When I was an undergrad, I spent a good deal of time pouring over the Norton anthologies of British literature (and the Heath anthologies of American literature). But, especially by the time I made it to grad school, I was as much (hell, probably more) interested in literary theory and criticism as I was with literature itself. It’s an odd thing to enjoy, but what can I tell you. Anyway, yesterday I noticed, at the local Barnes and Noble, the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. And, for anyone into the subject, it’s a substantial work–really the first of its kind in terms of comprehensiveness. It begins with the greeks and moves forward, including practically everyone you’ll ever hear name-checked in a typical English graduate studies program. And I’m showing my geek here, but I think I’d really enjoy spending the better part of a decade of spare moments it would take to slog through its 2624 pages. I wish they’d had such a thing while I was in grad school, as many of these texts are hard to track down. Of course, here you just have snipets. But that’s true of the literature anthologies as well. (Interesting connection, M. Keith Booker, whom I studied under at the U of A, wrote the teachers guide to this mamoth thing. His Vargos Llosa Among the Postmodernists is a good read and a good introduction to literary postmodernism).