Great topic, Janet!
There are some little read books I'm proud to have read, like Richardson's Clarissa and Musil's Man Without Qualities. Proust's magnum opus is, above everything else it is, a superbly entertaining, comic creation readable by any literate person should she give it the proper chance -- even if that means skipping the overture until some other Time. But my confession is that I've read only the first two thirds of it. Two bartenders I've turned onto it will outpace me to the end.
I've not read any Faulkner novels. The bugbear final three of Henry James I've so far been unable to penetrate. Tons of poetry I should truly have read (Faerie Queene, Piers Plowman, etc., etc.).
I believe we can get some sense of which works of literature are for us at what time in our lives. I'm mystified by some of the "shaming " confessions from these esteemed writers. Rushdie's Midnight's Children (I've not read it) doesn't seem to me to have an unassailable reputation. This writer had no other gap in his education to admit to us? I once was (good naturedly) shamed by some posters here when I admitted I'd rather reread Lear than ever read Titus, reread Bleak House than ever read Tale of Two Cities. I take the point but I still think it's all okay. We'll read what we can. I won't even berate anyone for not reading Middlemarch (I like Daniel Deronda even better).
I got in heaps of trouble here for this squib I posted (which makes me think it was relatively successful on its own slender terms).
An Office, Minus One, Reads J.K. Rowling
As each successive “Harry Potter” thickens,
So our department’s common brain. It quickens
With this bold challenge, “Have you even read them?”
“Have you read “Little Dorrit” by Charles Dickens?”
My narrator's rejoinder above seems unanswerable. I haven't read them. I don't know what I'm missing. But you don't know what you're missing either. (I'm still somewhat bitter. For months I was raked over glowing embers for my "snobbery," "elitism," "inability to have fun." Oh, I have fun alright.)
Meanwhile, I'd like to know what Harold Bloom hasn't read.
Best,
Slipp
P.S. I laughed out loud at Roger's post below. There is a risk even there, Roger. You might claim at one dinner party to have read Clarissa and then forget your lie and admit at another that you haven't. Things get around.
Truman Capote claimed for decades (?) to be writing a massive Proustian social comedy. Proust, Proust, Proust he'd repeat. Gore Vidal was able to ascertain in mere moments of conversation that he hadn't read any of it. It could easily be done. "Who is Madame Verdurin?"
P.P.S. Really, to answer at all makes one sound like an arrogant jerk. There are hundreds of "must reads" that I haven't read. I mentioned the late James. I didn't mean to imply I've read all of the early and middle. All of Trollope? Balzac? Every Dostoyevsky? I do read voraciously and I choose my books well. That all I can do. I do understand the point of this parlour game. To name an interesting, surprising omission . The woman who said "Middlemarch" was brave, was actually saying something about herself in relation to the canon. The soon-to-be-fired professor who said Hamlet was most certainly brave. But to offer lamely "Midnight's Children," even "Catch 22"? Not so brave or interesting.
[This message has been edited by Mike Slippkauskas (edited July 29, 2008).]
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