I got, the more I was convinced that I was as much a part of the mythology as any young girl could be. When my mother explained to me that my first name—the same as my grandmother’s—was even more than just a Puerto-Rican hand-me-down, but a derivative of the very island where Artemis was born, I knew that I could take this bit of myth with me everywhere I went. But then high school came, as high school does, with a vengeance, and I tucked this world away on a shelf for safekeeping.

I was awkward and shy still, lacking the social graces that make navigating through young-adulthood easy, an introvert in a school full of extroverts. So, I retreated into myself and decided I’d put my focus towards academic excellence and nothing else. In class, we were berated with the texts of dead white men: quiet tales and texts that were so verbose that they were inaccessible, esoteric and boring, for lack of a better word: texts we studied so in-depth that the words began to lose their meaning. At the rate we were going, I wasn’t sure I’d make it through freshman year English, let alone the next three years of it. That was, however, until we began the unit on The Odyssey. Suddenly the world that I loved growing up came flooding back to me. It felt sinful to study a text that was so fantastical that it might as well have been a child’s bedtime story. For a couple of hours a day I could escape to a world that felt familiar and comfortable, yet exciting. Every chapter was a soap opera: will Telemachus get all of the suitors out of his home? Will Odysseus ever make it home, and what will happen if he does? I’d never experienced a text, especially one as ancient, that kept my interest the way this one did. It kept me on my feet with its twists and turns, and with all the obstacles that worked to keep the family apart. But through it all, Odysseus, Penelope and Telemachus persevered and I never put it down.

In my cubicle as I type this, there is a passage of ancient Greek written on yellow legal paper. It begins: “andra moi ennepe mousa. . .” roughly, “sing to me, muse, of the man. . .” the very beginning lines of The Odyssey, the text that would predict my future as an English major and Classics minor and a writer who overwhelmingly uses myth to influence her own stories now. I keep it there as a reminder to myself to always weave a story with as many twists and turns as Odysseus himself. I’m reminded that the ingredients of this epic are the same ones that make up our very own lives: all the obstacles and eventual triumphs that make us who we are, that, like rocks at the center of the earth, apply enough pressure to turn us into gems. I’m reminded that life itself is a voyage with hazy horizons, loss and love and things and people that make us question who we are, who we think we are, and where we’re going. And lastly, in undergrad and even in post-grad life, The Odyssey reminds me that nostos, homecoming, is not always easy, but something often worth the trek.

— Delia Taylor

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It’s time again for the Penguin Classics essay contest! Open to high school freshmen and sophomores, our winners will each receive a $1,000 scholarship to be used toward higher education by writing an essay on a chosen Penguin Classic. This year’s selection is Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

On behalf of Penguin Classics we’d also like to congratulate the five winners of last year’s Lord of the Flies essay contest — (above, clockwise from left) Alanna Felton, Sarah Vail, Elise Curren, Saron Nebiye, and Victoria Enea (not pictured) — who dazzled us with essays that dove deep into the human condition as depicted by Golding. From charting loss of innocence through shifts in physical appearance to mapping the descent into savagery through the differing locations on the island, they assessed and dissected Ralph’s harrowing discovery: that humans are, indeed, fallible and capable of great evil.  As Elise Curren wisely stresses, “. . . human nature is to blame for the conflict that exists in contemporary civilization.” Meanwhile, Victoria Enea ends her essay with an optimistic suggestion, a plea for empathy: “If people would simply learn to love and appreciate the beauty of their own setting—that is, the world around them—perhaps they would not fall victim to the same savagery, cruelty, and heartlessness as the boys in the Lord of the Flies.” In times like these, it’s quite easy to forget how far a little kindness and empathy can go, but it is certainly a step towards conquering the Beast within us all.

Head here to read all of the essays from our talented young winners. Do you know a high-schooler who loves Penguin Classics? You can find the essay questions and rules here. To be eligible, all entries must be postmarked by April 28, 2018. Winners will be selected in June and notified by July 8, 2018.

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is no better day to read Jane Austen than on the 200th anniversary of her death. The beloved author of six of the most popular and influential works in the English literary canon has been read in classrooms and living rooms, park benches and libraries around the world. Her works have been adapted time and time again from ghoulish manifestations like Burr Steers’ Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), to Amy Heckerling’s 1995 Emma-based classic, Clueless, and while these versions are beloved, they always leave us aching for her original text.

But how is it that her works have endured in the hearts and minds of Americans in particular? In an interview with WNYC, Austen scholar Juliette Wells – who edited and introduced our new Emma Deluxe Edition – notes that “Americans respond to the sense of freedom within restraints that she portrays, especially for her women characters. And of all of her novels, Pride and Prejudice has a sentiment that [Juliette] thinks Americans respond to most strongly.” Of Austen, Wells goes on to say that “she focuses so much on women’s growth. . . and self-knowledge, women’s growth emotionally and psychologically, and readers for generations have gotten the sense that nothing held Jane Austen back in spite of all the constraints that are evident even on those title pages.”

Austen’s work reminds us of the humanity and complexity of women and their ability to have it all, do it all, love whomever they choose and above all else, survive despite society’s enduring limitations of women throughout history. In a time when women’s issues are taking center stage in both the social and political sphere in America, Wells’ fresh perspective makes Austen’s works feel just as relevant today as they were two centuries ago.

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In her autobiography, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote, “This is a woman’s century, the first chance for the mother of the world to rise to her full place . . .” In recent years, and given the current political climate, we’ve come to echo that exact sentiment with t-shirts and pins proudly proclaiming that “the future is female.” With director Patty Jenkins at the helm, Wonder Woman is already a box office hit and has brought about a revival of the on-screen feminist icon. On the page, however, the works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman endure and even draw some similarities with the mythos of the comic book heroine.

In her 1915 novella Herland, Gilman cleverly crafts a utopian society in which only women exist and live peacefully. In the opening paragraphs to this satire, Gilman writes, “No one will ever believe how they looked. Descriptions aren’t any good when it comes to women, and I never was good at descriptions anyhow. But it’s got to be done somehow; the rest of the world needs to know about that country.” Meanwhile, Diana Prince, aka Wonder Woman, inhabits an all-female land, which was influenced by the mythos of the Ancient Greeks. As far back as Homer, Herodotus, and Plutarch, there is tale of Amazonian women: formidable female warriors that even the Athenians sought to destroy in affront to the idea of their masculinity. While the storytellers and historians-of-old pegged the Amazons as aggressive “killers of men” (androktones), Gilman depicts the women of Herland as wildly progressive.

Herland wasn’t Gilman’s only feminist outcry: her well-known 1892 short-story The Yellow Wallpaper details a woman’s harrowing descent into madness brought about by her husband’s attempts to “cure” her. Gilman in her own right was quite the “wonder woman” of her day, revolutionary in her desire to dismantle gender-constructs. Both of these iconic tales, along with others, are included in our Penguin Classics edition.

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“T.S. Eliot once said he doubted ‘whether a poet or novelist can be universal without being local too.’ I can think of no literary work that more persuasively confirms this judgment better than Chinua Achebe’s trilogy, which evokes for us the local world of Igboland while exploring themes that are recognizable to us all. Achebe, by inviting us into his world, expands our own.” 

— Kwame Anthony Appiah, from his foreword to our new Deluxe Edition of Chinua Achebe’s The African Trilogy, featuring Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, and No Longer at Ease. We are so honored to welcome Achebe—who is widely considered to be the father of modern African literature—into the Penguin Classics family!

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up to no good

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“I didn’t understand at the time — no one could have — that [The Grapes of Wrath] was not just a historical document but also a document about our current world with its depiction of drought and its effects (…) California, where the Joads went, is no longer the reliably verdant and green paradise they found; it’s now coming out of a five-year drought of its own (…) The other point that Steinbeck makes well, is that when we have huge, natural changes like these, the people who pay the largest price are the people most vulnerable and closest to the bottom (…) None of them did anything much to cause the problem, and yet they are its early victims (…) Steinbeck was trying to do something more than just simply tell a story. He’s a remarkable writer, and this is his masterpiece.” — author and environmentalist Bill McKibben, in a recent interview with the Boston Globe

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“As a creative work and a historical document, Amiable With Big Teeth is nothing short of a master key into a world where the intersection of race and global revolutionary politics plays out in the lives of characters who are as dynamic and fully realized as the novel itself. The story offers a front-row seat to the polemics that drove (and stymied) black radical organizing in the 1930s. Given that the novel lived on the dusty shelves of Columbia University’s library for decades, we’ll never know how Amiable With Big Teeth would have been received at the time it was written, and if its skepticism regarding Russia would have complicated the reception of Richard Wright’s pro-communist 1940 novel Native Son. But for today’s audience, McKay’s last novel should make for fascinating and timely reading as Americans enter an era in which solidarity-building across racial identities and national borders feels more necessary, and perhaps more difficult to achieve, than ever.”

 — excerpted from The Atlantic’s in-depth and informative review of Claude McKay’s Amiable with Big Teeth. Head over to The Atlantic for the full review, which discusses the historical context of the acclaimed Harlem Renaissance writer’s newly-discovered work, and the way the novel’s racial and political themes make it as relevant today as ever.

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"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual."  — John Steinbeck, East of Eden 

Happy birthday to one of our favorite literary legends whose wisdom resonates with us daily, John Steinbeck!

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In 2004, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Philip Roth published a novel called The Plot Against America, which re-imagines that FDR unexpectedly loses the 1940 presidential election to the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, whose election was meddled with by foreign powers and subsequent rule emboldens xenophobes. In a recent email interview with the New Yorker, Roth was asked if his fictional story has become reality. Roth, in so many words, denied the link to his book and today’s current political state. Instead, he offered a “darkly pessimistic, daringly inventive novel” that may offer insight: Herman Melville’s 1857 novel The Confidence-Man, which centers on a con man who sneaks onto a Mississippi River steamboat on April Fool’s Day and, while dressed in various disguises, preys on the weaknesses of the passengers so they will have “confidence” in him and give him money.

This isn’t this first time Melville has come up in the news cycle. The Guardian recently noted that Melville’s classic tale Bartleby, the Scrivener shows the “steely strength of mild rebellion,” and “that revolutionary resistance comes from a man in a conventional suit mildly stating there are things he would rather not do.” The takeaway: when in doubt about how to understand the world, turn to Melville (or any classic author’s work that contains overt social criticism, for that matter).

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"Don't let people know the facts about the political and economic situation; divert their attention to giant pandas, channel swimmers, royal weddings and other soothing topics." 

— George Orwell

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"Why discriminate against the noble aborigines of America—they who have no other father-motherland? The gospel of humanitarianism, like charity, must begin at home, among home people, and from thence spread out into all the world. Americanize the first Americans." 

— Zitkala-Ša, American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings

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"Shakespeare continues to be a touchstone...I took this wonderful Shakespeare class in college where I just started to read the tragedies and dig into them. And that, I think, is foundational for me in understanding how certain patterns repeat themselves and play themselves out between human beings." 

— President Obama, in his recent interview with the New York Times about his love of books and how they've shaped his presidency. We will always appreciate and remember President Obama as a strong advocate for books and frequent champion of the classics.

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New year, new perspective. From a pioneering female journalist, to a groundbreaking LGBTQ voice, to two revolutionary civil rights activists from different eras, we're starting 2017 off with a few books on our backlist that renew our spirits and inspire change for a better world:

Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton The Light of Truth by Ida B. Wells On Being Different by Merle Miller Around the World in Seventy-Two Days and Other Writings by Nellie Bly