proximoception | (no subject)

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?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This is fun. I've read everything I can get my hands on by Emerson - only about 33% of the journals though. All of Pynchon that I know exists. All of Fitzgerald unless there are some stories I don't know about. Only about half of his collected letters. All of Dickinson's poems collected as of the 1990s. Collected Stevens but who knows what else is out there. A good 80% of Merrill. All of McCarthy except the plays. Working on Keats now.

I think I know, but which are your favorite Emerson essays?

Experience, Fate, Circles, The Poet and Nature I think are the ones I'd take to the desert island. Or I'd trade them all for the poem "Threnody."

Thank you.

I'm sticking that list in my Collected copy. (I love "The Poet and Nature," too. All that stuff about fossil poetry!)

I've read little of him systematically, just mostly around; I don't think I've read all of The Poet even, maybe out of irritation at his owing so much to Shelley despite execrating him his whole life through.

My Emerson poems are Bacchus and Two Rivers. And the Channing Ode. And Merlin and Brahma and Threnody and Uriel and etc.

Lots of great Stevens left out of Collected, esp. '50s poems, most of which is in Opus Posthumous.

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.

I agree with Bloom and have been saying for a decade to nobody listening that Emerson's journals starting around 1842 are the secret treasure of American writing. His published stuff is so ordinary. If you read the letters between him and Carlyle it's like a dope (Emerson) and a genius (Carlyle) chatting on AOL. But his journals have those great flashes that cause the earthquake of thought.

Starting in 1842, check.

Oh, and I think the double handful you know are the best. But the book many non-obsessives skip is The Crack-Up.