Posted on 02/17/2006 8:31:22 AM PST by Borges
LOL!
Pretty anti-Semitic, too: I'm thinking of just the first part of The Sun Also Rises and his description of Robert Cohn. Then again, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is about Huckleberry's guilt over not "doing the right thing" by returning a human being back to his "owner," and that book's pretty high up on this list.
Love to read. At least one novel a week. Guess I just like more contemporary 'stuff'.
"That is perhaps the best Bad Novel of all time. Highly enjoyable."
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I do not share that view...
Pan Tadeusz needs to be on the list. (Wajda made an excellent movie version)
Antigone is good - very good.
I also like Elektra.
(The story about Agamemnon and Clytemnestra is one of my favorite family sagas. I used to tease one of my co-workers about writing it up as a soap opera - you could do it, but oh, what a tragedy.)
I bet that got them reading the Satyricon. But the piece that will stick in my mind forever is the dinner scene. Oh what gorgeous nouveau riche excess....even by Roman standards!
I know people that think Huck Finn is the very best novel written in the US. And these are serious academicians.
I don't know who I'd put in that slot.
Off the top of my head, I'd say the title for best American novel goes to Mr. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. In my opinion, that novel says more about what it is to be an American than any other I've read. I reserve the right to change my mind later on, though.
I wonder what the top 100 "Books That People Actually Read Because They Wanted to Read Them, and Liked Them So Much, They Excitedly Passed Them on to Their Friends" would be.
Not many on the list is my bet. ;)
All the books on there that I've read (31) have been quite enjoyable. Do you just assume anything old is dull?
My guess is that factors other than sheer literary quality went into this one. Tale of Genji, for example, may have been the first novel, period, and written in an environment that made literary creativity, especially by a woman, nearly impossible. That said, the book's a yawner.
War And Peace was truly a sweeping, magisterial read, but some of the most important plot arcs (IMHO) weren't resolved until the second or third afterword. That simply isn't great construction, but it was a great read. Huckleberry Finn was the Great American Novel and indispensable to the understanding of the United States, especially the Western United States, and especially its males. "Lit out for the Territories" is an entire cultural dissertation in a single phrase.
I have a couple of unorthodox nominees. One is King's Salem's Lot, a marvel of concision and pacing that he hasn't really equaled since. William Gibson's Neuromancer is one I'd suggest. These are two "first" novels, meaning that their respective authors polished them relentlessly, far more than a professional could normally afford to do and that neither man appears to have done with subsequent novels.
Proust I don't get and I'm afraid I'm too impatient for Pynchon. Joyce I enjoy as an intellectual challenge but if you have to work that hard at grasping allusions it seems to cost in terms of emotional involvement. I adored The Tin Drum but haven't been able to get behind anything else Grass wrote. I didn't see Sense and Sensibility on the list - liked it better than Pride and Prejudice.
But no pr0n. Sheesh.
You want overrated? Ok... The Sound and the Fury, Middlemarch, Gravity's Rainbow, Tess..., The Tin Drum, Fathers and Sons, The Trial, Call It Sleep,
Missing: Catch 22, Simplicimus Simplicissimus by Grimmelshausen, Studs Lonigan, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, The Man With the Golden Arm, First Circle, Gulliver's Travels, Heart of Darkness, Naked Lunch, The Mayor of Casterbridge.
Why be intimidated by reputation. I can't imagine reading something like War and Peace or Moby Dick just once. I don't know how many times I've read re-read Dickens with equal enjoyment.
I love TSATF, Middlemarch and Tess. The latter is the great English prose tragedy. And how can something as majestic as Middlemarch be overrated. Faulkner and Pynchon are obviously an acquired taste. I think the Turgenev is there because it accurately described the sort of personality who take over Russia over 50 years later.
It is definitely right up there...an important must read.
There are books that I think are important because of their literary merits. Others because they capture a moment in time (One for me the The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, not fiction, I know, but still) or earned place in history because of their immediate influence (like Uncle Tom's Cabin). A few works manage to do all three. They are very rare. Off the top of my head without thinking deeply, Young Werther by Goethe is one that might qualify. Some might call Ulysses one of those. I'm not sure.
Mine too.
Read Madame Bovary this year.
It rocked - it's short, easy to read, and just kickass great writing. It's a "great book" that's actually worth reading and fun.
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