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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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100 classics of English Literature ...The Iliad ... A good start! |
Personally, I would probably classify that as a good start with Greek literature. Or as we all know here, Italian literature. But could you provide us with an URL so we can see how effortlessly we beat you?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Grant
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90 - if you count the ones where I've seen the film or TV series. The ones I've actually read add up to a measly 19.
Those who voted for James Joyce are bullshitters.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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In that case I will count those that I've heard of. Which, once I have finished perusing the list, will now be one hundred per cent. Another clear victory for Mick "the City" Harper. I will report back when I have finished the sub-contest, the one about how 'well-read' one is.
On what has come to be known as The Joyce Question, I'll probably put a tick by the short one and a cross next to Ulysses. Unless that's the short one. I will assume reading the Molly Bloom (is it?) soliloquy doesn't count but I am going to tick Great Expectations, if it is on the list, because I was supposed to have read it at school and sort of did.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Twenty-eight. There were a few 'can't remember, probably' and I didn't include Great Expectations in the end. I was surprised at how many 'accessible' books there were and how few of them I had read eg Willy Wonka. Of the rest, half were in the 'made a start with' category and half in the 'you must be joking' category. How you deal with 'I've read plenty of Wyndham but not that particular one', 'mum read it to me' and 'I listened to it in its entirety on the radio' are questions that entrants will have to judge for themselves.
Overall, it was clear the list was compiled by an Eng Lit graduate (and none the worse for that). I would think most well-read people i.e. someone who has spent their life reading books and has an IQ of 120 plus (by no means the same group) would have 'accidentally' read about the same number as me though I'm pretty sure another qualifying condition would be 'over fifty' since nobody younger than that has spent their life reading books, leastways not 'difficult' books.
I noted there was no Harry Potter though presumably because of the 'include one, include them all' factor rather than any sniffiness on the part of the compiler(s). However it was impossible to miss the general air of 'should have' that was ever-present but, I suppose, that is what we mean by a 'canon' anyway. It was definitely a 'good' list.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Aldous Huxley and C S Lewis are on the list and E M Forster's Passage to India certainly should be (not that I've read it). I mention this because of a curious coincidence yesterday. In the morning. I read this on medium
In the afternoon I replied
In 1963 neither C S Lewis nor Aldous Huxley were more than obscure children's and dystopian authors respectively. Their fame came later when fantasy and psychedelic drugs (respectively) became all the rage. Do you remember where you were the first time you discovered your wardrobe was a portal into a magical world and decided to stop taking drugs? |
In the evening I listened to a dialogue (approx) featured in
The Ballard of Syd & Morgan Syd Barrett, recently ex-Pink Floyd, has an imagined encounter with EM Forster in Cambridge, 1968. The two men discover surprising similarities about the sources of creativity. |
Syd Barrett: I think it was the Chronicles of Narnia that set me off originally.
E M Foster: Oh yes, I knew Lewis well. Died in 1963.
Syd Barrett: But later it was psychedelic drugs.
E M Foster: Of course Aldous called them by a different name.
Syd Barrett: You know Aldous Huxley?
E M Forster: Oh yes, gone now. I think that was 1963 as well.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I used to manage an English Lit graduate, whose previous job (unpaid intern) had been to read and summarise classics of English Lit for celebrities, mainly comics turned TV talking heads. It was so they could then present her ideas as their own on a TV countdown programme. You know the type, the "100 best novels ever".
"And at 33, we have a novel that explores themes including Catholicism and nostalgia for a bygone age of English aristocracy, set in a palatial mansion" (dramatic pause)....
Apparently they were unable, or couldn't be bothered, to read the novel for themselves, not even when they were getting paid to present.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This is grotesquely unfair. If your job requires a familiarity with things that are, in essence, infinitely great, what else are you meant to do? Give up the day job, devote your life to learning it all, then re-applying for the job posthumously?
so they could then present her ideas as their own |
They were not 'her ideas', they were her precising other people's ideas in so far as she couldn't have read all the books herself, and are on the jacket blurb even if she had. I've read Brideshead several times -- Waugh is my favourite novelist -- it explores themes including Catholicism and nostalgia for a bygone age of English aristocracy, set in a palatial mansion, in case you haven't.
That's the last intern you're ever going to be allowed to lay your greasy hands on. Fact!
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Mick Harper wrote: |
That's the last intern you're ever going to be allowed to lay your greasy hands on. Fact! |
You have to try, Wiley slyly offered her his copy of " Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula"
"Have you seen the forrest heather, peanut, they say it looks like tufts of giant candyfloss at this time of year, and it smells of Southern Comfort "
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A correspondent points out that the list was not compiled by Eng Lit people but by readers. It amounts to the same thing because in these kinds of exercises people don't send their choices in with reference to, say, 'most enjoyable' but in terms of 'most prestigious' or some similar criterion. This is an important AE point. Like everyone thinking Beowulf, the Iliad, the Bible et al are brilliant, timeless, transcendent etc etc not because they think they are but because they've been told they are. It may be that people actually interpret them this way as they read them. Though of course they may be all these things.
The same person wondered whether Penguin books might get given special treatment but this was an unworthy thought.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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You have two lists of saints, the official list of those saints who are actually canonised. The other is those saints that are not officially canonised, these have been turned down by officialdom despite often being popular, and some feeling that they should officially be declared saints.
If you ask the public for a popular saint, true, they will mostly go for one that has been canonised, and has the approval of officialdom.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It is though a curious distinction given that they are all bogus (in terms of providing miracles). Some actually existed while others did not though that is a qualification the Vatican does not necessarily recognise when formulating their judgements. (Presumably the Orthodox Church has its list of 'officials' too.)
PS The idea of an unpopular saint is maybe worth exploring (though preferably not in this thread where canonical has a different meaning). It sounds a bit of a contradiction in terms but I suppose in an era of 'national' saints, one man's saint is another man's sworn enemy.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Wile E. Coyote wrote: | If you ask the public for a popular saint, true, they will mostly go for one that has been canonised, and has the approval of officialdom. |
If they had a P-p--p-pick A Penguin asking the readers who submitted must-reads to tick the books they've actually read, it could indicate which books on the list are popular reads and which were there for show as it were.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Surely all such lists are for show. Best-seller lists are objective measures of popularity but canonical lists are something different. In fact popularity is something of a contra-indicator. If the great unwashed are reading them they can't be much cop. This was why I was a bit surprised at how many I had read and not one whit abashed at the ones I had not. (Well, a twinge maybe.)
Compare that with an exercise I once did with some classical music buffs. I had set them the task of coming up with the fifty operas that are in the canon. 'In the repertoire', as they call it. Not only did they surprise me by coming to a fairly swift agreement about, maybe, forty-five of them, but they nodded sagely at one another with the few they did disagree about. But here's the thing. Not only are these operas in the canon, they are also the most popular. In fact everyone gets the right hump if an opera company puts on anything that's outside the top, say, hundred. "We're not subsidising you so you can perform Humpernoodle's The Bartered Pig to empty houses. There's a reason it hasn't been performed since 1876, it's a bunch of bollocks."
But there you have another problem. Who decided on the canon and how do they know the Bartered Pig is a turkey if no-one has seen it performed?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I actually managed an Italian probie so slyly (you are probably noticing a pattern) asked her what she thought of Calvino. She looked embarrassed. Not willing to give up, and to stop her blushing, I asked about Sciascia. Nowt. Primo Levi?........
She knew more about English Classics than I ever will.
Sadly we had nothing in common, except ignorance of our own national classics.
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