# Visual art and classical literature: favorites?



## Ravellian

I will admit, I know almost nothing about art or literature... they never really held my interest. I used to think art was kinda boring, since a piece of art is there all at once, it's very easy to understand... unlike music, which is something you have to experience over time. However, I stumbled upon the Bosch painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights" recently, which has single-handedly made me interested in art. 

Also, I have little patience for reading anything besides topics on music or science; I have questioned whether there is really anything of value to be learned from reading classical literature.

So, enlighten me. What are your favorite works of art or literature, why do you like them, and what have your learned from them?


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## StlukesguildOhio

I read and look at art for the same reason I listen to music: they give me a certain pleasure. The goal of any art is not coming upon the ending or being able to discern some "meaning" or definition. rather, like life itself, it is the journey itself that matters. I'm am a visual artist with years of art history under my belt, and a self-admitted bibliophile (I am currently sitting in a den that doubles as a small library with some 3500 books). I could not begin to give you a list of the artists or writers who have made a profound impact upon me.


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## Ravellian

StlukesguildOhio said:


> I read and look at art for the same reason I listen to music: they give me a certain pleasure. The goal of any art is not coming upon the ending or being able to discern some "meaning" or definition. rather, like life itself, it is the journey itself that matters. I'm am a visual artist with years of art history under my belt, and a self-admitted bibliophile (I am currently sitting in a den that doubles as a small library with some 3500 books). I could not begin to give you a list of the artists or writers who have made a profound impact upon me.


To be honest, I made this topic with you in mind, since I know you have a great deal of this sort of knowledge.  Is there any chance you could give me a short list of some of your favorite books?


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## Sid James

This is a vast area, as stlukes suggests. What I'd recommend is make a visit to an art gallery in your area & see some art "in the flesh." Esp. one of the big "national" or city galleries. These tend to have a permanent collection as well as changing exhibitions.

As for literature, I'm now in the same boat as you Ravellian, I used to be a big reader in my younger years, but now I hardly read anything (apart from technical things in my area - fairly boring - or about music). A good idea there is to read the books that your favourite movies are based on. I did this after watching films based on Shakespeare's plays. Even went to theatre to see them as well. Charles Dickens was good in this way. The Brontes & Dostoyevsky as well (although quite dark). Jane Austen I found extremely boring (sorry, Austenites!). Even with more recent things, I've tended to buy the book if I liked the movie. It kind of brings a whole new level of appreciation to what you saw in the film (eg. Joseph Hiller's_ Catch 22 _is great, I've read it twice, better than the film, imo, same with Ray Bradbury's _Fahrenheit 451_). I've heard good things about Truman Capote, William Faulkner & Tenesee Williams, though I haven't read them. I did read Arthur Miller ages ago & he's pretty interesting to read, imo. So that's how I've gone about it in more recent times, although now I hardly read anything, I'm like you I just whack on a CD & listen to the music, it's kind of easier...


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## Timotheus

Ravellian said:


> I will admit, I know almost nothing about art or literature... they never really held my interest. I used to think art was kinda boring, since a piece of art is there all at once, it's very easy to understand... unlike music, which is something you have to experience over time. However, I stumbled upon the Bosch painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights" recently, which has single-handedly made me interested in art.
> 
> So, enlighten me. What are your favorite works of art or literature, why do you like them, and what have your learned from them?


Well, art is pretty easy. Go to your local art museum and wander around. I go to the local one fairly often and just go through a couple rooms and then leave (it's free). I don't think looking at prints or scans of prints is a good substitute.

I can't say I think of it as a learning experience, it's enjoyable. But even so, there's a painting there of an old man in his house...when you look around the interior you notice how bare it is and how the table only has one chair, and he's just sitting in his old fashioned clothes looking out the window, it presents vividly for your consideration the fact that many people end up alone in their old age and forces you to imagine it. You can get that kind of thing from paintings. It's not really the goal though.



> Also, I have little patience for reading anything besides topics on music or science; I have questioned whether there is really anything of value to be learned from reading classical literature.
> 
> So, enlighten me. What are your favorite works of art or literature, why do you like them, and what have your learned from them?


Well, if it's really learning your after you are doing yourself a tremendous disservice by sticking to music and science. You don't even read history? It's perhaps the most important subject. And most classic literature has a double function as history. My favorite history book is "Berlin Diary" by Shirer. He wrote diary entries while he was a reporter in Berlin in the period leading up to the outbreak of WW2 and for a while after the start. It's an interesting and dramatic way to tell it.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Is there any chance you could give me a short list of some of your favorite books?

*The Bible (KJV)*
Homer- The Iliad and The Odyssey
Aeschylus- The Orestiea
Sophocles- Oedipus Rex
Euripides- Medea
Virgil- The Aeneid
*Firdowsi- The Shahnameh*
*Dante- The Comedia (Divine Comedy)* and La Vita Nova
Petrarch- Sonnets
Machiavelli- The Prince
Ariosto- Orlando Furioso
*anon.- The Arabian Nights*
Tasso- Jerusalem Delivered
Rabelais- Gargantua and Pantagruel
*Cervantes- Don Quixote*
Montaigne-Essays
Edmund Spenser- Amors and Epithalamion, The Faerie Queene
*Shakespeare- Hamlet, King Lear, MacBeth, Otello, Julius Ceasar, A Mid-Summer Night's Dream, sonnets, etc...*
Racine- Andromaque, Phedre, etc...
Moliere- Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, School for Wives, etc...
Chaucer- Canterbury Tales
Milton- Paradise Lost
*Lawrence Sterne- Tristram Shandy*
Rousseau-Confessions
Gibbons- Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Boswell- Life of Johnson
Goethe- Faust, poems
Holderlin- Poems
*Blake- Collected Poems*
Byron- Don Juan
Keats- Poems
Shelley- Poems
Coleridge- Kublah Khan, Christabel, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Wordsworth- Poems
Tennyson- In Memoriam, Poems
Browning- Poems
Jane Austen- Sense and Sensibility
Victor Hugo- Les Miserables, Poems
Flaubert- Madame Bovary
*Baudelaire- Les Fleurs du mal*
Rimbaud- A Season in Hell, Illuminations, Drunken Boat
Verlaine- Poems 
Mallarme- Poems
Walt Whitman- Leaves of Grass
Dickinson- Poems
Melville- Moby Dick
Poe- Collected Tales
Hawthorne- Short Stories
Emerson- Essays
E.T.A. Hoffmann- Short Stories
Maupassant- Short Stories
Gautier- Short Stories, Poems
Walter Pater- The Renaissance
Oscar Wilde- Picture of Dorian Gray, plays
Dostoevski- Brothers Karamazov
Tolstoy- War and Peace
Pushkin- Eugene Onegin
Checkov- Short Stories
Gogol- Short Stories
Yeats- Poems
Rilke- New Poems, Duino Elegies
*Kafka- Short Stories, The Trial*
*Proust- In Search of Lost Time*
James Joyce- Ulysses
Dickens- A Tale of Two Cities
Lewis Carroll- Alice and Through the Lookingglass
Thomas Mann- Doctor Faustus and Death in Venice
Hermann Hesse- Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game
Gunter Grass- The Tin Drum
Paul Celan- Poems
T.S. Eliot- The Wasteland
Wallace Stevens- poems
Faulkner- As I Lay Dying
Boris Pasternak- My Sister-Life
Fernando Pessoa-Poems and Prose
Federico Garcia Lorca- Poems
Pablo Neruda- Residence Earth, poems
Beckett- Endgame
*J.L. Borges- Labyrinths, Collected Fictions, Collected Non-Fictions, Collected Poems*
Gabriel Garcia Marquez- Love in the Time of Cholera
Julio Cortazar- Stories, Hopscotch
Nabokov- Lolita
Saul Bellow- Seize the Day
Gore Vidal- Myra Breckenridge
Norman Mailer- The Naked and the Dead
Philip Roth- Zuckerman Bound
Cormac McCarthy-Blood Meridian
*Italo Calvino- Cosmicomics, The Baron in the Trees, Invisible Cities*
Tomaso Landolfi- Short Stories
Eugenio Montale- Cuttlefish Bones
Leopardi- Poems
Octavio Paz- Sunstone
Yves Bonnefoy- Curved Planks
Anne Carson- The Story of Red
Tu Fu- Poems
Li Po- Collected Poems
Wang Wei- Collected Poems

This would just about skim the surface. I've emboldened what might be my 10 or so most beloved books/writers... as of this moment.


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## mmsbls

StlukesguildOhio said:


> This would just about skim the surface. I've emboldened what might be my 10 or so most beloved books/writers... as of this moment.


Very nice list! I especially like the unexpected (to me) bolding of Italo Calvino and J.L. Borges. One question: did you come up with this list off the top of your head or did you take it from a list that had been compiled somewhere? If the former, very nicely done!


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## science

StlukesguildOhio listed _The Brothers Karamazov_ as his favorite Dostoyevsky novel. That is a good choice. If I were recommending Dostoyevsky novels, I would recommend starting with _Crime and Punishment_.

TBK would be second, because its diverse plots hold together rather less tightly and it is much heavier on the philosophizing. Even if you don't read the whole novel, every single literate person in the Western world should be forced to read the chapters in the middle where Ivan and Alyosha talk, including "The Grand Inquisitor."

With those under one's belt, I would not have anyone neglect _The Idiot_. Can't call it "the greatest" of D's novels, because C&P is so tight and well-done in every way, and TBK is much more ambitious, but _The Idiot_ is very enjoyable. Then, if you want more philosophy, then _Notes from the Underground_; and if you want more politics, the one that is variously called _The Devils_ or _The Possessed_.

Just my opinion, by the way. I don't want to sound overly authoritative.


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## Ravellian

I have read _Notes from the Underground_.. it was very much unlike anything else I've ever read.. a bit like sorting your way through the labyrinth of one twisted man's mind. Are all Dostoyevsky's books like that?

Also, I'm glad nobody's recommended Ayn Rand. I hate her.


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## Argus

Thomas Kinkade and Dan Brown. The two towering artistic geniuses of our time, all the rest pales in comparison.


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## Polednice

To answer your question:



Ravellian said:


> What are your favorite works of art or literature, why do you like them, and what have your learned from them?


I would first say that, though books - purely in terms of time - demand the greatest attention compared to visual art and music, I think they are the most historically important, if not also culturally. The fact that they use language is an attribute that propels them above all other forms of art because it allows a proper transmission of ideas not available to visual art and music. I don't think a person necessarily has to read _classic_ literature, but I think reading should be one of the most important forms of exploration in a person's life. I certainly can't think of anything more mind-expanding, with the exception perhaps of travelling, but then we can't all afford that!

Personally - although Stlukes' list is very comprehensive and mentions everything I'd suggest at first - my own perspective falls heavily on the medieval, as that's what I study at university. Of course, the biggest name of the period would be Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, which is an amazing collection of insight and comedy. But then there are works like Malory's _Le Morte D'Arthur_ (plus a whole host of other Arthurian literature), and, further back, the anonymously-'written' _Beowulf_.

Although that period is my greatest area of interest, I naturally like to dip into other periods from time to time, with Milton's _Paradise Lost_ being a particular favourite, as well as the poetry of the Romantic period, especially Byron. I would also say that my favourite form of literature is the short story, and, as such, one of my favourite writers is automatically Chekhov, though I have had great fun recently dipping into contemporary short story writers like Lydia Davis.

At the moment, with some time off, I'm just reading _The Gun Seller_ by Hugh Laurie. It doesn't aspire to be anything more than comedy, and yet, with every page, there is insight; a human familiarity; new ways of looking at and experiencing things. It's so hard to describe what you 'learn' from reading - I don't think that's such an appropriate word unless you're reading textbook. Perhaps it's a cop-out and cliche, but it's really just about _enriching_ your life and your thoughts.


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## Almaviva

StlukesguildOhio said:


> This would just about skim the surface. I've emboldened what might be my 10 or so most beloved books/writers... as of this moment.


I have read almost all of the above except for most of the poetry (with exceptions such as Fernando Pessoa and Pablo Neruda which I did read) and also except for everything you've listed below Nabokov except for Calvino, reflecting the problem that I stopped reading after a certain age (it's regrettable... these days I practically only read science fiction and books about opera). On the other hand I've read a lot more in South American, Portuguese, and French literature than is listed above, all in original language since I'm fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and French (but I understand that you gave us just a 'skim the surface' list and you're probably well versed in those as well). It makes a real difference when you read authors like Proust, Victor Hugo, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, José Saramago, and Guimarães Rosa (just as untranslatable as Joyce) in original language given how they play with words and/or write what I'd call poetic prose, and especially poets like Fernando Pessoa, Pablo Neruda, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade.


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## Ravellian

I'm curious as to why you chose to learn Spanish and Portuguese, Alma, instead of something like German or Italian, which is what most operas are set in. ???

Alright, I'm gonna start at the top of St.Luke's list and work my way down.  I've already read most of the Bible, so I'll start with the Iliad. Here goes.....


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## science

The Iliad was originally recited (or sung actually), and I heard it on tape before I read it. It worked well, driving through the prairie night, listening to long lists of slaughtered soldiers. Personally, I recommend it that way. 

But of the warrior epic poems, by far my favorite is Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. Someone needs to turn that into a work for chorus and orchestra.


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## Polednice

science said:


> But of the warrior epic poems, by far my favorite is Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. Someone needs to turn that into a work for chorus and orchestra.


*cough*amateur composer and medievalist working on that*cough* 

Although, please, don't give me that Heaney crap. Edwin Morgan any day! 

It's true that a lot of classic literature - particularly poetry - was composed to be read aloud to an audience, and that'd be the best way to experience it. However, as that's not always an option, you should _always_ - not matter what it is - read poetry aloud to yourself.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Very nice list! I especially like the unexpected (to me) bolding of Italo Calvino and J.L. Borges. One question: did you come up with this list off the top of your head or did you take it from a list that had been compiled somewhere? If the former, very nicely done!

As I stated in the earlier post, my den... where my computer is... is virtually a small library of books and CDs. With some 3500 books you have to develop some sort of order and so my books are ordered by the nationality/language and then somewhat chronologically within that. I simply looked around and drew up a list of the central books that immediately jumped out at me. Admittedly, I tend to lean more toward poetry, short story, and non-fiction than the novel... but I tried to come up with a list of the books that have had the biggest impact upon me.

As for Borges and Calvino... I am a sworn Borgesian having read everything available in translation by him. He is undoubtedly the central figure of Latin-American literature which has become a major force to be reckoned with. He, along with Calvino... and the earlier Kafka are the major fabulists and masters of the fantastic of the last century. When you consider Sterne, the _Arabian Nights_, Dante, and the _Shahnameh_ are also highlighted on my list, it should be obvious I have a love of fable and story-telling.


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## regressivetransphobe

I take it the Romantic period isn't your favorite in music? Literature is kind of an inseparable yin to the yang of that era of classical music. 

I recommend various Baudelaire, but as with anything, what you get depends on what you bring to it.


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## Aramis

Tie between music and other arts you want to dive into is good way to choose your target. You like Schumann, Berlioz? Read Byron. You like Wagner? Go for medieval epics. Mad for Chopin? Read Mickiewicz. Obsessed with Russian romantics? Explore Pushkins, Lermontovs and all the rest of the bunch. Debussy? Can't go wrong with French contemporary poets from symbolic and panteist circles. Mahler, expressionists? Literature is full of decadents.


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## Polednice

Aramis said:


> Tie between music and other arts you want to dive into is good way to choose your target. You like Schumann, Berlioz? Read Byron. You like Wagner? Go for medieval epics. Mad for Chopin? Read Mickiewicz. Obsessed with Russian romantics? Explore Pushkins, Lermontovs and all the rest of the bunch. Debussy? Can't go wrong with French contemporary poets from symbolic and panteist circles. Mahler, expressionists? Literature is full of decadents.


... and if you're in love with Brahms - like me - then you're screwed.


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## StlukesguildOhio

I have read almost all of the above except for most of the poetry (with exceptions such as Fernando Pessoa and Pablo Neruda which I did read) and also except for everything you've listed below Nabokov except for Calvino, reflecting the problem that I stopped reading after a certain age (it's regrettable... these days I practically only read science fiction and books about opera). On the other hand I've read a lot more in South American, Portuguese, and French literature than is listed above, all in original language since I'm fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and French (but I understand that you gave us just a 'skim the surface' list and you're probably well versed in those as well). It makes a real difference when you read authors like Proust, Victor Hugo, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, José Saramago, and Guimarães Rosa (just as untranslatable as Joyce) in original language given how they play with words and/or write what I'd call poetic prose, and especially poets like Fernando Pessoa, Pablo Neruda, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade.

Spain and Latin-America both underwent a major Renaissance in the twentieth century. Spanish literature underwent a "golden age" around the same time as Shakespeare with writers such as Cervantes, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Fenado de Rojas, Luis de Gongora and San Juan de la Cruz... and then it slipped into oblivion rather as Spain itself declined. In the 20th century there was a resurgence inspired by French Symbolism, Surrealism, and a rediscovery of the great Spanish-Islamic culture. Along with such figures as Dali, Miro, and Picasso in the visual arts, Albinez and Rodrigo in music, and Bunuel in film, there was a wealth of poets including Garcia-Lorca, Jimenez, Aleixandre, Alberti, Miguel Hernandez, Antonio Machado, Jorge Guillen, etc...

This Renaissance carried over into Latin-America building off the examples of Spanish writers... especially as many fled Spain following the rise of Franco. It also build heavily upon the American examples of Walt Whitman and Edgar Allen Poe. The two central Latin-American writers were Pablo Neruda and J.L. Borges... but they were surrounded by any number of writers of real genius including Cesar Vallejo, Bioy Casares, Julio Cortazar, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Alejo Carpentier, Augusto Monterroso, Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, Homero Aridjis, Tomas Eloy Martinez, and any number of other writers. Seriously, Latin-American literature in the 20th century is more than a match for that of any other culture, including France, Britain, and the US.

I personally became intrigued with Latin-American and Spanish literature while living in a largely Hispanic neighborhood in New York City (actually Jersey City, just across the Hudson). I went to any number of art exhibitions with artists from Puerto Rico, Mexico, and a slew of other Central and South American nations. We often discussed literature and music as well as art. Considering that Spanish is the largest spoken second language in the US and that Hispanics are the fastest growing minority it should come as no surprise that an American would focus upon Spanish as opposed to French, German, Russian, or Italian as a second language.


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## StlukesguildOhio

I take it the Romantic period isn't your favorite in music? 

I can't say I have a single "favorite" period in music or literature. Among my favorite composers I would certainly count any number of "Romantics/late Romantics/Post-Romantics": Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, Korngold, Richard Strauss, Verdi, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, etc... Among my list of favorite writers there are more than a few Romantics: Rousseau, Goethe, Holderlin, Blake, Byron, Keats, Shelley, 
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning, Victor Hugo, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Walt Whitman, Melville, Hawthorne, Emerson, Poe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gautier, etc... although some, like Flaubert, Tennyson, and even Baudelaire may be argued as Post-Romantic... yet in many ways they maintain certain Romantic sensibilities.


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## regressivetransphobe

I meant OP, to clarify!


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## StlukesguildOhio

... and if you're in love with Brahms - like me - then you're screwed. 

You read Freud.


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## Almaviva

Ravellian said:


> I'm curious as to why you chose to learn Spanish and Portuguese, Alma, instead of something like German or Italian, which is what most operas are set in. ???
> 
> Alright, I'm gonna start at the top of St.Luke's list and work my way down.  I've already read most of the Bible, so I'll start with the Iliad. Here goes.....


 Portuguese because my wife is Brazilian and so are all my in-laws so I need it to communicate with my children's grandmother, uncles and aunts, cousins, my sisters-in-law, etc - not all of them speak English.
Spanish because it is very helpful in my line of work, and it wasn't too difficult to learn once I learned Portuguese (these languages are pretty similar).
I do speak some Italian (not very well but the comprehension is almost 100%)
Yes, I've tried to learn German but then got too busy. I still want to learn it, eventually.
In any case, these languages that I learned preceded my interest for opera.


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## Almaviva

StlukesguildOhio said:


> I have read almost all of the above except for most of the poetry (with exceptions such as Fernando Pessoa and Pablo Neruda which I did read) and also except for everything you've listed below Nabokov except for Calvino, reflecting the problem that I stopped reading after a certain age (it's regrettable... these days I practically only read science fiction and books about opera). On the other hand I've read a lot more in South American, Portuguese, and French literature than is listed above, all in original language since I'm fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and French (but I understand that you gave us just a 'skim the surface' list and you're probably well versed in those as well). It makes a real difference when you read authors like Proust, Victor Hugo, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, José Saramago, and Guimarães Rosa (just as untranslatable as Joyce) in original language given how they play with words and/or write what I'd call poetic prose, and especially poets like Fernando Pessoa, Pablo Neruda, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
> 
> Spain and Latin-America both underwent a major Renaissance in the twentieth century. Spanish literature underwent a "golden age" around the same time as Shakespeare with writers such as Cervantes, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Fenado de Rojas, Luis de Gongora and San Juan de la Cruz... and then it slipped into oblivion rather as Spain itself declined. In the 20th century there was a resurgence inspired by French Symbolism, Surrealism, and a rediscovery of the great Spanish-Islamic culture. Along with such figures as Dali, Miro, and Picasso in the visual arts, Albinez and Rodrigo in music, and Bunuel in film, there was a wealth of poets including Garcia-Lorca, Jimenez, Aleixandre, Alberti, Miguel Hernandez, Antonio Machado, Jorge Guillen, etc...
> 
> This Renaissance carried over into Latin-America building off the examples of Spanish writers... especially as many fled Spain following the rise of Franco. It also build heavily upon the American examples of Walt Whitman and Edgar Allen Poe. The two central Latin-American writers were Pablo Neruda and J.L. Borges... but they were surrounded by any number of writers of real genius including Cesar Vallejo, Bioy Casares, Julio Cortazar, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Alejo Carpentier, Augusto Monterroso, Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, Homero Aridjis, Tomas Eloy Martinez, and any number of other writers. Seriously, Latin-American literature in the 20th century is more than a match for that of any other culture, including France, Britain, and the US.
> 
> I personally became intrigued with Latin-American and Spanish literature while living in a largely Hispanic neighborhood in New York City (actually Jersey City, just across the Hudson). I went to any number of art exhibitions with artists from Puerto Rico, Mexico, and a slew of other Central and South American nations. We often discussed literature and music as well as art. Considering that Spanish is the largest spoken second language in the US and that Hispanics are the fastest growing minority it should come as no surprise that an American would focus upon Spanish as opposed to French, German, Russian, or Italian as a second language.


Great, I see that indeed you're well acquainted with Spanish and Latin-America literature.

Still, Brazil is a bit under-represented in your list, which only included Machado de Assis.

Have you tried authors such as Guimarães Rosa, Jorge Amado, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, José de Alencar, Tomás Gonzaga, Alvarenga Peixoto, Gonçalves Dias, Castro Alves, Álvaro de Azevedo, Euclides da Cunha, Olavo Bilac, Monteiro Lobato, Lima Barreto, and then the new generation starting with the brothers Mário and Oswald de Andrade, Manuel Bandeira, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Nelson Rodrigues, Rubem Fonseca, Fernando Sabino, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, Rubem Braga, Aníbal Machado, Dalton Trevisan, Murilo Rubião, Ariano Suassuna, Adonias Filho, Autran Dourado, Érico Veríssimo, Clarice Lispector, Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Rachel de Queiroz, Paulo Lins?

I'd be curious to know how many of the above you've read. I always feel that because Portuguese is a more isolated language, this spectacular body of works gets pretty much ignored around the world.


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## Lenfer

Dear *Ravellian* those are some of my favourite books. No ones really "knows" anything about art and literature other than the facts anything else is just one's perspective. So don't let anyone even yourself put you off, knowledge is the only thing in life you can dive into with both hands and grab as much as you can without getting fat.

There is a favourite painter thread, I'd go there for some nice pictures. My artists I listed on that thread were *Francisco Goya*, *Vincent Van Gogh* and *Lucian Freud*.


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## graaf

and some of the most memorable paintings:


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## Air

The ten pieces of fiction that I love the most :

1 - The Idiot - Dostoevsky
2 - The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
3 - The Divine Comedy - Dante
4 - The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
5 - The Iliad - Homer
6 - The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
7 - The Trial - Kafka
8 - Le Morte D’Arthur - Malory
9 - A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
10 - The Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne


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## StlukesguildOhio

Have you tried authors such as Guimarães Rosa, Jorge Amado, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, José de Alencar, Tomás Gonzaga, Alvarenga Peixoto, Gonçalves Dias, Castro Alves, Álvaro de Azevedo, Euclides da Cunha, Olavo Bilac, Monteiro Lobato, Lima Barreto, and then the new generation starting with the brothers Mário and Oswald de Andrade, Manuel Bandeira, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Nelson Rodrigues, Rubem Fonseca, Fernando Sabino, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, Rubem Braga, Aníbal Machado, Dalton Trevisan, Murilo Rubião, Ariano Suassuna, Adonias Filho, Autran Dourado, Érico Veríssimo, Clarice Lispector, Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Rachel de Queiroz, Paulo Lins?

Jorge Amado, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, J.V. Foix, Luiz Vaz de Camoes, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Fernando Pessoa, and Jose Saramago are the only Portuguese-language writers in my collection... which is undoubtedly limited as the result of translations.


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## Kopachris

For art, I'm very fascinated by "The Garden of Earthly Delights" and "Mona Lisa." For classical literature, Les Misérables, Nineteen Eighty-four, Alice in Wonderland, and Things Fall Apart. Oh, and Hamlet. Can't forget Hamlet.


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## Almaviva

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Jorge Amado, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, J.V. Foix, Luiz Vaz de Camoes, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Fernando Pessoa, and Jose Saramago are the only Portuguese-language writers in my collection... which is undoubtedly limited as the result of translations.


Yes, like I suspected, the rich Brazilian literature gets to be obscure thanks to their relatively obscure language. The Portuguese literature is a bit more establish and gets more translations (e.g. José Saramago, Camões, Fernando Pessoa) but when you turn to Brazil, there's only a small fraction of these excellent authors who have had consistent translations, so it doesn't surprise me that even a very well read person like you hasn't had sufficient access to them.

The best of them all in my opinion is Guimarães Rosa. His masterpiece _Grande Sertão: Veredas _is one of the best books I've ever read in my life. It's utterly amazing. It does have an English translation, entitled _The Devil to Pay in the Backlands.

_See this Wikipedia page about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_to_Pay_in_the_Backlands

They accurately say: "Most of the book's spirit is however lost in translation, as the Portuguese original is written in a register that is both archaic and colloquial, making it a very difficult book to translate. The combination of its size, linguistic oddness and polemic themes caused a shock when it was published, but now it is considered one of the most important novels of South American literature. In a 2002 poll of 100 noted writers conducted by Norwegian Book Clubs, the book was named among the top 100 books of all time."

I can't attest to the quality of the English translation. It doesn't have the greatest of reputations. If you speak French, there is a *very* good French translation that supposedly was more able to preserve the puns and word plays of the original; it's called _Diadorim.

_But like Wikipedia said, the grandeur of this extraordinary work is only fully captured when it is read in original language. But it is so darn good that it's almost worth learning Portuguese just to read it. I once met an Englishman who was doing just that: learning Portuguese so that he'd be able to read this book and the other books by the same author (they are all very good - I've read other than _Grande Sertão_, _Tutaméia, Sagarana, Primeiras Estórias, Estas Estórias,_ and _Corpo de Baile_ - he wrote some seven or eight more that I haven't read).

Guimarães Rosa was a language genius who spoke Portuguese, German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto, Russian, and could read Swedish, Dutch, Latin, and Greek, all self-taught, can you imagine? He taught himself fluent French before his 7th birthday.

And it's not like he wasn't busy and could spend time studying languages and reading literature: he was a very active medical doctor and later a prominent diplomat - a quite extraordinary man.


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## Couchie

I hate both literature and fine art. I really don't know what people get out of them, feel free to share. All "classic" literature I've read is a chore, neither entertaining nor providing any real insight on the human condition in comparison to what can be gleaned from reading non-fiction historical, philosophical, or scientific books. Art on the other hand is nice, but that's about it.


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## Curiosity

I've read a few of the most widely-acclaimed novels and, while interesting enough, have never felt inclined to explore literature any further. Poetry leaves me utterly indifferent. Art I can be appreciate, but usually in the form of things like ancient arms and armor rather than paintings and sculptures.


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## Almaviva

Couchie said:


> I hate both literature and fine art. I really don't know what people get out of them, feel free to share. All "classic" literature I've read is a chore, neither entertaining nor providing any real insight on the human condition in comparison to what can be gleaned from reading non-fiction historical, philosophical, or scientific books. Art on the other hand is nice, but that's about it.


 I'm sorry for you that you feel this way, Couchie. I have the exact opposite view: I believe that the most enduring literary works are exactly those that provide deep insight into the human condition; that's exactly why they last throughout the centuries.


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## Timotheus

Couchie said:


> I hate both literature and fine art. I really don't know what people get out of them, feel free to share. All "classic" literature I've read is a chore, neither entertaining nor providing any real insight on the human condition in comparison to what can be gleaned from reading non-fiction historical, philosophical, or scientific books. Art on the other hand is nice, but that's about it.


Well, you think that real insight is possible. So presumably some people have real insight. And the can share it in a book.

I don't think the distinction between history, philosophy, and literature is as clear as you make it sound anyway. Nietzsche is often regarded as a literary kind of philosopher, and many works of literature are prime historical documents.


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## regressivetransphobe

Couchie said:


> I hate both literature and fine art. I really don't know what people get out of them, feel free to share. All "classic" literature I've read is a chore, neither entertaining nor providing any real insight on the human condition in comparison to what can be gleaned from reading non-fiction historical, philosophical, or scientific books. Art on the other hand is nice, but that's about it.


If you go into anything expecting to be totally enlightened on the human condition you're going to be disappointed no matter what.


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## Polednice

It's important to consider how many periods and styles of writing you have attempted before writing literature off as a medium. As an example, if you've come to "classic literature" via authors like Austen and the Bronte sisters and it's not to your liking, you can't just write it off. That'd be like never exploring Baroque and Romantic music purely because you didn't like Classical. I find some classic literature a chore (I've never been a fan of Dickens, for example), but we mustn't romanticise our view of literary history, imagining that all 19th century writers sound like Dickens _etc._. The range of styles, voices, structures, perspectives - it's just immense, and I think there is something for _everyone_; you just need to find the right place to start.


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## Lenfer

Air said:


> The ten pieces of fiction that I love the most :
> 
> 1 - The Idiot - Dostoevsky
> 2 - The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
> 3 - The Divine Comedy - Dante
> 4 - The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
> 5 - The Iliad - Homer
> 6 - The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
> 7 - The Trial - Kafka
> 8 - Le Morte D'Arthur - Malory
> 9 - A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
> 10 - The Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne


This could have been my list I love all those books you listed *Air*, well almost I haven't read the Lord of the Rings.


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## Air

Lenfer said:


> This could have been my list I love all those books you listed *Air*, well almost I haven't read the Lord of the Rings.


Well, read it, I say! And read the _Silmarillion_ too! 

Some say Tolkien is overrated, overhyped, low art even - or at least compared to other 'classics'. Personally though, his literature has an ability to take me to a world that is far more interesting and greater than the world we live in. I think this is the sign of great fantasy - that it can give such worlds such wonderful meaning.

And believe me, it has everything. A creation, gods, races, a long, long history with an ultimate apocalypse, and even different languages - he's got it all extremely well thought out.


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## Lenfer

I'll maybe borrow *The Hobbit* from a friend and try *Tolkien*. I don't normally read books about elves and orcs that sort of fantasy, but I shall give it ago. Thank you for the "like" it was most kind of you.


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## Argus

Couchie said:


> I hate both literature and fine art. I really don't know what people get out of them, feel free to share. All "classic" literature I've read is a chore, neither entertaining nor providing any real insight on the human condition in comparison to what can be gleaned from reading non-fiction historical, philosophical, or scientific books. Art on the other hand is nice, but that's about it.


I'm in total agreement.

I like visual art but only in a superficial 'what a nice thing to look at' way. I don't experience any real emotion from looking at it but I'd miss it if it were gone. That's probably why I mostly have interest in totally abstract work.

I haven't read any fiction since school and poetry is complete anathema to me. Non-fiction is where its at. I'm sure lots of the big name classic literature is only read because people think it necessary for their intellectual development. Sure, some people will genuinely enjoy reading them, but I reckon a lot of it is read because people think 'it's good for them'.


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## Ravellian

regressivetransphobe said:


> I take it the Romantic period isn't your favorite in music? Literature is kind of an inseparable yin to the yang of that era of classical music.


What a silly statement, I love the Romantic period of music. It's where 87% of my favorite composers composed. What literature is so important for the romantic age? Besides Goethe.


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## mmsbls

Some wonderful fiction has been suggested. Let me just mention two more works.

graaf mentioned Camus's _The Stranger_. I would add Camus's _The Fall_ - two of my all time favorites.

By far the best modern work I have ever read is: _An Instance of the Fingerpost_ by Iain Pears.


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## StlukesguildOhio

The best of them all in my opinion is Guimarães Rosa. His masterpiece Grande Sertão: Veredas is one of the best books I've ever read in my life. It's utterly amazing. It does have an English translation, entitled The Devil to Pay in the Backlands.

See this Wikipedia page about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dev..._the_Backlands

They accurately say: "Most of the book's spirit is however lost in translation, as the Portuguese original is written in a register that is both archaic and colloquial, making it a very difficult book to translate.

I can't attest to the quality of the English translation. It doesn't have the greatest of reputations. 

Even if it did, it's out of print and used copies run $300+ on Amazon. Even the original runs $154!!

That is the problem faced by a great deal of literature. Translations of most major Western European languages into English are quite plentiful and of a fairly consistent quality for most major writers... with the possible exception of the Spanish... until recently. This was probably owed to the tensions between England and Spain at the height of the Spanish "golden age". Calderon is recognized within the Spanish-speaking world as one of the greatest dramatists ever... ranking with Shakespeare, Jonson, Racine, and Moliere... but until recently, almost nothing by him was available. Only recently... as a result of the US' proximity to Spanish-speaking Latin-America have the translations of Spanish lit become more plentiful. The same problem exists for Eastern European literature (with the exception of Russian) and a good deal of non-Western literature. The rise of Japan and China as economic superpowers have resulted in a slew of new translations of Japanese and Chinese lit. I personally far prefer Japanese literature and art and the whole Japanese aesthetic to the Chinese (with some exceptions). Middle-Eastern literature has also begun to show some signs of life in the translation department as a result of the wars in the Middle-East, our continued dependence upon Middle-Eastern oil, etc... The Persian Empire was one of the greatest in history outlasting both the Greeks and Romans before falling to the Byzantines and ultimately the Arabs. In spite of this, Persia has long been little more than a name popping up in Greek histories. A great many Americans have no idea as to difference between Persian and Arabic cultures, and yet Persian art and literature is incredibly rich... far more so than that of the conquering Arabs, Mongols, and Turks.

Portuguese literature undoubtedly faces the same problem. Camoes has the advantage of being acknowledged as one of the greatest works of European epic poetry combined with it's worth in documenting the period of Portuguese exploration. Saramago undoubtedly benefited from the Nobel-prize... and I think Pessoa somewhat rode in upon Saramago's coat-tails as well as the fact that Harold Bloom's best selling and highly influential critical collection, _The Western Canon_, placed Pessoa alongside Neruda and Borges. (Machado de Assis was another figure highly praised by Bloom). Eventually, as America develops closer relationships with Latin-America, I suspect more Brazilian literature will show up in translation.


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## Polednice

Ravellian said:


> What literature is so important for the romantic age? Besides Goethe.


Shakespeare, Dante, Byron, Ibsen - hell, you might as well know some Schiller just for Beethoven's 9th.


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## StlukesguildOhio

I'm in total agreement.

I like visual art but only in a superficial 'what a nice thing to look at' way. I don't experience any real emotion from looking at it but I'd miss it if it were gone. That's probably why I mostly have interest in totally abstract work.

I haven't read any fiction since school and poetry is complete anathema to me. Non-fiction is where its at. I'm sure lots of the big name classic literature is only read because people think it necessary for their intellectual development. Sure, some people will genuinely enjoy reading them, but I reckon a lot of it is read because people think 'it's good for them'.

I wouldn't expect less of you.


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## waldvogel

Polednice said:


> ... and if you're in love with Brahms - like me - then you're screwed.


Have you read any Thomas Mann? The Magic Mountain is one of the greatest novels ever written, with Buddenbrooks and Dr. Faustus not far behind.


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## Xaltotun

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Is there any chance you could give me a short list of some of your favorite books?
> 
> *The Bible (KJV)*
> Homer- The Iliad and The Odyssey
> Aeschylus- The Orestiea
> Sophocles- Oedipus Rex
> Euripides- Medea
> Virgil- The Aeneid
> *Firdowsi- The Shahnameh*
> *Dante- The Comedia (Divine Comedy)* and La Vita Nova
> Petrarch- Sonnets
> Machiavelli- The Prince
> Ariosto- Orlando Furioso
> *anon.- The Arabian Nights*
> Tasso- Jerusalem Delivered
> Rabelais- Gargantua and Pantagruel
> *Cervantes- Don Quixote*
> Montaigne-Essays
> Edmund Spenser- Amors and Epithalamion, The Faerie Queene
> *Shakespeare- Hamlet, King Lear, MacBeth, Otello, Julius Ceasar, A Mid-Summer Night's Dream, sonnets, etc...*
> Racine- Andromaque, Phedre, etc...
> Moliere- Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, School for Wives, etc...
> Chaucer- Canterbury Tales
> Milton- Paradise Lost
> *Lawrence Sterne- Tristram Shandy*
> Rousseau-Confessions
> Gibbons- Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
> Boswell- Life of Johnson
> Goethe- Faust, poems
> Holderlin- Poems
> *Blake- Collected Poems*
> Byron- Don Juan
> Keats- Poems
> Shelley- Poems
> Coleridge- Kublah Khan, Christabel, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
> Wordsworth- Poems
> Tennyson- In Memoriam, Poems
> Browning- Poems
> Jane Austen- Sense and Sensibility
> Victor Hugo- Les Miserables, Poems
> Flaubert- Madame Bovary
> *Baudelaire- Les Fleurs du mal*
> Rimbaud- A Season in Hell, Illuminations, Drunken Boat
> Verlaine- Poems
> Mallarme- Poems
> Walt Whitman- Leaves of Grass
> Dickinson- Poems
> Melville- Moby Dick
> Poe- Collected Tales
> Hawthorne- Short Stories
> Emerson- Essays
> E.T.A. Hoffmann- Short Stories
> Maupassant- Short Stories
> Gautier- Short Stories, Poems
> Walter Pater- The Renaissance
> Oscar Wilde- Picture of Dorian Gray, plays
> Dostoevski- Brothers Karamazov
> Tolstoy- War and Peace
> Pushkin- Eugene Onegin
> Checkov- Short Stories
> Gogol- Short Stories
> Yeats- Poems
> Rilke- New Poems, Duino Elegies
> *Kafka- Short Stories, The Trial*
> *Proust- In Search of Lost Time*
> James Joyce- Ulysses
> Dickens- A Tale of Two Cities
> Lewis Carroll- Alice and Through the Lookingglass
> Thomas Mann- Doctor Faustus and Death in Venice
> Hermann Hesse- Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game
> Gunter Grass- The Tin Drum
> Paul Celan- Poems
> T.S. Eliot- The Wasteland
> Wallace Stevens- poems
> Faulkner- As I Lay Dying
> Boris Pasternak- My Sister-Life
> Fernando Pessoa-Poems and Prose
> Federico Garcia Lorca- Poems
> Pablo Neruda- Residence Earth, poems
> Beckett- Endgame
> *J.L. Borges- Labyrinths, Collected Fictions, Collected Non-Fictions, Collected Poems*
> Gabriel Garcia Marquez- Love in the Time of Cholera
> Julio Cortazar- Stories, Hopscotch
> Nabokov- Lolita
> Saul Bellow- Seize the Day
> Gore Vidal- Myra Breckenridge
> Norman Mailer- The Naked and the Dead
> Philip Roth- Zuckerman Bound
> Cormac McCarthy-Blood Meridian
> *Italo Calvino- Cosmicomics, The Baron in the Trees, Invisible Cities*
> Tomaso Landolfi- Short Stories
> Eugenio Montale- Cuttlefish Bones
> Leopardi- Poems
> Octavio Paz- Sunstone
> Yves Bonnefoy- Curved Planks
> Anne Carson- The Story of Red
> Tu Fu- Poems
> Li Po- Collected Poems
> Wang Wei- Collected Poems
> 
> This would just about skim the surface. I've emboldened what might be my 10 or so most beloved books/writers... as of this moment.


StlukesguildOhio is now officially my mythical hero, or perhaps demi-god. It's good to know that people like you exist. Makes me feel a bit better about humanity in general.


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## itywltmt

More music and paintings on my blogs this week, starting with my Tuesday blog:
http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/itywltmt/305-museum-orchestra-edition.html


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## Argus

StlukesguildOhio said:


> I wouldn't expect less of you.


I haven't read a single book in your list. I am not a ponce.


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## clavichorder

I've only read David Copperfield and The Claverings and The Warden by Anthony Trollope for classic literature.


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## StlukesguildOhio

I haven't read a single book in your list. I am not a ponce.

Although you do seem to have a fixation with arses.


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## Argus

StlukesguildOhio said:


> I haven't read a single book in your list. I am not a ponce.
> 
> Although you do seem to have a fixation with arses.


Only the finest arses known to man. I demand critically acclaimed arses that can be objectively proved to be 'good' arses.

Now, be a jolly good chap, and get back to reading your James Joyce's love letters.


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## Klavierspieler

Hmmm... Can't go wrong with Dickens, Dostoevsky, Carroll, Tolkien, The Bible, etc...


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## StlukesguildOhio

Only the finest arses known to man. I demand critically acclaimed arses that can be objectively proved to be 'good' arses.

Now, be a jolly good chap, and get back to reading your James Joyce's love letters.

What ever happened to the days when children were to be "seen and not heard"?


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## Polednice

Argus said:


> I haven't read a single book in your list. I am not a ponce.


Your deformity makes you look more and more like a troll every day. Delightful.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Well... it has been brought up before... that there is this sort of pathological need by many metal-heads to join classical music forums. It has something to do, I believe, with insecurity and the need to legitimize their adolescent musical tastes by linking them with "serious music". I wonder if bluegrass fans ever join the jazz forums and then start rants about how big of a wus Duke Ellington was vs the Stanley Brothers?


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## Couchie

Almaviva said:


> I'm sorry for you that you feel this way, Couchie. I have the exact opposite view: I believe that the most enduring literary works are exactly those that provide deep insight into the human condition; that's exactly why they last throughout the centuries.


They're too long-winded. Text should be as concise and information-dense as possible. Share with me the most insightful novels you've read, I'll go read the SparkNotes on it. Perhaps I will miss out on the whole critical thinking-for-yourself business but I spend enough time pondering real-world affairs to not leave time to sort through the irritating intentional ambiguity and obfusication of these ******* authors.


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## Polednice

Couchie said:


> Text should be as concise and information-dense as possible.


Oh, so you must love poetry instead then.


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## Couchie

Polednice said:


> Oh, so you must love poetry instead then.


Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?


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## StlukesguildOhio

They're too long-winded. Text should be as concise and information-dense as possible. 

Seriously... that has to be one of the lamest ideas ever put forth here concerning art of any genre. Text "SHOULD" do what? Confrom to you notions? Do you take the same approach to classical music: "Music should be a brief as possible employing a minimal number of notes and avoiding any variety of instrumentation or dynamics that might keep us from getting to the end ASAP??

Share with me the most insightful novels you've read, I'll go read the SparkNotes on it.

The very purpose of art wholly evades you. The goal isn't to reach the end and discern some great "meaning" or "theme". That is the sort of pathetic approach to literature best reserved for grade school. The purpose of art, like life itself, is the experience. It matters not if a well written book goes on forever. Like a well-written symphony or opera the reader is able to lose themselves in the pleasure of the narrative, the characters, the setting, the atmosphere, and the language itself. Sparks Notes are to literature what the recipe is to a splendid meal. It tells you what the ingredients were without you ever having had the pleasure of actually experiencing the taste of the meal.

Perhaps I will miss out on the whole critical thinking-for-yourself business but I spend enough time pondering real-world affairs to not leave time to sort through the irritating intentional ambiguity and obfusication of these ******* authors.

And perhaps you will be no worse for it in practical terms. It is simply a source of pleasure that you have lost out on.

Denis Dutton, who studies aesthetics and their connection with evolutionary psychology has written eloquently of the value of "story-telling":

_If survival in life is a matter of dealing with an often inhospitable physical universe, and dealing with members of our own species, both friendly and unfriendly, there would be a general benefit to be derived from imaginatively exercising the mind in order to prepare it for its next challenge. Puzzle-solving of all kinds, thinking through imagined alternative strategies to meet difficulties - these are at the heart of what the arts allow us to do. In fictional narratives, we meet a far greater variety of obstacles, along with potential solutions, than we ever could in a single life. As Stephen Pinker has argued, "Life has even more moves than chess. People are always, to some extent, in conflict, and their moves and countermoves multiply out to an unimaginably vast set of interactions" (Pinker 1997). Story-telling, on this model, is a way of running multiple, relatively cost-free experiments with life in order to see, in the imagination, where courses of action may lead. Although narrative can deal with the challenges of the natural world, its usual home is, as Aristotle also understood, in the realm of human relations. As Pinker puts it, "Parents, offspring, and siblings, because of their partial genetic overlap, have both common and competing interests, and any deed that one party directs toward another may be selfless, selfish, or a mixture of the two". Add to this the complications of dealing with lovers, spouses, friends, and strangers, and you have the basic material for most of the history of literature, from the Epic of Gilgamesh right up to drugstore bodice-rippers._

Anna Quindlen suggested: "Books (and I would expand this to include the whole of the arts) are a means to immortality." (Kafka, among others, agreed, comparing reading with an "intercourse"... a dialog with the dead.) Quindlen continued "through (the arts) we experience other times, other places; we manage to become more than our own selves." If art has a utilitarian value, it lies here... in the ability to spur on an empathy... a greater understanding of others.

Perhaps the greatest as to the value of the arts is that put forth by Walter Pater in the conclusion to his book, _The Renaissance_:

_*Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face*; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us,-*for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.* *A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?*

*To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits... While all melts under our feet*, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. *Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening.* With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch...

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of the Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had clung always about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the interval that remained; and he was not biassed by anything in his previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. *Well! we are all condamnes*, as Victor Hugo says: *we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve*-les hommes sont tous condamnes a mort avec des sursis indefinis: *we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more.* Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among "the children of this world," in art and song. *For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time.* Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion-that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake.
_
1868.


----------



## Couchie

StlukesguildOhio said:


> They're too long-winded. Text should be as concise and information-dense as possible.
> 
> Seriously... that has to be one of the lamest ideas ever put forth here concerning art of any genre. Text "SHOULD" do what? Confrom to you notions? Do you take the same approach to classical music: "Music should be a brief as possible employing a minimal number of notes and avoiding any variety of instrumentation or dynamics that might keep us from getting to the end ASAP??
> 
> Share with me the most insightful novels you've read, I'll go read the SparkNotes on it.
> 
> The very purpose of art wholly evades you. The goal isn't to reach the end and discern some great "meaning" or "theme". That is the sort of pathetic approach to literature best reserved for grade school. The purpose of art, like life itself, is the experience. It matters not if a well written book goes on forever. Like a well-written symphony or opera the reader is able to lose themselves in the pleasure of the narrative, the characters, the setting, the atmosphere, and the language itself. Sparks Notes are to literature what the recipe is to a splendid meal. It tells you what the ingredients were without you ever having had the pleasure of actually experiencing the taste of the meal.


Well the experience is usually obscenely boring. When you confront readers with the fact that these books are so boring, they invariably go on to justify the book's existence for its insight on the human condition! I say, if you have a profound statement for humanity, communicate it plainly, don't obfuscate it in some novel.

The colourful excerpts you posted, as with Proust and Tolstoy, are TL;DR.


----------



## Kopachris

Couchie said:


> Well the experience is usually obscenely boring. When you confront readers with the fact that these books are so boring, they invariably go on to justify the book's existence for its insight on the human condition! I say, if you have a profound statement for humanity, communicate it plainly, don't obfuscate it in some novel.
> 
> The colourful excerpts you posted, as with Proust and Tolstoy, are TL;DR.


I'd just like to point out here that "boring" is a matter of opinion. While many people would find _Les Misérables_ or _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ or _Hamlet_ dreadfully boring, I personally found them fascinating and enthralling, and I found myself reading them at every available moment for as long as it took to read the book. I found the whole thing fascinating--not just the characters and the story, but the window into the author's life and times. _Les Mis_ offers a remarkable view into 19th century France, which, for someone who is interested in the subject, is only enhanced by the actual experience of reading Hugo's lengthy discourses. _Zarathustra_'s manner, or excess of manner, is an experience in and of itself--such wild philosophical fantasy!--the author's soul and passion gushing forth at the reader in an unrelenting torrent. Granted, it may not be everyone's cup of tea, but for those who can stand up to the torrent, it's a fascinating and empowering experience. Not boring at all.

To top it off, there is plenty of classical literature which keeps the reader on the edge of his seat at all times. Orwell's _Nineteen Eighty-four_, for example. No lengthy philosophical discourses, plenty of information density, and enough suspense to make some of us neglect our nutrition and/or hygiene (or was that just me?  ).


----------



## Couchie

Kopachris said:


> I'd just like to point out here that "boring" is a matter of opinion. While many people would find _Les Misérables_ or _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ or _Hamlet_ dreadfully boring, I personally found them fascinating and enthralling, and I found myself reading them at every available moment for as long as it took to read the book. I found the whole thing fascinating--not just the characters and the story, but the window into the author's life and times. _Les Mis_ offers a remarkable view into 19th century France, which, for someone who is interested in the subject, is only enhanced by the actual experience of reading Hugo's lengthy discourses. _Zarathustra_'s manner, or excess of manner, is an experience in and of itself--such wild philosophical fantasy!--the author's soul and passion gushing forth at the reader in an unrelenting torrent. Granted, it may not be everyone's cup of tea, but for those who can stand up to the torrent, it's a fascinating and empowering experience. Not boring at all.
> 
> To top it off, there is plenty of classical literature which keeps the reader on the edge of his seat at all times. Orwell's _Nineteen Eighty-four_, for example. No lengthy philosophical discourses, plenty of information density, and enough suspense to make some of us neglect our nutrition and/or hygiene (or was that just me?  ).


Well, I've seen the Les Mis musical so I feel I've got that one covered. I've discovered that it is far more enjoyable and efficient to read about Nietzsche than to read Nietzsche. My opinion on Shakespeare I share with Tolstoy: so overrated it is not only offensive, but actually evil. 1984 I enjoyed, but is it really a work of classical literature?


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## mmsbls

Couchie said:


> My opinion on Shakespeare I share with Tolstoy: so overrated it is not only offensive, but actually evil.


Wow. Overrating Shakespeare is evil? I can understand mistaken (although I would strongly disagree), but evil? I've never heard that view.


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## Timotheus

Couchie said:


> They're too long-winded. Text should be as concise and information-dense as possible. Share with me the most insightful novels you've read, I'll go read the SparkNotes on it. Perhaps I will miss out on the whole critical thinking-for-yourself business but I spend enough time pondering real-world affairs to not leave time to sort through the irritating intentional ambiguity and obfusication of these ******* authors.


Uh, I want to reply to this, but it's kind of difficult. What would you say to someone who thought music was boring and wanted a summary of what the song was supposed to be about?

Why do you think classical literature is filled with obfuscation? It isn't really 

I don't know why the people in this thread who don't like literature act like those who do find it just as boring and unpleasant as they do and just read it to seem smart. Actually I think there's a proverb about that but I can't remember it.


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## Polednice

Couchie said:


> Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?


No thanks, I don't think I'd come off too well.


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## Polednice

Timotheus said:


> I don't know why the people in this thread who don't like literature act like those who do find it just as boring and unpleasant as they do and just read it to seem smart. Actually I think there's a proverb about that but I can't remember it.


Indeed. It's one thing to say that literature is boring, but the vehemence that some people have said it with seems to me to indicate a profound laziness.


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## science

My own $.02:

- Shakespeare: absolutely amazing genius; to understand him is to love him

- Nietzsche: as much fun to read as to read about, but Kierkegaard is better on both counts

- Thomas Mann: perhaps my favorite novelist, the secular democratic answer to Dostoyevsky

- Orwell's _1984_: politically brilliant, literarily decent

- Tolkien: unsurpassed imagination and influence, but the childish romanticism turns me off; T. H. White didn't have as much imagination, but _The Once and Future King_ was far more mature - and while on the subject of Tolkien, skip Tolkien, go to the source its own self: read Seamus Heaney's translation of _Beowulf_

- Latin American literature: I can only talk about Garcia Marquez, but _Chronicle of a Death Foretold_ is a very, very underrated work, one of the masterpieces of world literature on par with _King Lear_, _Romeo and Juliet_, _The Magic Mountain_, Kafka's _Metamorphosis_, and so on

- Haven't seen enough American literature mentioned, so I want to mention a few flawless American masterpieces: _The Age of Innocence_, _The Sun Also Rises_, _The Great Gatsby_, and _The Catcher in the Rye_. You want something more recent? Maybe Proulx's _The Shipping News_, but I've only read it twice so I can't be sure.


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## Argus

StlukesguildOhio said:


> What ever happened to the days when children were to be "seen and not heard"?


Check out the razor sharp wit on Stlukes. I've never heard that comeback before.



> Well... it has been brought up before... that there is this sort of pathological need by many metal-heads to join classical music forums. It has something to do, I believe, with insecurity and the need to legitimize their adolescent musical tastes by linking them with "serious music". I wonder if bluegrass fans ever join the jazz forums and then start rants about how big of a wus Duke Ellington was vs the Stanley Brothers?


Oh yeah, I must only like metal because you say so.

Have you finished your James Joyce love letters yet?


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## Kopachris

Couchie said:


> Well, I've seen the Les Mis musical so I feel I've got that one covered. I've discovered that it is far more enjoyable and efficient to read about Nietzsche than to read Nietzsche. My opinion on Shakespeare I share with Tolstoy: so overrated it is not only offensive, but actually evil. 1984 I enjoyed, but is it really a work of classical literature?


No. The musical _Les Mis_ is a completely different beast from the book. For the rest, would you believe that some people actually enjoy reading them more than reading about them?


science said:


> My own $.02:
> [...]
> - Tolkien: unsurpassed imagination and influence, but the childish romanticism turns me off; T. H. White didn't have as much imagination, but _The Once and Future King_ was far more mature - and while on the subject of Tolkien, skip Tolkien, go to the source its own self: *read Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf*
> [...]
> - Haven't seen enough American literature mentioned, so I want to mention a few flawless American masterpieces: _The Age of Innocence_, _The Sun Also Rises_, _*The Great Gatsby*_, and _The Catcher in the Rye_. You want something more recent? Maybe Proulx's _The Shipping News_, but I've only read it twice so I can't be sure.


Loved Heaney's translation of _Beowulf_, hated _The Great Gatsby_. Maybe that's only because I skimmed through it, though.


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## Argus

Polednice said:


> Your deformity makes you look more and more like a troll every day. Delightful.


I honestly have never read any of those books (even in school) and I agree entirely with everything Couchie has said in this thread.


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## science

Kopachris said:


> No. The musical _Les Mis_ is a completely different beast from the book. For the rest, would you believe that some people actually enjoy reading them more than reading about them?
> 
> Loved Heaney's translation of _Beowulf_, hated _The Great Gatsby_. Maybe that's only because I skimmed through it, though.


It was only after I'd read _The Great Gatsby_ about five times that I began to realize how good it is. The devil is in the details.


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## science

Argus said:


> I honestly have never read any of those books (even in school) and I agree entirely with everything Couchie has said in this thread.


I haven't read anything Couchie has said in this thread, and I disagree with all of it.


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## Argus

science said:


> I haven't read anything Couchie has said in this thread, and I disagree with all of it.


Question: Do you seriously enjoy reading the kind of books Stlukes listed or do you read them for some kind of intellectual advancement?


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## Aramis

Argus said:


> Question: Do you seriously enjoy reading the kind of books Stlukes listed or do you read them for some kind of intellectual advancement?


Stlukes posted so many titles on his list that it's crazy idea to say "this kind" in reference to them as if they would represent one kind of literature. Unless by "this kind" you mean "regarded" kind of books which are famous and generally considered to be important/valueable.


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## Argus

Aramis said:


> Stlukes posted so many titles on his list that it's crazy idea to say "this kind" in reference to them as if they would represent one kind of literature. Unless by "this kind" you mean "regarded" kind of books which are famous and generally considered to be important/valueable.


Stlukes only listed books that had been inducted into the pantheon of classic literature. For example, I didn't see any Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton. It suggest Leavisism on Stlukes part.


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## Polednice

Argus said:


> I honestly have never read any of those books (even in school) and I agree entirely with everything Couchie has said in this thread.


Oh, I see, so what you're telling me is that, actually, your stated opinion is entirely invalid because you are totally unqualified to respond to Stlukes suggestions. Thanks for clearing that up.


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## Guest

I'm kind of late to the game here, but thought I would add my own list (who doesn't like making lists).
For art, I am admittedly very poorly educated. Like music, I am drawn to what is appealing, and don't care as much for a lot of modern art. Most of my interest falls in the impressionists - I have van Gogh's Starry Night as my computer background. I did take an art appreciation enrichment course during my senior year in high school, and did a report on Goya, and found some of his work appealing.

For literature, I have been an avid reader for most of my life. My first love was the classics, and I can remember reading them as far back as the 6th grade. Then I dipped into popular fiction and a LOT of history and politics. Lately, I have tried to go back and read more classics, as well as some of those "important" works of antiquity and Western Civilization. Here is my list off the top of my head:

The Bible
The Prince - Machiavelli
The Republic - Plato
Faust, Part One - Goethe
A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
David Copperfield - Dickens
Great Expectations - Dickens
Beowulf
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Nibelungenlied
Dracula - Stoker
Frankenstein - Shelley
Ivanhoe - Scott
Journey to the Center of the Earth - Verne
War of the Worlds - Wells
Island of Dr. Moreau - Wells
Kidnapped - Stevenson
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Stevenson
Captain's Courageous - Kipling
Confessions - St. Augustine
Last of the Mohicans - Cooper
Volsungssaga
Antigone - Sophocles
Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
Second Treatise of Government - Locke
Portions of the Bhagavad Ghita and the Koran

I might be leaving some things out.


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## Polednice

DrMike, I'm absolutely loving that Victorian Gothic!


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## Guest

Polednice said:


> DrMike, I'm absolutely loving that Victorian Gothic!


Dracula is a great read - none of the movies have done it justice.


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## graaf

Argus said:


> Question: Do you seriously enjoy reading the kind of books Stlukes listed or do you read them for some kind of intellectual advancement?


Although the question was not aimed at me, it reminded me of short essay on the topic. Here is exceprt:
_
Another way to figure out what you like is to look at what you enjoy as guilty pleasures. Many things people like, especially if they're young and ambitious, they like largely for the feeling of virtue in liking them. 99% of people reading Ulysses are thinking "I'm reading Ulysses" as they do it. A guilty pleasure is at least a pure one. What do you read when you don't feel up to being virtuous? What kind of book do you read and feel sad that there's only half of it left, instead of being impressed that you're half way through? That's what you really like._

whole essay is on: http://www.paulgraham.com/copy.html


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## science

Argus said:


> Question: Do you seriously enjoy reading the kind of books Stlukes listed or do you read them for some kind of intellectual advancement?


Depends.

I recently read _I'm Not Scared_, by an Italian author whose name I've forgotten. However, it was a very good book. Not perfect, but very good. It had all the virtues of popular literature, plus it was a retelling of the story of Jesus saving humanity, dying in our place to satisfy his Father, rescuing us from hell. A whole lot of apparently meaningless details in the story make extra sense in light of this second meaning.

I enjoy that kind of thing.

When there is nothing particularly interesting about the narration, no extended metaphors or allegories, no social or political or religious agenda hidden in the text, no allusions to other great literature, in short when there is essentially nothing to a story but plot, I find that boring. Worse, it can be annoying if the characters are all predictable, if metaphors are mixed consistently, and so on.

I don't want to work any harder on this post than I already have, so let me quote a review I wrote on amazon.com about _Chronicle of a Death Foretold_ and you'll get the idea of what kind of literature I enjoy most:



> Don't even read this unless you've read the book. This review is not intended to help you figure out whether you ought to buy or read the book - of course you should, at least, read it - but to help some readers appreciate it.
> 
> Reviewing the plot: the beautiful Angela Vicario marries the powerful Bayardo San Roman, but on her wedding night she is found not to be a virgin; devastated, Bayardo returns her to her family. She tells her brothers, Pedro and Pablo Vicario, that her "perpetrator" was Santiago Nasar. The brothers, to preserve the family's honor, kill Santiago. At the time of the murder the narrator was sleeping with a prostitute - a prostitute whom Santiago loved. Twenty years later the narrator decides to return to the village and investigate the murder. Memories are faded and confused; people tell the narrator stories that contradict what they'd told an investigator so many years before - but the investigator's report has also been partly lost, damaged in a flood.
> 
> It's already obvious that the fallibility of memory is a central theme, for which the flood damage to the investigator's report is a simple (and perfect) symbol. The narrator even calls the village "forgotten." One level deeper, the fallibility and pseudo-infallibility of texts is being considered as well.
> 
> Another favorite for commentators is social class: Bayardo is able to choose his wife because of his money, and she is unable to reject him because of her poverty; Bayardo unintentionally kills an old widower by offering so much money for the man's beloved home; a poor young woman, Divina Flor, who works for Santiago, "feels herself destined for his furtive bed," as he molests her; and so on. However, the poor get their day: the lowly Vicario brothers kill the rich Bayardo, with the help of Divina Flor, who accidentally (ahem) collaborated by (mistakenly) telling Santiago's mother that he was in the house. In fact he was outside, so when the mother locked the door, she locked him out, putting him at the mercy of the killers.
> 
> Now it is obvious that the unreliability of the reports is another theme. Several characters report not believing each other, and nearly everyone here seemed to mention the inconsistent reports of the weather. But most interestingly to me there is no reason beyond typical readerly gullibility for so many readers to believe what Divina Flor (twenty years afterward) tells the investigating narrator about her mistake. Even if she made an honest mistake about Santiago being in the house, she or her mother could have warned him of the danger earlier in the day when he was eating breakfast, but they both chose not to. She tells the narrator that her mother wanted Santiago dead; but the only reason she can give for failing to warn him was that she was just a scared naive little girl: in other words, a virgin.
> 
> So we have every reason to suspect Divina Flor and her mother of active collaboration in the crime. Of course neither of them admit to it, but there are interesting problems with their testimonies. For instance, Divina says that before he was killed, she'd seen Santiago come in holding something she couldn't see clearly, but looked like a bouquet of roses. After he was repeatedly stabbed by the brothers, Santiago in fact does enter the house, carrying his intestines. Clearly the Divina of twenty years later has confused what she actually did see after the murder with what she claimed to see beforehand. But at the time, what had she seen? Perhaps - nothing?
> 
> Perhaps there are allusions to Oedipus Rex - the repeated reference to birds ~ the sphinx, blindness, foreigners, prophecy, the quest for truth, and as we'll see below, arguably even incest - though none are undeniable. But unlike poor Oedipus, Divina Flor triumphed over her unwanted fate ("Santiago's furtive bed"), even if she really did believe that Santiago was in the house. I'm saddened a little that most readers to not appreciate her triumph, and I'm forced to blame the rather incompetent narrator.
> 
> But is he so incompetent? A question far too few reviewers have asked is who in fact deflowered Angela. The narrator gives us pretty good reasons to believe that it was not Santiago, who seemed completely unaware of the crime and startled by the accusation. One obvious suspect looms large, and I am very disappointed that none of the reviewers here have suggested... obviously... the narrator.
> 
> Of course the narrator reports that (twenty years later) he asked Angela Vicario and she insisted that it was Santiago - calling the narrator "cousin" as she does so. But why trust him? Have we really read Fitzgerald, Kafka, Salinger, Nabokov and so on without learning to suspect the narrator? The narrator who is in some obvious ways the double of Santiago? We'll never know (and too few readers will ask) why the narrator decided to dig up all these memories twenty years after the fact, visiting several people now scattered around the country to get their testimony, and telling us how much work it was to find the investigator's report in the flooded basement of a government office in a distant city. Had he really nothing else to do?
> 
> Many other reviewers do a good job of discussing the significance of gender and especially "machismo." A few mentioned that, as with other GGM stories, there may be allegories or symbols of Colombian politics. But did anyone notice that Angela's birthday is a national holiday, or wonder why? And that her husband, with his melodramatically offended honor, is the son of a great national hero?
> 
> The last theme I'd like to mention is ir/rationality. The story is loaded with inconsistencies, explanations that don't make sense, unreasonable reasons. Santiago's mother can accurately interpret dreams provided she hasn't eaten yet, Santiago never used the back door of his house when he was dressed up, and so on. It is not clear whether the narrator is trying to make sense of such things, or is comfortable with their senselessness - were it clear, it would be less thematic.
> 
> This book deserves several reads because of its complex cleverness. I strongly disagree with reviewers who have called it heartbreaking, harrowing, shocking, brutal, and so on. People who feel that way need to read "Sophie's Choice," "Lolita," "A Tale of Love and Darkness," "In the Forest" and so on. This is not a criticism of the story. Those inaccurate adjectives are supplied by readers created in the image of the original investigator, who, although striving to find a rational explanation for things, merely glosses everything with romantic cliches: "the fatal door" is given as a typical example. The book is immensely clever - more so than most reviewers have appreciated - but rather than tragic (or any other typical romantic aspiration) it is essentially ironic, wry, darkly comic. It seems the final joke, one destined to be poorly appreciated, is on the reader.


_That_ is literature!


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## Webernite

I can't believe classical music fans are accusing classic literature fans of being pretentious.


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## regressivetransphobe

Argus said:


> Question: Do you seriously enjoy reading the kind of books Stlukes listed or do you read them for some kind of intellectual advancement?


Reading for "intellectual advancement" is as empty and artificial as a Nickelback fan buying a Mozart record because he thinks it will make him a genius. The notion that reading has to be a weighty intellectual exercise is one of the reasons kids today list their favorite books as "who reads? lol"


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## Timotheus

graaf said:


> Although the question was not aimed at me, it reminded me of short essay on the topic. Here is exceprt:
> _
> Another way to figure out what you like is to look at what you enjoy as guilty pleasures. Many things people like, especially if they're young and ambitious, they like largely for the feeling of virtue in liking them. 99% of people reading Ulysses are thinking "I'm reading Ulysses" as they do it. A guilty pleasure is at least a pure one. What do you read when you don't feel up to being virtuous? What kind of book do you read and feel sad that there's only half of it left, instead of being impressed that you're half way through? That's what you really like._
> 
> whole essay is on: http://www.paulgraham.com/copy.html


So his advice to people who don't like literature is: "Read _Harry Potter_" :lol:


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## graaf

Timotheus said:


> So his advice to people who don't like literature is: "Read _Harry Potter_" :lol:


Not quite, but I think someone revealed his "guilty pleasure"! 

BTW, it's a good thing to read the whole essay, it's not long at all.


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## Almaviva

Argus said:


> I'm in total agreement.
> 
> I like visual art but only in a superficial 'what a nice thing to look at' way. I don't experience any real emotion from looking at it but I'd miss it if it were gone. That's probably why I mostly have interest in totally abstract work.
> 
> I haven't read any fiction since school and poetry is complete anathema to me. Non-fiction is where its at. I'm sure lots of the big name classic literature is only read because people think it necessary for their intellectual development. Sure, some people will genuinely enjoy reading them, but I reckon a lot of it is read because people think 'it's good for them'.


Sincerely, Argus, a comment like this makes me weep for you. You don't know what you're missing.

If I enjoy reading these books? Wildly. It's pure bliss.
Reading just because I *think* it's good for me?
Buddy, I've been around. I don't do things because of convention. I engage in what gives me pleasure. Life is short.


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## StlukesguildOhio

I say, if you have a profound statement for humanity, communicate it plainly, don't obfuscate it in some novel.

You still don't get it. The art does not lie in making some profound statement about whatever. The art lies in the form... the language or the music or the imagery and colors. It isn't about concisely communicating some idea. What does Mozart's Clarinet Quintet communicate? What does Bach's WTC say about human existence? As some smart *** noted years ago, the "meaning" of most of Shakespeare's sonnets can be reduced to "when I think of you, I feel blue". But the "meaning" isn't what they are about. Literature is often taught this way in grade school because students at that age lack the experience with language, poetic form, archaic vocabulary etc... and need help in grasping what the author is saying... but the "meaning" isn't where the art lies. You don't have an epiphany and go "Oh! I get it." and then never need to return to the work again. That is as true of music as literature. I will not suddenly reach a state when I fully grasp the "meaning" of Don Giovanni and will never need or want to experience it again... because it is the experience, not some simple dictionary definition or Sparks Notes reduction that matters.

Ultimately, the experience of literature and music and art cannot be reduced to a brief outline, a definition, or a simple meaning any more than the experience of sex can be reduced to a a handful of Vaseline and a a porno magazine.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Well, I've seen the Les Mis musical so I feel I've got that one covered.

And I've seen several paintings of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ so I don't need to read it? You have not experiences Les Miserables by attending the musical Les Miz anymore than you have experienced Mahler's First Symphony by reading a critical analysis. They are separate and unique art forms and individual art works.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Wow. Overrating Shakespeare is evil? I can understand mistaken (although I would strongly disagree), but evil? I've never heard that view.

Tolstoy's apprehension concerning Shakespeare was basically the same as Plato's criticism of Homer. It was based on a combination of envy and moral outrage. Both Plato and Tolstoy realized that they could never surpass the work of their great predecessor on aesthetic terms. Homer and Shakespeare were simply the far greater writers. As a result, both Plato and Tolstoy turned to a moral criticism, attempting to establish themselves as great moralists... or even prophets. In both instances, Plato and Tolstoy criticized Homer and Shakespeare for the amorality of their art. Homer's gods were greatly flawed... jealous, vindictive, petty, and lustful... they were a true mirror of humanity. Plato argued that they should have been perfect, ideal beings... rather like the perfect, ideal state he imagined in the Republic that was both unrealistic... and would have been not far from the literary dystopias of Orwell, Huxley, and Yevgeny Zamyatin. By the same token, in Shakespeare there is no moral. He is not a prophet or preacher. Good does not always triumph. Characters who are or do evil can also be seductive, brilliant, and and beguiling. This was an absolute anathema to Tolstoy who believed that art MUST convey a moral. Ultimately, both Tolstoy's and Plato's critiques of their predecessors come off as petty jealousy.


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## mmsbls

Most people here appear to love literature, but certainly there are many (the majority, the vast majority?) who do not. In my experience, people generally fall into two groups - those who like to read fiction and do so often and those who essentially do not read fiction at all. I do not know many in between. 

I would expect that while there are those on TC who do not read fiction that there are very few who do not read much at all.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Argus- I haven't read any fiction since school and poetry is complete anathema to me. Non-fiction is where its at. I'm sure lots of the big name classic literature is only read because people think it necessary for their intellectual development. Sure, some people will genuinely enjoy reading them, but I reckon a lot of it is read because people think 'it's good for them'.

I haven't read a single book in your list. I am not a ponce

I honestly have never read any of those books (even in school) and I agree entirely with everything Couchie has said in this thread.

Question: Do you seriously enjoy reading the kind of books Stlukes listed or do you read them for some kind of intellectual advancement?

Stlukes only listed books that had been inducted into the pantheon of classic literature. For example, I didn't see any Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton. It suggest Leavisism on Stlukes part.

There are topics that I am not overly interested in... mathematics and botany for example... and as such I haven't put forth much effort in exploring these things. On the other hand, I am not stupid enough to go about parading my ignorance before others as if it were a badge of honor. Nobody, not unless they are very well off, builds a library of some 3000+ books in order to impress others. Most of my friends are well read themselves... and there are not many others traipsing through my home on a regular basis that I might impress. I read because I love reading and loved reading since I was a child. The fact that Argus can't even imagine that possibility makes me actually feel sorry for him. I suspect something of an inferiority complex... especially considering the assumption that someone could not possibly read for any reason other that to impress others. (And who started the thread asking others what social class they were?) What circles do you travel in that a feigned machismo and an embrace of ignorance are to be publicly proclaimed as positive attributes, and all those who admit to enjoying art, music, and literature are to be dismissed as "ponces"? I hate to burst the bubble of you illusions but in spite of my "effete" habit of reading and making art, I can also handle my way around power tools, have spent more than my fair share of time engaged in playing sports, I work in some of the roughest urban inner-city neighborhoods in the US, and at 6 ft.+ and 200 lbs.+ I can easily handle myself in a bar fight if needs be.


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## StlukesguildOhio

I've actually been struck by the number of classical music aficionados who are also "well-read" and/or knowledgeable of art. A good majority of the artists that I have known are also well-read and/or fond of classical music (among other genre). I've been struck by the few on internet sites devoted to art or literature who might be thought of as knowledgeable of artistic endeavors outside of their own genre... but quite often those who participate on such social networks tend to be rather young and quite often haven't been exposed to other artistic achievements in any real way. I never had the experience of attending a live opera until I was in college, and my first visit to an art museum where I actually saw examples of great art in person was but a few years earlier.


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## Almaviva

While this is an interesting thread, it has generated some unpleasant exchanges.
I'll close this thread temporarily for repairs and to allow for some time out.


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