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Dec. 20th, 2009 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Next year I'll ditch books and master pinball.
In the meantime this question might be fun: what authors have you read all, or all in their major line, or nearly all of?
I like running through an author, where possible--so this list resembles all my others--though there's been little time for it in recent years. Seems to help one understand a writer better than the best criticism can. Mine:
Possibly only Shakespeare for complete writings. I missed some bits of Wilde--early verse plays, some poems, letters and fairy tales. I think I've read everything translated by Goethe but his non-fictional prose. Probably everything by Kleist that's been translated. Short Finnegans and "Penelope" for Joyce.
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Marlowe, everything translated by Moliere post 1900, Ibsen, Chekhov for plays. All Stoppard and Pinter through the '90s. Probably all but a handful by Beckett, Shaw too. Must have missed three or four by Racine. Read all Valery's and Buchner's but there's few. Everything by Hofmannsthal I could find, likewise Musset & Marivaux. Never finished Congreve's Old Bachelor. All or nearly all of Sheridan.
Only Kafka & McCarthy for fiction (apart from one-shots like Emily Bronte). Borges for non-collaborative fiction. All Tolstoy's but Resurrection, all but three of Roth's books, all but the last two of Crowley's. All Calvino's but Castle of Crossed Destinies, a double handful of stories and whatever hasn't been translated. Haven't read Proust's minor works. Must have read all Hemingway's fiction but that early parody and the posthumous novels. For O'Connor I've missed a handful of short stories and the latter half of Wise Blood. Haven't read Dream Life of Balso Snell. I wonder if I read all of Douglas Adams' novels. Did read all four Salinger books.
Dante, Milton, Blake, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Baudelaire, Rossetti, Rimbaud, Yeats, Housman, Thomas, Frost, Stevens, Eliot, Crane for poems. Also people like Stephen Crane, Dowson, Thomas Gray etc. who wrote so little it shouldn't count. I skipped a few of Spenser's early poems, likewise Beddoes. Probably read 90% of Dickinson by now. Nearly all available Holderlin, Pushkin, Morike. All Carson's verse or verse-ish books. All Lorca but some of Poet in NY. Most everything by Borges that's been translated. Marvell except some dubious satires. Almost all of Wordsworth through 1806. All Owen but his Andersen story. Haven't read Bishop's uncollected poems.
I kept up with Vidal's non-fiction till lately. May have missed a few pages of Bloom here and there. Most everything by Borges that's been translated.
Forgetting things, as always, but I find listing soothing. Sample of yours?
In the meantime this question might be fun: what authors have you read all, or all in their major line, or nearly all of?
I like running through an author, where possible--so this list resembles all my others--though there's been little time for it in recent years. Seems to help one understand a writer better than the best criticism can. Mine:
Possibly only Shakespeare for complete writings. I missed some bits of Wilde--early verse plays, some poems, letters and fairy tales. I think I've read everything translated by Goethe but his non-fictional prose. Probably everything by Kleist that's been translated. Short Finnegans and "Penelope" for Joyce.
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Marlowe, everything translated by Moliere post 1900, Ibsen, Chekhov for plays. All Stoppard and Pinter through the '90s. Probably all but a handful by Beckett, Shaw too. Must have missed three or four by Racine. Read all Valery's and Buchner's but there's few. Everything by Hofmannsthal I could find, likewise Musset & Marivaux. Never finished Congreve's Old Bachelor. All or nearly all of Sheridan.
Only Kafka & McCarthy for fiction (apart from one-shots like Emily Bronte). Borges for non-collaborative fiction. All Tolstoy's but Resurrection, all but three of Roth's books, all but the last two of Crowley's. All Calvino's but Castle of Crossed Destinies, a double handful of stories and whatever hasn't been translated. Haven't read Proust's minor works. Must have read all Hemingway's fiction but that early parody and the posthumous novels. For O'Connor I've missed a handful of short stories and the latter half of Wise Blood. Haven't read Dream Life of Balso Snell. I wonder if I read all of Douglas Adams' novels. Did read all four Salinger books.
Dante, Milton, Blake, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Baudelaire, Rossetti, Rimbaud, Yeats, Housman, Thomas, Frost, Stevens, Eliot, Crane for poems. Also people like Stephen Crane, Dowson, Thomas Gray etc. who wrote so little it shouldn't count. I skipped a few of Spenser's early poems, likewise Beddoes. Probably read 90% of Dickinson by now. Nearly all available Holderlin, Pushkin, Morike. All Carson's verse or verse-ish books. All Lorca but some of Poet in NY. Most everything by Borges that's been translated. Marvell except some dubious satires. Almost all of Wordsworth through 1806. All Owen but his Andersen story. Haven't read Bishop's uncollected poems.
I kept up with Vidal's non-fiction till lately. May have missed a few pages of Bloom here and there. Most everything by Borges that's been translated.
Forgetting things, as always, but I find listing soothing. Sample of yours?
no subject
Date: 2009-12-20 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 05:26 am (UTC)You've never seemed like an Austen fan.
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Date: 2009-12-21 05:32 am (UTC)Also all of Joyce (senior thesis in college on Finnegans Wake), and Flaubert and Roth (well, still catching up to the last couple). Salinger, yes.
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Date: 2009-12-21 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-20 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 02:25 pm (UTC)I'm sticking that list in my Collected copy. (I love "The Poet and Nature," too. All that stuff about fossil poetry!)
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Date: 2009-12-21 03:33 pm (UTC)My Emerson poems are Bacchus and Two Rivers. And the Channing Ode. And Merlin and Brahma and Threnody and Uriel and etc.
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Date: 2009-12-21 05:29 am (UTC)I tried to read Emerson's journals through but young Emerson seemed like an intolerable prig.
Don't miss Sunset Limited and Stone Mason!
What Fitzgerald stories do you like best? I've read only the most anthologized double handful. But not The Rich Boy.
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Date: 2009-12-21 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 05:41 pm (UTC)i'm nothing if not not well-read
Date: 2009-12-20 10:07 pm (UTC)and wasn't going to go genre, but since you mention him, douglas adams, yes.
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Date: 2009-12-21 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 05:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 02:34 am (UTC)And, actually, most of Michael Chabon: chronologically, almost. He's the one, actually, whom I've really, really enjoyed seeing develop as a writer - and just as a person.
But, then, Austen - too, I realize as teach P&P. Well, Austen in the conventional sense that most of us have - all the novels, none of the juvenilia or un-finished. And yes, Salinger - went through that phase in my teens. All of Joyce, save the Wake, which doesn't really appeal. Not now. Pretty predictable stuff. More Shakespeare than any other author but Nabokov, but still not by far all of Shakespeare. Almost all Fitzgerald - not The Last Tycoon, though - and not letters. Many, many, many by Stevens - but always new ones surface.
Again, not surprising names. I wouldn't ever read everything by the author of a novel I loved just to say I did. So often, just single novels, single collections of poetry or shorts, or whatever, are marvelous, but there's no clear need (outside of academic pursuits) to read the rest. Because there's just so much else.
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Date: 2009-12-21 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-12-21 05:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 03:11 pm (UTC)Lotsa Kafka! At the moment I like best The Burrow, Investigations of a Dog Reflections on Sin Suffering Hope and the True Way, all the parables, Before the Law (& the whole Trial Cathedral scene), In the Penal Colony, & anything set in China.
Just avoid Michael Hofmann's translations, which have temporarily killed Metamorphosis and Josephine the Singer for me. Calvino's favorite book was Amerika, but I'll have to hunt down someone else's translation to find out why. The one I read left episodes out, but I'm not sure there's another in print than Hofmann's.
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Date: 2009-12-21 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-21 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-22 05:56 am (UTC)I can't even say Hart Crane since I bet there's stuff in the back of collected I glazed over.