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

I'm very predictable: Proust and Nabokov. Although there are essays and letters and short fiction that I haven't. In the case of the latter, it began as a pre-grad school sort of private pissing contest and, many years later, found me sick to death of Nabokovian minutiae, and ended up making me wish we (that was the *we* of academia) could just stick to his truly good stuff and not hermeneuticize the trivial details of the stuff that just...isn't.

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.

The Last Tycoon is wonderful. Also I owe you an email.

It's more officially on my list, then. It's nice to think there's more good Fitzgerald left. This fall, I purchased a little collection, put out by a local publisher, of his so-called St. Paul stories. It's nice to have, but I'd already read most of them - not realizing they were such. I was sort of nostalgically thinking or re-reading This Side of Paradise, just because I haven't since high school, which essentially means that, save for fragments and a general sense of it, I haven't.

There's a neat little essay on Fitzgerald's French that talks a lot about St. Paul. I think the author is Michael Hollington. You might be able to find a PDF through a library online database if you're interested.

Sounds perfect! Thank you.

I tried to post a nice episode from The Last Tycoon here, but it was too long for a comment. Will post in my lj.

Nabokov was a favorite of Calvino's--and Crowley's, of course. I'll try Lolita again sometime soon.

rather, why don't we do a group read of pale fire?

Yes, why not?

I'm in. The lost glove is happy.

If we read Ada I bet we could get Karin to join in.

if you invite her & she says yes, i can set it up

I think that one can't swing a dead cat in a room full of writers without hitting many who adore Nabokov.