I came across this essay by novelist Cathleen Schine while flipping through a stack of recent New York Times Book Reviews:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/books/review/Schine-t.html?scp=1&sq=dostoyevsky%20%22the%20idiot%22&st=cse
In it, she talks about being "illiterate" after developing an aversion to reading when she bit off more than she could chew as a seventh grader picking up Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. She describes standing in The Strand after years of graduate work in medieval history, trying to find something to read. She describes all the great classics that are still new to her--Dickens and Austen.
I'm fairly well-read in the canonical classics. I was an English major and focused on eighteenth and nineteenth century British novels. And yet I still relate to her feeling of the endless possibilities awaiting--especially as I'm hunkered down in my own Dostoyevsky novel. (1/3 of the way through Karamazov!!) I've never read a Henry James novel . . . or Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn. I've been wanting to read Lolita and Gone With the Wind for some time now. There are so many books out there, I think there will always be new territory to explore, even for life-long voracious readers.
Okay, enough wistful thinking. It's back to the 9o0+-page Russian novel for me!
Wave Two, Weight Loss
12 years ago
It's funny, I've read all of the things you list as embarrassingly not read (and GWTW was my FAVORITE in the 5th grade, Lolita is among my favorites now), but man, the 18th & 19th C. British novel? I've read most Austen, but I think that's about it out of that category. I set down Great Expectations halfway through and never looked back.
ReplyDeleteHmm, I'm trying to think of some you should really read . . . well, Tristam Shandy, for sure. Jane Eyre? DO NOT read Villette (also Charlotte Bronte). Ick!
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