PROFESSOR Stipes (did anyone see that?) brings up Borges on Patriotism, which reminds us, 48 hours later, that 3/5 of our personal 20th century pantheon of reading (NB, not a Top Five list, just those I have the highest regard for
and enjoy reading a lot. Unlike, say, Joyce or Kafka I regard but don't re-read) was some species of monarchist or other (Eliot, Nabokov). It's odd that I've never thought about it exactly that way before, don't you think? And two of them were great essayists, and one a great memoirist.
Wow.
I wonder if that is true,
mutatis mutandis, for anyone, say, at The Corner? That if the lot of 'em ranked their five most readable authors of fiction from the last century, and we exempted Sci-Fi, that you could find three writers
in toto whose writings clearly skewed left politically?
Oh, Proust and Pynchon, the one a superb essayist and the other, eh.
Iʻve read V and Gravityʻs Rainbow, V 3x and GR 4x. Each reading make the books more enjoyable. Pynchon makes me feel so lucky to be born ʻMerican so I can deeply appreciate Pynchonʻs American English.
ReplyDeleteBTW it took me about 3 attempts to get through GRʻs dense elliptic prose style the first time and actual;ly finish the book.
Alphaloha
Pookapooka
Major Marvy SUCKS!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you would find three writers in toto whose works didn't include pictures.
ReplyDeletePersonally, when making literary lists, an arbitrary endeavour, I tend to go the post/pre-wars route rather than century, an arbitrary boundary.
I'm always surprised when Dos Passos is left out of the much longer lists, even of lists which include Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald and the rest of the usual suspects.
I almost made it through Swann's Way. Didn't come close with Gravity's Rainbow. I'm a lightweight.
I'm always impressed when some right-winger cites Montaigne (I know, not exactly 20th C). Apparently they never got to the part about his innate inability of to achieve certainty.
Umberto Eco and Garcia-Marquez are nearly as furrin-sounding as Nabokov, Proust, and Borges. These names shall never appear on a winger's list.
"Starship Troopers" must be high on their list. Book and movie.
ReplyDeleteI find I can read "Portrait of the Artist" and "Dubliners" again and again and still be amazed by the technical ability, let alone the emotional strength.
ReplyDeleteKafka not so much.
One of these days I'm gonna read Proust.
ReplyDelete