This topic contains 22 replies, has 6 voices, and was last updated by davidsmith 9 years ago.
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Great list. I’d add a few of my favorites:
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Stranger by Albert CamusAlthough I have to say I don’t get Empire Falls. What makes that novel great? Maybe I didn’t have it in me to relate to it.
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You were so wrong to eliminate Empire Falls. Russo is one of the great writers of our time, and his stories are beautifully told with well defined, memorable characters and warm, real settings. So I’d put it back on the list, and add Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.
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Hi Polly,
Great topic, forever debatable. I don’t think that the antifeminist turns of A FAREWELL TO ARMS make it any less worthy of a place on this list. After all a novel is a product of its time and of the people living in it, and Hemingway’s time was not exactly a great one for feminists around the world, at least I imagine not. That said, here is my personal list, with many similarities:
A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
THE STRANGER by Albert Camus
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain
THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
PEDRO PARAMO by Juan Rulfo
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME by Marcel ProustI haven’t read Toni Morrison yet, but I’m willing to bet I’ll change my list once I do.
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I’m not sure what my 10 are, but for sure THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING by T.H. White is on my list.
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Thanks for the recommendation of Cholera. Have you read it in English or Spanish? Or both?
- This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by davidsmith. Reason: Thought I'd submitted it on the item above. Where it appeared, though, it didn't make sense without the addition of "of Cholera"
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After much thought and with an eternally changing order:
1. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (misogyny notwithstanding)
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. The Stranger by Albert Camus
4. A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean (technically a novella)
5. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
6. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
9. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
10. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (minus the political preaching)
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La Peste, Camus.
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South Riding, Winifred Holtby
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There are few Holtby books. Died young. I just became aware of her. Both funny and deep.
My French is only elementary to intermediate, but la Peste isn’t that hard a read, as I recall. (Zola, on the other hand, is a slog, mainly because of the vocabulary. Otherwise, I’d probably nominate something from the Rougon-Macquart. Awesome.)
- This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by davidsmith.
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Beats me. I *think* I’ve read it in French, but all I remember is that I didn’t care much for it. Alas, I’m not a cultured, properly educated person. I just like what I like.
Is there still a literary canon? I though all that had been violently smashed on top of the trash heap of colonialism and imperialism.
French is a lovely language – or maybe I just have a vested interest it. Have you read Simenon in French? Wonderful stuff.
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I just googled “bovary boring”. The first hit was a long, boring introduction by A. S. Byatt to a Norwegian edition of Madame Bovary:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jul/27/classics.asbyatt
I confess I didn’t finish it. Almost – maybe mid-way down the second page – but not quite. Life is too short to be consumed in this sort of thing, especially when the reader has an abnormally short concentration span.
But Byatt does give an answer to your question, why is it such a bore?
It is not a nice story. So why is it one of the greatest novels of all time? To answer that, it is necessary to look at the history of its writing, and Flaubert’s ideas about what he was trying to achieve.
So, there. It’s <b>supposed</b> to be boring, and you, the reader, are supposed to like it because of that. Academics.
Oh, I think, looking at the passages Byatt quotes in French, that I probably did not read the novel in French. I doubt my French vocabulary would have been up to it.
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And reading a good novel in translation is probably something one should do only if one’s completely unable to tackle it in its own language. Translation is, in fact, of course, impossible. What you get is a rough approximation, the plot without the poetry.
That’s why, I think, it’s good to read Simenon in French, if you choose to read him at all. Before I could read French, I once read a Penguin translation of a Maigret and though I found it interesting enough to quote a snippet in a collection of quotes I was keeping, I know I was completely blind to what I now love.
If you’re interested in a quick look at a GS title, here’s a link:
http://www.simenonnumerique.com/
You won’t find Simenon ebooks in French on amazon.com, alas.
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Translation is hard and, I’m pretty sure, thankless. I imagine most translators are poorly paid and little regarded. I once considered translating a Pierre Véry mystery into English but gave it a pass. The charm is in the language, not in the story.
Robert Lowell, who did not, I think, speak or read Russian, did an “imitation” of a Russian poet or two. I assume he communed with the authors’ spirits. Well….
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/nov/30/translating-dark/
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