How much time do you spend reading Literary classics versus Genre fiction?

Hi Gollum, so have you had a chance to start that "Beyond the Horizons" thread yet? I'd like to mention "Auto Da De" by Elias Canetti.
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antiloquax said:
Hi Gollum, so have you had a chance to start that "Beyond the Horizons" thread yet? I'd like to mention "Auto Da De" by Elias Canetti.
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Yes, I have that book but I am yet to read it. As one of the subplots to my upcoming blog site and here as well I am planning on reading ALL of the Nobel Prize winners in literature from 1903 - current in the 'Novel' category (versus predominantly dramatists or poets)....:) I'm close to having all of these in my library, It should prove to be an interesting study I think notwithstanding the fact that any prize is going to have its questionable recipients and vocal detractors, which is fair enough.
 
antiloquax said:
Whoops, I meant Auto Da Fe. Anyway, you knew what I meant, of course!
:)
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Don't be so sure.....:p

No you're correct, I assumed this was the book you referred to. I must admit I was not familiar with it at all until I ran across a recent copy in a favourite bookshop of mine and further research revealed to me what I was dealing with. The publisher of this reissue is Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a New York publisher like the book I had not previously heard of.

Good night.
 
Literary classics bore the living crap out of me. Not all, but the majority.
 
Next week i start a course called the modern novel. I will have to read The Ambassadors by Henry James and Swann's Way by Marcel Proust before next thursday.

It was a course you could choose among others, i choose what i would like to read, classic non-genre, modern classics of the same. Try to enjoy myself with some important authors.

Who is amazing like Gogol,Camus in last course and who is overrated ;)
 
Connavar said:
Next week i start a course called the modern novel. I will have to read The Ambassadors by Henry James and Swann's Way by Marcel Proust before next thursday.

It was a course you could choose among others, i choose what i would like to read, classic non-genre, modern classics of the same. Try to enjoy myself with some important authors.

Who is amazing like Gogol,Camus in last course and who is overrated ;)
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Gogol! Dead Souls as translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky has had me almost literally bent over double and weeping with mirth. I love the way his figurative language about the flies on the ceiling takes off in one of the early chapters.
 
Extollager said:
Gogol! Dead Souls as translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky has had me almost literally bent over double and weeping with mirth. I love the way his figurative language about the flies on the ceiling takes off in one of the early chapters.
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The Overcoat is one of the best shorter stories i have read, frankly i think he should most talked about of old Russian, east europe writers and not Tolstoy, Dostejevski.

His writing, satire is much timeless i felt. He is easily top 5 1800s authors i have read.
 
Connavar said:
Next week I start a course called the modern novel. I will have to read The Ambassadors by Henry James and Swann's Way by Marcel Proust before next thursday.
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I think you will enjoy The Ambassadors. It's fantastic. I've read a bit of Henry James and that one, together with The Golden Bowl, are my favourites. Never read any Proust, but I really should!
:):)
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antiloquax said:
I think you will enjoy The Ambassadors. It's fantastic. I've read a bit of Henry James and that one, together with The Golden Bowl, are my favourites. Never read any Proust, but I really should!
:):)
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Yes indeed for the Golden Bowl. I have The Bostonians and Portrait Of A Lady by James to read. I've never read The Ambassadors.

On Proust he's one you will want to read (Remembrance Of Things Past of which Swann's Way in book 1). Along with Robert Musil (The Man Without Qualities) and Joyce (Ulysses) they're probably the leading lights of the modernist movement..actually let me add Arno Schmidt to that mix albeit he's viewed as being postmodernist in nature; I'm currently sourcing a compilation of his fiction. One of the themes on my planned blog will be so-called modernist literature where at some stage I hope to make a comparison between Musil, Joyce and Proust.

Wkipedia (not always a reliable source but a decent starting point) views Thomas Mann and Italo Svevo as modernist authors too but I haven't read enough of either of these two gentlemen yet to comment on this. Svevo's greatest work is regarded as being Zeno's Conscience (on the TBR pile) while Mann gave us his shorter fiction (incl. Death in Venice) but also works like Faustus and Magic Mountain, two novels I hope to add to my review list later this year.

Did I mention I'm a Stream of Consciousness fanboy?....;)

Off to sleep, the Melbourne Writer's Festival begins in earnest tomorrow and I want to be sure to get a front row seat with the great Argentinian novelist Cesar Aira in town.

Good night all.
 
At present I'm spending a roughly equal amount of time reading both non-genre and genre literature (not sure exactly what a classic is, as regards this thread, but a fair few books I've got through lately have either been regarded as such at one time, or have had a substantial later influence on writings of a similar type). At present I'm reading In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin, a 'classic' of travel literature, ironically because it broke so many of the boundaries of what travel lit up to that point was conceived of as being (Chatwin himself denied that the book was travel literature at all). After that I'm going to read a veiled biography of Richard Farina, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, which chronicles the beat movement in 60s America. I'm also dipping into various short stories, as is my wont, Sturgeon and Borges primarily, and slowly making my way through the classic (there's that word again) ghost tale The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions.
 
I've read a fair bit of Joyce (but not Finnegan's Wake!). I have the Musil, but have yet to read it ...
Enjoy the festival, Gollum.
:D
 
Thanks. The festival was good today....:)

I haven't read the Musil either nor Ulysses for that matter but now having an annotated edition of the original 1923 text it's part of my plan to read and review those 3 key modernist works I spoke of previously in the New Year.
 
Anyone read The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann ? Thats the most high modernism book that frankly was too much for me atleast the 100 or so pages i read for class. Joyce was fast paced short novel in comparison ;)

Any thoughts on that important Mann novel ?
 
Connavar said:
Anyone read The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann ? Thats the most high modernism book that frankly was too much for me atleast the 100 or so pages i read for class. Joyce was fast paced short novel in comparison ;)

Any thoughts on that important Mann novel ?
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Sorry I have it and intend to read it along with a revisit of Dr Faustus but that will not happen before next year.

Jayaprakesh has definitely read it, he's a massive Mann fan, so I may ask in our correspondence.

Cheers.
 
Its a massive 1000 page book in swedish translation that we get two weeks to read it for class.

The class is pretty heavy read but im really wondering selfishly thinking i need new modern classic favs. Henry James Brit/American side is too safe in my comfort zones in classic reads.

I want more non-anglo saxon european favs.
 
A few faves ...

Italo Calvino If on a Winter's Night a Traveller ...
Milan Kundera The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Herman Hesse The Glass Bead Game
Jean-Paul Sartre Nausea
Rilke The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge
Elias Canetti Auto Da Fe
Gregor von Rezzori Memoirs of an Anti-Semite
Nikos Kazantsakis The Last Temptation of Christ

Holocaust
Elie Wiesel Night
Primo Levi If This is a Man
 
antiloquax said:
A few faves ...

Nikos Kazantsakis The Last Temptation of Christ

Holocaust
Primo Levi If This is a Man
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Not got those or read them. I have Periodic table (sp?) by Levi and certainly not read the Kazantsakis. Is that related to the film at all?

Not bas big a fan of Kundera as you might be antiloquax.
 
I've barely read anything that wasn't Speculative Fiction this year. Not that I don't love other forms of literature, I've just been in the zone.
 
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