Your All-time 5 Favorite Literary Works

Started by Dry Brett Kavanaugh, June 06, 2022, 09:12:32 AM

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Florestan

Quote from: Jo498 on June 07, 2022, 11:17:29 PM
I agree with some of this but not all. One does not need to know the history before reading such novels (and many older adults don't). I think I know most of my 18th century scottish history from reading Stevenson's "Kidnapped" and "Catriona" not before, although I read this not as a teenager but in my twenties. And I probably looked up some things during that reading although it was before the internet, I think, so it would have been a standard lexicon entry for the Jacobites etc. I think one of the most famous German critics in the late 20th century mentioned several times that all he knew about a certain topic or historical period he had from some novel, not from school or scholarly literature.

And it also applies to some only moderately great literature, like Eco's Name of the Rose where despite all the scholasticism info-dumps included most readers will lack sufficient knowledge to appreciate even a fraction of the philosophical, theological and literary allusions. I recall that in the 1980s there were books called something "The name of the rose revealed" or so that tracked some of this stuff.

Even the love/sex aspect is a bit "cultural". In older literature and film sometimes these things are so discreetly hinted at, that I missed them as an adult! There is a novel by Fontane where I am still not sure, if adultery took place or  if the person feels so guilty about their adulterous intention that it lead to the marriage falling apart or so (now reading a summary, I think adultery did take place but off stage, so the scene I had in mind was not supposed to already indicate it).
This doesn't matter. Not many people have the vocabulary for that and it is not necessary to appreciate literary quality although it is usually true that kids go more for plot/action and might downright ignore other aspects.
It certainly is a factor if a child read whole real books with 6 or only with 9 that will partly determine what one can take with 12 or 14. However, at some age one also has to read the lighter stuff (like all these adventure stories, SciFi and classic murder mysteries etc.) so I'd rather do this at ~12-16

Fair enough.

Otoh, one of the teenagers I refered to previously, although he boasted about reading Dostoevsky and Schopenhauer, was unfamiliar with such words as fanfare (military band) and wardrobe and guessed candies only after much thought (they were taking part in a contest where you are given the definition of a word and you must name it).  ;D
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Mandryka

In the UK they get kids in primary school to read bits of the bible and Shakespeare. If that's OK, why not bits of  Crime and Punishment?
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

ritter

IIRC. Luchino Visconti claimed to have had read all of Shakespeare's plays by the time he had turned 12 or so...

Jo498

o.k. maybe these kids were just bragging on that show... I used to watch quiz shows when they suddenly became very common on our TV around 2000 (I have long since stopped) and I was often puzzled what reasonably intelligent (from their general behavior, formal education etc.) adults didn't know. Classical music and mythology was usually worst, but almost any more traditional culture and history was also pretty bad. And some otherwise smart guy was totally lost on a basic question concerning watt, volt, ohm, although this is on every hairdryer (or nowadays charging device)...
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Florestan

At 12 I was fully immersed in the fascinating worlds of Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas and Paul Feval. Such happy times.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Jo498

But there is a considerable difference between "primary school" (6-10 here), and 15. And of course there are some very gifted and/or privately well educated children. John Stuart Mills supposedly read Greek at 3 or 4 and many gifted children in former times read Latin or another second language at 7 or 8. That's why they had the Classics edited ad usum delphini to take out all the naughty stuff ;)
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Ganondorf

Thomas Mann: Buddenbrooks
Charles Dickens: Our Mutual Friend
Victor Hugo: Notre-Dame de Paris
Herman Melville: Moby-Dick
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Silmarillion


Florestan

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on June 06, 2022, 07:56:04 PM
It's interesting to see that almost nobody mentioned Shakespeare.  ;D

Maybe dramas / plays in general warrant a separate list?

Ibsen - Peer Gynt, The Pillars of Society
Edmond Rostand - Cyrano de Bergerac
Tchekhov - Uncle Vanya
Goldoni - The Boors

Still no Shakespeare, though.  :D

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

San Antone

I just bought the Kindle versions of the Aeneid, Iliad, and Odyssey translated by Stanley Lombardo.   Over the past 50 years or so I have bought a number of different translations of these works, and the Lombardo is a newish one, and has received high praise.  So another go round with these classics.

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: Florestan on June 08, 2022, 06:17:28 AM
Maybe dramas / plays in general warrant a separate list?

Ibsen - Peer Gynt, The Pillars of Society
Edmond Rostand - Cyrano de Bergerac
Tchekhov - Uncle Vanya
Goldoni - The Boors

Still no Shakespeare, though.  :D


I think only Mandryka mentioned Shakespeare (Hamlet). Weird, this is an Anglo-majority forum.

André

Just my opinion, but I don't think plays are strictly literary works. They demand an intermediary (actors and scenery, even music) between the text and the listener/viewer. A literary work is in the abstract, the writer communicating directly with the listener. Any thoughts ?

Florestan

Quote from: André on June 08, 2022, 08:00:16 AM
Just my opinion, but I don't think plays are strictly literary works. They demand an intermediary (actors and scenery, even music) between the text and the listener/viewer.

Not necessarily. You can read the play just as you would read a novel. Actually, save Hamlet and The Taming of the Shrew, I've never seen any Shakespeare on stage, yet I read a lot of his plays. Also, I know Peer Gynt and Cyrano de Bergerac exclusively from reading them.

I've never seen any definition of literature that excluded plays.

Quote from: André on June 08, 2022, 08:00:16 AM
Any thoughts ?

As you can see above, I disagree.  :)

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Karl Henning

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on June 08, 2022, 06:46:40 AM

I think only Mandryka mentioned Shakespeare (Hamlet). Weird, this is an Anglo-majority forum.

One of a number of omissions I might chide myself for.  But, of course, five makes such a short list.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

San Antone

Quote from: André on June 08, 2022, 08:00:16 AM
Just my opinion, but I don't think plays are strictly literary works. They demand an intermediary (actors and scenery, even music) between the text and the listener/viewer. A literary work is in the abstract, the writer communicating directly with the listener. Any thoughts ?

While it is true that plays are works for the stage, they can certainly be read and enjoyed as literature.  I have several production copies of Shakespeare plays, with scenic design and blocking added to the stage directions, complete with set drawings of each scene.  But I always read them and imagine the action.  I also have two complete audio versions of the plays.

Not any different from listening to an opera instead of watching a DVD or seeing one live.

Brian

Although I do have Shakespeare printed and like to read it on occasion, he didn't make my personal favorite list because it is so much better to experience live or on film, acted. I'll go see a great production any time, but don't sit down to read Twelfth Night (or whatever) with anything like the frequency with which I sit down to savor Jane Austen for example.

Karl Henning

Quote from: Brian on June 08, 2022, 09:59:42 AM
Although I do have Shakespeare printed and like to read it on occasion, he didn't make my personal favorite list because it is so much better to experience live or on film, acted. I'll go see a great production any time, but don't sit down to read Twelfth Night (or whatever) with anything like the frequency with which I sit down to savor Jane Austen for example.

A fair point. I've watched Shakespeare more recerntly than I've read him.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Mandryka

Here's a favourite bit of reading Shakespeare

Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight,
Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
    All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
    To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Artem

I'll try

Tender is the Night
The Winners
The Castle
The Trial
The Magic Mountain

Ganondorf

Quote from: André on June 07, 2022, 08:36:13 AM
I'd like to read a novel by a Japanese
::)

Not a novel but Kentaro Miura's Berserk manga is one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind. However one has to be acquainted with how to read manga and also, a big warning: Berserk is very very VERY dark and adult-themed full of disturbing elements. Yet it is also is very very VERY well done, capable of presenting vilest things imaginable without the characters doing those things themselves been in any way exaggerated or caricaturish and with great subtlety. There is also great dark humor in it. And the art style is simply STUNNING.

San Antone

QuoteNot a novel but Kentaro Miura's Berserk manga is one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind.

Nothing like hyperbole to enhance a recommendation.