Time magazine: the 10 greatest books...

[fajrdrako]

maaseru sent me this link, knowing it was just the kind of article that I love to pounce on, for several reasons.

For one thing, it starts out talking about lists. You know how I love lists, especially literary lists. It says:

Let's not mince words: literary lists are basically an obscenity. Literature is the realm of the ineffable and the unquantifiable; lists are the realm of menus and laundry and rotisserie baseball. There's something unseemly and promiscuous about all those letters and numbers jumbled together. Take it from me, a critic who has committed this particular sin many times over.

I suspect he is rather proud of his sin, and so he should be. Menus and laundry, indeed! Lists are a literary achievement of a very particular type.

I think I need to read The Top Ten even if just to scream and grumble about it. As might be predictable, at first glance the lists look rather pretentious to me. Writers who are fashionable among the literati, but who are not necessarily good - meaning that I don't necessarily like their style. Or I do like their style, but I am suspicious of their reputation. Nabokov, for instance. A brilliant stylist. But also fashionable, and that makes me look askance at him. I love Dickens, and since he is not fashionable, he seldom makes these lists. But why, or why not? Is he too popularist, too inclined to humour? What makes a writer great? Why is Dorothy Dunnett not on everyone's lists? I heartily approve of the inclusion of Scaramouche, of course.

Of the ultimate Top Ten list I am faintly (but only faintly) ashamed of how few I have read:

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
   
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
   
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
   
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
   
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
   
6. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
   
7. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
   
8. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
   
9. The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
   
10. Middlemarch by George Eliot

I have read Madame Bovary (it bored me), 1/4 of War and Peace (read that first part three times before giving up, I just can't get past the Battle of Borodino), Lolita (loved it), Huckleberry Finn (meh), Hamlet - many times, unquestionably the best of the best and then some, and The Great Gatsby (liked it a lot but it isn't on my top ten lists, not even my top 100). I must admit, the list doesn't make me want to run out and read Anna Karenina or Middlemarch, which sound boringly schoolteacherish to me. Am I misjudging? Reacting to prejudice? Under an erroneous impression? Why does the rest of the world like Tolstoy more than I do?

Ever since seeing Little Miss Sunshine, though, I've been thinking I should read Proust. People talk about Proust in the abstract - I can't recall any of my friends actually ever saying they've read him. Is it their guilty secret, or has he just not come up in conversation? Or is he one of those writers who is universally admired and universally unread?

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I was eh about Anna Karinena: by the time I read it I was thoroughly sick of that plot: woman tries to be independent and has to die for it. Definitely A Man's Pick. Ditto Madame Bovary--she's not even interesting as a person.

Middlemarch though...an incredible book. Would it help you to know that it in it was the very latest scientific tech of the day, as people struggled to put that to practice in lives? It's a brilliant book, and its last paragraph is my favorite in all literature, Austen notwithstanding.

I do intend to read Proust--I didn't like Scott-Moncrieff's translation when I began reading it, and the more I know about him the more I know why; since my French isn't likely to get up to par, I'd like to read the new translation out. Otherwise I've read them all, and have to admit I adored the Tolstoi--especially as I read two accounts of eye-witnesses at Borodino before, including the woman disguised as a hussar, who wrote about her experiences. Tolstoi had gone out to those fields, paced them, talked to the local peasants who still remembered the battle, in fact had helped drive wagonload after wagonload of corpses away to be buried.

I don't know about Dunnett...have to think about that. My tendency is to appreciate heroic lit without thinking it great, because some of the very elements that make the characters suitably heroic are counter to psychology, and despite the unsentimental, even trenchant writing, in Dunnet, there is a melodramatic streak through it that supports heroic suffering on a heroic scale, but denies the normal human psychology that makes the greater novels so resonant, but I dunno....thinky think think.

[littledrop.livejournal.com]

I haven't read any of those! I have Lolita, Hamlet, and The Great Gatsby sitting on my bookshelves, partially read. I can't abide Fitzgerald, though. I don't know if I'll ever finish that one.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Forgot to say that I think Gatsby at best okay. But not even remotely great.

[kikibug13.livejournal.com]

Couldn't get past some of Anna Karenina (the first 1/3rd or so had all the signs of heading for disaster and I didn't want to go there).

Madame Bovary - I think I ought to give it a try.

War and Peace - read it, in Russian (and French, which was much more of a problem), and rather liked it, until the guy I fell in love with was cheated and then killed; I still finished it.

Lolita - I know I've seen both movies, and I think I read the book too, although I'm not perfectly certain. Was probably 17 at the time (I remember my stepdad talking to me about it), and it impressed me rather a lot.

Huck Finn. Yep.

Hamlet - definitely. The only male part I've wanted to have a chance at, for all the beautiful things he says.

Great Gatsby - yep.

In Search of Lost Time - Not yet.

Stories of Anton Checkov - which stories? One of my most memorable drinking evenings was spent with my brother, and we ended up reading Checkov stories artistically to one another. Mom was somewhere on a tour... the world was ours (well, until the neighbours rang and asked us to turn the music down).

Middlemarch. I started it and loved it, but it was at a very busy time (I was taking sever courses that semester), and it went on, and on... and on. I think I dropped about halfway through, and I still want to know what happened with those characters. I should pick it up again.

Hmm. Not exactly my top ten list, but I think there are significant omissions (well, it's just 10... can't cover all the goodies, can it?)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't see any virtue is reading novels one doesn't enjoy. Which is why I've never made a fourth attack on War and Peace.

Lolita is beautifully written, witty, intersting, and a lot of fun. I'm not sure if there's any real depth there, though.

Hamlet, I adore. I fell in love with Hamlet (the character as well as the play) when I was about 12 years old. I see every production or movie of it I can, and occasionally just reread passages because they are so wonderful and sexy and smart. Hamlet is the perfect Romantic-Byronic hero, in my opinion.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Gatsby is another book I found quite readable, though light. Enjoyed but didn't understand why there's a literary fuss over it. Worthy of being on a top ten books list? Not remotely!

[cyberducks.livejournal.com]

God, these kinds of lists irritate me....hope you don't mind me snagging the list so I can rant about it in my lj...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Definitely A Man's Pick.

Yeah. I was wondering at the gender differentiation of the writers who were doing the choosing. With no evidence except the results my guess is that they were predominantly men.

Madame Bovary

Dare I say, the most boring woman I ever read about? Close, anyway.

Thanks for the comments on Middlemarch, about which I know almost nothing, including the reasons for its popularity. Hmm. You make me want to read it.

There's a new translation of Proust? Okay, I'll look for it.

Interesting comments about melodrama in literature and heroic suffering on a heroic scale. Since I absolutely love melodrama and heroic scales, this is a point in its favour in my opinion, but certainly that kind of literature-as-drama and psychology as pertaining to the norm (rather than the extraordinary) are not terribly popular in our time. The works I think are most great do tend to be take the larger-than-life approach rather than the slice-of-life approach.

Shakespeare, for example.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, by all means! Help yourself! I look forward to reading it.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I fyou try Madame Bovary, do tell me what you think. I had no sympathy for her at all.

I haven't seen either Lolita movie. They're on my 'to see' lists, but I don't feel particuarly eager to see them because the reason I loved the book was the beautiful style in which it was written - I can't imagine that sense of style and cleverness of language translating to the screen.

If I could act, I'd want to play Hamlet too.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

Sadly, of the ultimate top ten, not one is among my favorites, and of the authors, I can say that I enjoy Chekhov's plays, but his stories... meh. I've read some Proust, both in English and French. It's fascinating, but there's just too much of it. It wears me out. I might say different if I was reading a newer translation, but the Scott Moncreiff one is maddening.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm learning what translations of Proust to avoid, good!

I think I read some of Chekhov's short stories, but I don't remember them, so I didn't count them. (I did like Pushkin's short stories.) His plays - I enjoy them in a really good production but I haven't seen many of such.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

The difficulty is finding time to read fiction. I have Proust, mean to read Proust, but... research and stuff comes first, so somehow fiction gets put on the back-burner. Have seen a couple of good film versions, though, of parts of his work.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I really must try Proust for myself. But as you say - time! I love reading new novels and fanfic and comics and history and biographies and where is the time to fit in more?

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

The films are good. And slash (male and female) is canonical.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I don't see anything gendered about the list at all.

Bovary - yes! Excellent novel, and a completely kill-able title character: a stupid, shallow cow. (And apparently inspired by a real scandal in Rouen.)

Middlemarch - ponderous. Started but never finished.

I am appalled to see no Thomas Hardy or Thomas Mann listed! And what about Emile Zola?

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I don't see any virtue in reading novels one doesn't enjoy.

Me neither. I had to do that at school. It was one reason I decided not to do English at university.

I only feel it's justified if I'm tearing them apart as part of another project.

[cupati.livejournal.com]

I must confess to having never read any of them, nor attempted to: and plays should be watched, not read.

These appear to be books that people want to have read, not want to read.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yes...yet Shakespeare's heroes (and villains, or hero/villains such as Richard and Hamlet) tend to touch on shared human reactions which (at least so I think) drives the resonance deeper between the heroic flights. Lymond is just so perfect all the time, he's even perfect when he's a wreck, and most of Checkmate is awash with unnecessary emo, from Lymond's and Philippa's maybe first, certainly second, conversation on. Even so, the sheer weight of the backstory plus the psychic bonding and so forth, while departing from the human, do reach Olympic heights to make a satisfying story. But a great one? I dunno, I've gone back and forth on this one for years. Yet that said, I think the Lymond Chronicles far better than Gatsby. Far.

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

there are no Dutch authors on the list!! How can this be. It is more international than other such lists I've seen, but English, American, French and Rusian, still limited.

I've read, and enjoyed immensely, War and Peace. It was the one book I brought along on a vacation to the Czech republic. My sister got thoroughly frustated that I picked it up all the time. (She was to depressed to read at that time, now she reads and I just sit waiting around).

Read Ana Karenina, enjoyed it, but got also immensely irritated with the heroine.

Loved Lolita.

For some reason I dislike all George Elliot novels, tried several but it rubs me up the wrong way. I'd prefer for example Charlotte Bronte's Shirley

I've read Hamlet.

I've read a simplified version of Hucklleberry Finn.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It is more international than other such lists I've seen, but English, American, French and Rusian, still limited.

The non-English inclusions are all books that have very famous English editions.

Interesting comments on War and Peace. Maybe I'll try it again some time. I enjoyed the movie versions.

I'd prefer for example Charlotte Bronte's Shirley

As would I. I love Charlotte Bronte's writing. Shirley was wonderful. I once rewrote it as a play - I wonder what happened to that ms?

[toraks.livejournal.com]

Going to read Lolita for next book club. Not sure how I feel about that!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Lymond is just so perfect all the time

I don't see him that way, though I know many readers do. I see him as very human, and humanly flawed.

most of Checkmate is awash with unnecessary emo

Well, I'll agree there - Checkmate is probably my least favourite book of the Lymond saga for that reason. Which is not to say that I don't still love it... But isn't Lymond's excess of emotion something that makes him less than perfect?

And are you saying, then, that emotion is an unsuitable subject for literature? Or that great works cannot and should not ever be grandiose and epic? What about Homer, for example? Milton? I almost, almost get what you're saying, but the precise differentiation escapes me.

[swanswan.livejournal.com]

I've read Proust! But it was a college requirement, so I don't get brownie points. I read it (by which I mean the first two and last books of "A La Recherche...") a few years ago and it is one of my life-changing books. Proust writes about thinking, and about writing:

"Style for the writer, no less than colour for the painter, is a question not of technique but of vision: it is the revelation, which by direct and conscious methods would be impossible, of the qualitative difference, the uniqueness of the fashion in which the world appears to each one of us, a difference which, if there were no art, would remain forever the secret of every individual."

"Real books are the product of darkness and silence, not of daylight and casual talk."

--- Marcel Proust

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

plays should be watched, not read.

I agree in general, especially Shakespeare. But I do love reading his plays. And many others too, by favourite playwrights, especially when the opportunity to see a play is rare. (that was one reason living in London was such heaven. There were plays everywhere.)

These appear to be books that people want to have read, not want to read.

Or to appear to have read? I am deeply suspicious.