(no subject)

[proximoception]

A hundred works of fiction I particularly love (dates approximate):

Late 1900s: Little, Big, Engine Summer; Sabbath's Theater, Zuckerman Bound, My Life As a Man, "The Conversion of the Jews"; Vineland; Invisible Cities, The Baron in the Trees, If on a winter's night a traveler; The Violent Bear It Away, "Good Country People", "Revelation"; The Kingdom of This World

Early 1900s: Remembrance of Things Past; Women in Love, The Rainbow, Sons & Lovers, St. Mawr, The Virgin & the Gypsy, The Man Who Died, "A Fragment of Stained Glass"; Andreas; "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen"; "Mysterious Kor", "Ivy Gripped the Steps"; The Magic Mountain, Lotte in Weimar, Death in Venice, Man and Dog; The Waves, To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando (Ch. 1); Miss Lonelyhearts; Sanctuary, Light in August; "The Burrow", "Investigations of a Dog", "Josephine the Singer", "The Country Doctor"; Nostromo, Victory; "The Garden of Forking Paths", "The Order of the Phoenix", "The Immortal", "Death and the Compass", "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "The Theologians", "The Circular Ruins"; "The Burning", "A Still Moment", "A Worn Path", "Why I Live at the P.O."

Late 1800s: War & Peace, Anna Karenina, Childhood/Boyhood/Youth, The Cossacks, The Kreutzer Sonata, Family Happiness, The Death of Ivan Ilych, "The Snowstorm"; Moby-Dick, Benito Cereno, The Encantadas, "Bartleby", "The Apple Tree Table", "I & My Chimney", "The Piazza"; Sketches from a Hunter's Album, Fathers & Sons, First Love; "Gusev", "The Kiss"; A Christmas Carol; Middlemarch; The Portrait of a Lady; Huckleberry Finn; "The Open Boat", "The Blue Hotel", The Red Badge of Courage

Early 1800s: Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Elective Affinities, The Sorrows of Young Werther, "Fairy Tale", "Novella"; The Charterhouse of Parma, The Red & the Black; Michael Kohlhaas; "Young Goodman Brown", "Earth's Holocaust", "Egotism, or: The Bosom Serpent", "The Ambitious Guest", "Wakefield"; Nightmare Abbey, Gryll Grange; Mozart On His Way to Prague; "The Nose"; Wuthering Heights; "Lenz"

Comments

[agoraphiliac.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I like the roominess of this list better than the "what are the five books you'd take with you to a deserted island?" kind of list. I might copy the form.

Also, on the other hand, at the same time, I'm a little unsettled by the magisterial, Bloomian sweep of your reading. You are not me, judging by this list. I have a hard time with that.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

An inheritance let me spend a few years alone in a room reading, is all. Any magisterial sweep is due to Bloom himself, whose various published lists and criticisms directed most of my choices during that time.

I think I prefer the desert island list, for recommendation and self-description. Many of the works above I like because they're similar to my very favorites', ultimately. And I read (mostly past tense) broadly primarily to ferret out those voices that would speak to me most deeply.