Of course, a stunning absence on the list: Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds

First time I read that book, I laughed my head off. Was a bit embarassing as I was on a train from Halifax to Quebec City at the time... but that translation of the Sweeny tale and the parodied Finn McCool stuff is priceless....

and of course, Jem Casey, Poet of the Pick and Bard of Booterstown:

"When money's tight and hard to get
and your horse has also ran
when all you have is a heap of debt
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN!"

Damn, it's been ages. Maybe if I re-read it I'll actually get inspired to pick up my dissertation again...

[ May 08, 2002: Message edited by: vickyinottawa ]

Samuel Beckett, Ireland, 1906-1989, Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina, 1899-1986, Collected Fictions
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia, b. 1928, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Guenter Grass, Germany, b. 1927, The Tin Drum
James Joyce, Ireland, 1882-1941, Ulysses
Doris Lessing, England, b. 1919, The Golden Notebook
Astrid Lindgren, Sweden, 1907-2002, Pippi Longstocking
Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt, b. 1911, Children of Gebelawi (haven't read this one but have read other Mahfouz and have enjoyed them immensely)
Herman Melville, United States, 1819-1891, Moby Dick
Shikibu Murasaki, Japan, (N/A), The Tale of Genji
Salman Rushdie, India and Britain, b. 1947, Midnight's Children
William Shakespeare, England, 1564-1616, King Lear
Stendhal, France, 1783-1842, The Red and the Black
Laurence Sterne, Ireland, 1713-1768, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
Anonymous, India, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, 700-1500, Thousand and One Nights
Walt Whitman, United States, 1819-1892, Leaves of Grass
Virginia Woolf, England, 1882-1941, To the Lighthouse

[ May 08, 2002: Message edited by: vickyinottawa ]

And apparently the only great Conrad novel is Nostromo. Not Heart of Darkness, not Lord Jim?

The list was silly in other ways. Gogol is there for Dead Souls because it's a "novel" -- but it's his stories that deserve the prize. I'm always glad to see Diderot given his due, but again the C19 generic prejudices of the judges confused them about what to pick. Hemingway: Old Man is a tired and precious work; pick The Sun Also Rises if you want poetic accomplishment, or For Whom the Bell Tolls if you want meaty (I don't like Hemingway, but I can recognize what he did).

Sophocles, Oedipus, ok by reason of influence -- but they would pick both him and Euripides and leave out Aeschylus, The Oresteia, surely the greatest achievement of classical Greek drama?

And the list is obviously Eurocentric -- which would be ok if the jury had admitted the limitations of its knowledge and not pretended to be including other traditions. As it is, they just mis- and underrepresent those others.

Personally, I was happy to see

quote:

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The Tale of Genji

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[ May 08, 2002: Message edited by: vickyinottawa ]

The few very recent novels are obviously contentious. Och, politics. MacEwan? Sebald? etc.

I'm really glad to see Italo Svevo recognized. Funny book.

Diderot but not Rousseau ... hmmmn. I wonder if that pendulum has begun to swing. It's taken long enough.

[ May 08, 2002: Message edited by: skdadl ]

And Pippi Longstocking? Either it's someone's little joke, or the Norwegians wanted to give the Swedes a little gift.

A Doll's House is a play, not a novel, and it is Ibsen's historically most important work. Hoever, for my money, the plays "Rosmersholm" and "Jonh Gabriel Borkman" are better yet.

But where's Graham Greene? Or Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch? Or Isaac Bashevis Singer?

Quite surprising to me is the complete absence of the classical Chinese novel from the list. I mean, there are only five of them and they all rate:

Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Journey to the West
Outlaws of the Marsh
Dream of the Red Chamber
Gold Plum Vase

All are worth reading, but especially the first three. The last is an erotic novel.

The inclusion of Kalidasa's Shakuntala suggests to me that none of the people have read it. Unless you read Sanskrit and can enjoy the language I honestly don't know what literary enjoyment you could get out of it. Ditto for almost the whole of Sanskrit literature. I think they felt compelled to include India and most of them have heard of this. If we are going to be broad enough to include this and Hamlet and the
Complete Poems of Leopardi as fiction, then certainly Kalidasa's Meghaduta rates much more highly...as does his Kumarasambhava. The Mahabharata and Ramayana certainly deserve their place on the list. I see Tagore's stock still has not risen, which is unjust and based on Tagore's shitty translation of his own work into English, which absolutely must not be depended on to any degree whatever. Among the Indian writers though the absence of any of the Urdu poets is notable... Ghalib easily outshines Leopardi.

All of Dostoyevsky's major works are included -- Yes Yes Yes!

But if you're including poetry, the Divan of Hafiz -- hello!!!! Only *the* greatest poetry ever, at any time, period. And what about Sa'di's Gulistan? Or the Shahnama of Ferdausi? Serious omissions that do indeed reveal, as someone suggested, the cultural bias of the authors selected.

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: rasmus_raven ]

quote:

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Wow. Not a single Henry James novel

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I was pleased to see two of my favourites - Woolf's To The Lighthouse and Lessing's Golden Notebook - on the list. Anyone remotely surprised that most of the selections were written by European men?

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: Rebecca West ]

I'm also grateful that "The Idiot" wasn't sacrificed for "Crime & Punishment." (Both deserve to be on the list, but I enjoyed the former more and was fearful that they would limit the selections from a single author)

Happy that Achebe was included (although "Anthills of The Savannah" arguably deserved a spot), and if any Solzhenitsyn (sp?) belongs on the list, IMHO, it should be "The Gulag Archipelago."

"Lear," my favourite Shakespeare! Sure I've only read six or seven of his plays and a handful of sonnets, but still. I've argued it's merits with friends and classmates; sweet vindication tastes so good that it simply must be fattening.

Don Quixote is also included in my overly ambitious summer reading plans - picked up a copy before leaving the city for work. Coupled with "Ulysses," it felt as though I was toting a cinder block in my backpack coming up here.

Lists...so much like a car accident (not necessarily agreeable, but dare y'all to look away! )

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: Jared ]

I'll recommend an appropriate Ulysses antidote: At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: vickyinottawa ]

And then it just hit me last night, another obvious misstep with the contemporary choices. Where is Judy MacDonald, Jane and Grey? Both of them -- no question!

I was surprised not to find Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat on the list. I was thrilled, however, to find Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe on the list - I just read that this year, and it was so fantastic. I loved it.

I like the Book of Job better than Psalms and Ecclesiastes. There's a certain agony, melodrama, to it. The why of undeserved suffering, the question of what to do in the face of suffering. The question of whether to still believe in God when you're suffering, the mystery of why God allows suffering to happen. It asks all the "big" questions. Not only that, though, it also is the story of a man who keeps living through the pain, someone who chooses life. It's an amazing book, one I really love.

Of course, Ecclesiastes is like that too - it asks a lot of big questions, such as "What the hell is the point to all this?" But I find it asks in a more detached way, instead of really relating it to his own life. I like Job better for that reason.

As a master escapist I do value a novel's ability to trasport a frazled mind into a calmer or more wonderous place. Or into a hectic and ugly place, ie Gibson's 'Neuromancer'. I live for this 'challange of escape'.

My dislike of Genji is personal. I lived in Yokohama/Tokyo for a long year and actualy read the book while unemployed as a bricklayer in Japan. During this period I was almost overcome with the virulent sexism, exclusion, and waste inherent to modern Japanesse society. I see the root of many of these social ills in works such as Genji. I DO NOT dislike most Japanese things just because of this bad experience in that country. I have been described, though never by myself, as a niponophile.

The socialy accepted rape and banishment of misfits championed by the charecter Genji is abhorent to me. I have read this book twice, I will probably read it again. I fully admit that it made a huge impact on Japanese society and therefore is a largely influencial work. I just can't stand what it has helped do to generations of women and outsiders.

Lists suck anyway. The best book I've ever read is called "Conversations With Angels: A life Spent at High Latitudes" by (oh crap I lent it out and can't remember the author's name! )
Google's no help either - anyone else read it?

[ May 13, 2002: Message edited by: sherpafish ]

Report to Greco is less focussed, but almost as powerful.