I've had a rather naïve perception on why I read books. I've been reading serious literature for a couple years now and am constantly looking for books that are 'classics' and 'beautiful,' ones that are said to change your life.

I am currently reading A Tale of Two Cities and frankly, I am not enjoying it. The plot feels a little stale and the prose is too difficult for me. Despite this, I have enjoyed moments in the novel, specifically a quote on how other people's consciousness is a mystery to us.

Compare this to one of my favourite novels, Tortilla Flat. I can wholeheartedly say that this story was a joy to read despite not being able to tell you about the plot or characters as I read it a while ago. All I can specifically remember is the vague outline of the themes and a quote about a dog which I found funny.

These two books will meet the same fate. Despite the disparity in my enjoyment they will have no objective difference upon reflection. All the Steinbeck has over the Dickens is my subjective feeling that I enjoyed the former more.

The reason I wrote this little thought is to not get too distressed if I'm not enjoying a work. Find those one or two quotes, or that one especially appealing character, and be happy with it, for, in reality, you enjoying it won't mean it has the capability to change your life - a fallacy I keep trying to pretend will manifest. When I read a book that really connects with me, all it really means is that on the off chance I do reflect upon it, I can do so with a smile, which, although worth something, is not going to change my life.

Just thought I'd share and wondering if anyone else feels this on their literature journey.

TLDR:

1. I am enamoured with the idea of books changing my life, or at least, finding a book which will have a significant intellectual influence on me.

2. In reality, I take very little away from books, only the occasional quote or idea. Even if I love the book, the only thing I can say is I have the subjective *feeling* that I enjoyed it. It has no objective superiority over a book I didn't particularly enjoy.

3. I should stop with this fallacy of finding a book that will change my life. It may be true for other people but not for me. Don't think you wasted time by reading something you didn't enjoy.

"A cold pudding of a book" was the description of Finnegans Wake by Vladimir Nabokov. I couldn't help but borrow this quote from him while writing my brief note on this book. Solenoid is a 638 page anti novel by the somewhat cultish/controversial Romanian writer Mircea Cartarescu. In those 638 pages we are exposed to the dreamlike city of Bucharest and it's strange anomalies through the eyes of a nameless narrator who (by his own accounts) is a failed poet and a man who is trying to find a way to transcend his everyday life. It's not everyday when a book is so happily embraced by critics and readers that it gets the title of the greatest novel of 21st century only after 2-3 years of it's publication. It's also not everyday where one has to read about a protagonist getting reincarnated as a mite christ or a man having sex with his girlfriend while floating through air(which is probably a homage to Tarkovsky) and Solenoid is a great work when it comes to it's imagery and fantasy but at the end of the day it fails to become anything beyond an exploration of Kantian Epistemology and existentialism through Fantasy and science fiction which is most interesting when it is quoting other writers. It is derivative, unoriginal and worst of all, unedited. It is a science fiction novel which is written by someone who looks down upon Science fiction, a philosophical novel written by someone who doesn't want his novel to an unapologetic exercise on pure philosophical ideas, a political novel which refuses to indulge in it's politics without restraints. A novel that would appeal to people who haven't read Cartarescu's influences but would come off as an unsuccessful and tiring gibberish to those who have read them. Rather read The Book of Disquiet once more.

Ever since I was in grade school and we were assigned To Kill A Mockingbird I always looked up to Atticus Finch. I now have a new top contender for best fictional role model-someone I could only strive to be like- that is Samuel Hamilton in East Of Eden.

What are your favorite fictional role models?

It's been almost a year since Gabriel García Marquez's En Agosto Nos Vemos, or Until August in English, was published roughly ten years after the author's death. It had been extensively worked on by the writer along with different editors, but was never deemed finished with Gabriel García more or less stating that the book was simply no good. His sons decided to go ahead and publish it anyway after much thought, arguing that they see much literary value in it and that surely the world could only benefit from one last story from one of the 20th century's most remarkable authors.

This publication brought back this controversial practice into my consciousness, but I didn't find many people to talk about it at the time, and having just stumbled upon this subreddit, it feels like the right place for it. What are your thoughts on works being published posthumously, very often against the author's wishes? Does your opinion change depending on the size of the publication, say, the situation described above versus how we've come to enjoy Kafka's writings? Does the —subjective— quality of a literary work matter on whether it was worth being posthumously published?

First thoughts after reading --- This is a book about some insufferably boring and bored people. They talk, there is a big problem, and they talk.

What I get from this book is that these people are too rarified to live. They don't really even seem to eat, or sleep, or even feel their own pain.

So I think Delillo says we are or are becoming Eloi.

This is for people who have already read Never Let Me go. Spoilers Ahead:

Never Let Me Go is still one of my favorite books. I've reread it at least once a year for at least ten years by now. I think and feel that Never Let Me Go is more relavant than ever with our current political climate and perhaps can explain some of the nuance that comes with it.

DONORS ARE OTHERED:
If you feel othered in some way through the society you live in, you perhaps see youself in the donors. Donors are grown through a society that tells them that they are lesser. The Children at Hailsham have this idea indocternated into them from early childhood. They must live by a different standard: eating healtheir and told not to envision their future, like Miss Emily telling the students who talk about becoming actors, that, (paraphrasing), 'They must stop dreaming.' Because their lives are fated to be nothing more than donors. They see how society views them as disguisting, such as Madame, coiling when they surround her and realize they distgust her like spiders. We can see this realized when Ruth sees her other and realizes its probably not her. She says that they come from trash, prostitutes, and such. Eventually when they grow into adults the world crushes them and they lose their spirit, like Ruth and when Kathy becomes a Carer and sees Laura staring out into nothing.

WHY DONT THE DONORS REBEL?

In my view the donors dont rebel because they are trapped/complacent in the system. They have been told not to dream by from an early age because its hopeless--so they have no hope--whole institions are against their spirit--even the ones that seem to care for them. When Tommy and Ruth arrive at Madames house to plead for a defferal, Madame cries for them, calls them "poor creatures" but she has movers coming in an hour, so they must go. There seems to be no one to love them unconditionqally, so there nothing else they can do except scream into a lone wind-swept field and weep.

Why don't the others rebel? Well I think, Ishiguro proposes the question, 'Why don't we rebel?'

HOW ART CAN GIVE US MEANING AND UNDERSTANDING:

For Tommy, art never meant much until he felt that perhaps it could show his soul or inner world. Art then gave Tommy meaning. This of course proved frutless when they realize the deferrals are false.

At the ending of the novel, after everthing she has loved has been taken from her, Kathy looks out at fields covered by a barbed wire fence with little bits of plastic in its spines.

And the book ends...but also where it starts. This is when Kathy begins to write her memories, she writes Never Let Me Go, and so, we: the reader can see their souls, their humanity. Consuming art and making art lets us love, gives us community like the students in Hailsham and sheds the notions that society has indocternated onto us--at leat for a little while.

EXTRA THROUGHTS:

I think this book may explain why Selena Gomez is getting so much hate for her instragram/tik-tok video (I'm not sure because I dont use these plateforms). I think the hate comes from the right is pretty understandable as it stems from fear and hatetred but if you are confused why she is getting hate from the left too, I think its because like Madame, she cares for these people, but like Madame, she also lives a life where, at least in the public's eye, she metaphorically, 'has movers coming in an hour' and so can only give the people othered by society a brief respite before returning to her life.

IS KATHY GOOD OR EVIL?

I think Kathy like us, are nuanced characters. Like Proust said, "“Each one of us is not a single person, but contains many persons who have not all the same moral value” - In Search of Lost Time

Kathy obviously cares for her friends, but is also, in some way, a part of their dismemberment. Even Kathy has trouble facing the truths and thus becomes an unreliable narrator. Perhaps Tommy never loved Kathy in the same way he loved Ruth.

PARALLELS IN THE BOOK:

I think the boat is the hardest metaphor in the book to grasp. I feel like the barbed wire fence during their journey to the boat juxtaposed to the barbed wire fence at the end is showing us that pehaps love and the support from that love is what makes the existential inevibility of being human more bearable. What are some of your takes on the parallels of the book?

ENDING THOUGHTS:

Art is more important than ever. Reveal your souls to the world and keep creating and consuming art.

I'm very scatter brained and tend to jump all over the place. Hopefully this was coherent enough. I'll leave you with a Proust quote that I feel is revelvant to the book and the times.

"I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say. Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it—our life—hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future delays them occasionally. 

But let all this threaten to become impossible forever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah! If only the cataclysm doesn’t happen this time, we won’t miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India. 

The cataclysm doesn’t happen, we don’t do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire. And yet we shouldn’t have needed the cataclysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening. 

for me it is definitely notes from underground for some weird unsettling reason :)

what is that one book you’d do anything to experience it for the first time again?

During my time of studying English in a university setting, we would read a couple of Shakespeare plays, and even before that, my school years were full of reading a few of the classic Greek plays and a couple of plays written in my native language that endured through time as classics.

However, outside of those titles I'm pretty much a rookie when it comes to plays. I know reading them is perhaps not the only way (and probably it's not even a proper one) to experience them.

I'm willing to get into play reading in some way. Most of my reading schedule is filled with books on occultism, astrology, literary fiction, and I used to read fantasy and other speculative fiction from time to time. I also seem to be mostly interested in the anglophone world of writing, which is really a bummer once I think about it as I know it's a very limiting lane to occupy, but I've been getting better at it.

Anyone got some words of advice how to get into plays and dramas? Would love to hear your thoughts on this matter.

On my last re-read of GR, and my only complete sequential “close read” (I had read the novel twice before but in a “let it wash over you” fashion, although I’ve read certain sequences numerous times), I’ve went ahead and did it and pathologized Pynchon himself. Won’t win me points as an academic, which is fine because I’m not an academic.

GR feels to me now less like an indictment on the state of the world re surveillance and war and impending destruction, although it’s also that, but more like a document of a guy going through it. I think the book has as much upsetting porn (I say porn because those sections are written explicitly in a pornographic way) as it does because Pynchon couldn’t find another way to make us feel as viscerally upset as he felt.

I think he saw his future in Slothrop, constantly running and shedding identities, ultimately fading into the unknown, which we know Pynchon did to some extent, moving to evade detection, carefully guarding his address even among colleagues.

The book also seems to constantly plead with us that the paranoia is real and not perceived. What if the paranoia is justified? What if they’re really after you? But also uncertain. Like nervously stating its case.

Ultimately, this book does work - even if my relationship to it is complicated to say the least lol - because Pynchon’s distress - which I feel reads as unchecked severe OCD resulting in spiraling anxiety and paranoia (to be clear this is just a flowery interpretation, I obviously know nothing of the man himself outside of his work and couple of editorials and pieces of correspondence and heresay)- was tapping into real and universal and contemporary existential anxieties. You know, taking inner pain and applying it to something universal and human. The artist thing.

But I don’t know. The book ultimately read to me as a piece of profound upset. Yes it’s incredibly silly and absurd but that’s because of who Pynchon is. And I’m not dismissing the symbolism, meta structure, or anything of that sort. It’s all there and valid. But this last reading felt very personal and emotional to me. Almost as a document to an unraveling mental state.

Separately I have a host of issues with the book as well. Not complaints, exactly, as I don’t think it even makes sense to touch a hair on its head. But personal issues I just have with the book that make my relationship to it complicated in a way that my relationships with my favorite Pynchon books aren’t. But I also appreciate how the book simply works when taken in totality, whether by design, intuition, sheer luck or the likely combination of all three with a heavy emphasis on the design and intuition bit.

1)Osamu Dazai & Yukio Mishima -esque depressing,

2)warm, cozy, feel good slice of life related to coffee shops, bookshops, library and cats

3)Murakamism

I personally don't like the 1 & 3. So I've already read most of the books that fall under category 2. And I feel like most books in that category have almost the same stories. This month I'd read Sounds of Waves & Kitchen and despite them being simple romance I actually liked them alot. It feels really refreshing to read a little bit of drama, romance with happy ending.

I've heard that Japanese literature has far greater books that haven't got any translation (in English) yet.

I had to read the stranger for AP lit and I do not get it at all. I don't understand how it is an existentialist or absurdist masterpiece. How the main character, Meursault, acts just doesn't make any sense to me and it seems like he is more so just depressed than a person who refuses to conform to society's expectations of him. Maybe I just am not an absurdist or I'm just like everyone around Meursault in the book but to me he just seems like a jerk. Either that or an extremely troubled person. I have no idea how I'm supposed to write anything about this book when it just doesn't interest me. I'm wondering what is it I'm missing? How do I have to look at the book to like it. Do I have to believe in the absurdist philosophy or is there anything else that I'm just not seeing? Considering that Albert Camus won a Noble Prize for his work I feel like I should like the book more than I do.

I just finished reading 1984 and the way Winston thought about raping & murdering julia -who has done nothing wrong other than existing- came across as really disgusting. This wasn't even resolved in any meaningful way other than Julia laughing when Winston talked about his fantasies (which i still don't get? just because a person was indoctrinated into loving a government doesn't mean fantasizing about raping and murdering them is a justified response)

The way Winston looked down upon the people who are indoctrinated and the proles (though I'm fine with this as it actually get somewhat resolved later on) is also rather uncomfortable? He comes across as pretentious & creepy, which made it quite hard to empathize with him.

Julia also gave off man writing women vibes.

I know the characters are not the point of 1984, and the worldbuilding is genuinely masterfully done, but I feel like the way Winston was portrayed didn't really add anything to the tension, plot, or message of the novel. It just made me more detached from the way he was thinking & made it extremely hard to relate to or emphasize with him.

I've recently started exploring Haruki Murakami's catalog, as he was one of the rare "popular lit" authors whose works I had yet to get a taste of. I had spent 6 months last year living and working remotely in Tokyo, and thought it'd be a cool idea to immerse myself into the country's most popular living author and read some books that take place around where I was.

Out of curiosity, I decided to check out what impressions people have of him and his books on various subs. I'm finding that he seems to be very polarizing and contentious, and opinions range from people having him as one of their all-time favourite authors to others finding his work to be hacky dreck. The primary complaints of his work are always pretty much the same - the extremely sexist bent and inability to write female characters worth a damn, as well as all his books feeling kind of the same in terms of narrative, style and characters.

Personally, my feelings on Murakami don't extend to either extremes of the spectrum. For reference, I've read 3 and a half books from him so far - have finished Hard-Boiled Wonderland, Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and am currently making my way through Kafka on the Shore. Honestly, I get the criticisms. His female characters are indeed quite lacking, and his treatment of them, their relationship to the protagonists, and sex in general range from head-scratching to downright cringeworthy at times. And yes, all the books do have a very similar style and feel so I understand the critiques of "if you've read one, you've read them all." His prose is fairly simple and unadorned as well and with the exception of a fascinating turn of phrase or paragraph here and there, nothing really to write home about.

In spite of all that, I would say that I'm very much enjoying Murakami's work. I don't think I'd put him in that GOAT territory or anything or even say that he's now one of my favourite authors, but there's just something about his books that really pull me in. An intangible, mysterious dreamlike atmosphere that he creates with his meandering narratives and sprinkling of magical realism that I find very transportive. I think it helps that his protagonists are typically everyman blank slates, so it's easier to immerse yourself into the otherworldly ambiance without a strong personality getting in the way. Strangely enough, despite all the weird shit that pops off in these books, I find them...rather cozy and comfortable? It's like sinking into a favourite chair with a cup of tea with a cold wind howling and rain pouring outside. It's a feeling that I really haven't been able to capture in anything else I've read, which is what keeps me coming back to his work even with how flawed they are.

I think Murakami really has an ability to dial in on capturing abstract feelings like loneliness and the mundane emptiness of contemporary existence - but from a very distinctly adult male perspective. So it could be that factor appealing to me as a man in my 30s. And I wonder if me being in Japan while reading these books plays a part as well. Oftentimes I would spend entire afternoons wandering aimlessly around the alleys and backstreets of Tokyo, sometimes with my wife, sometimes by myself, come across weird and cool stuff, and contemplate about the strangeness of being here and now in Tokyo. So Murakami-coded omg.

I know my analysis of him isn't really very literary and mostly based on just vibes lol...but I would love to hear what others think of him.

I found in an Austrian book from 1946 this writing (the Permit) and wondered what exactly it is, can't find sth on google.

My Idea would be that under military occupation from America they permited a couple of books to be printed

(the book in question is Faust)

I just finished the book and it was the most fulfilling reading experience of my life, and I have many things to say. Sadly I don't know anyone who's read it (even though I am Spanish... which is extra sad), so I hope the internet will indulge me. Thank you!

I have never enjoyed a book on so many different levels. Some things you can find in many other books, such as:

- The humour: funny situations, physical comedy, constant puns, funny ways of speaking (Don Quijote's old-school register, Sancho's proverbs), funny insults...

- The characters. Among other things, the psychological depth of the characters is why people consider this the first modern novel. In my opinion, the book is better enjoyed in small spurts over multiple months, and by the end of the journey Don Quijote and Sancho truly feel like distant friends to me.

- The world-building. It is a very rich universe, with many interesting side characters with stories of their own, poems, plays...

- The writing. I don't think Cervantes' prose is particularly great, but he is a master at crafting dialogues. Don Quijote's monologues in particular are mesmerizing.

Some things are harder to find outside of this book:

- The historic importance. I was constantly in awe at how modern it felt, specially the humour. Also, there weren't really any similar books at the time for Cervantes to work with, which is astonishing.

- The layered narration and meta-fiction. In particular, the way it deals with the fake second part of the book is brilliant. That book appals both Cervantes and Don Quijote (for different but somewhat similar reasons, specially when you read about Cervante's life and struggles), which grounds the message of the book even more to reality and opens up autobiographical interpretations.

- The constant ambiguity. This is my favorite part of the book, it is at the same time optimistic and melancholic, sweet and tragic. Is Sancho stupid? Is Don Quijote mad? The narrator constantly plays to this ambiguity, whenever you think you are onto something there comes a cynical comment to make you doubt. My favorite example is >!Sancho's dignity in the gobernor arc, which makes his bullies look like the fools. The ending is another great example. I feel sad because he rejects his journey, because society (his bullies, the fake second part, and even his friends like Carrasco) end up breaking the man. I also feel happy because he did manage to change the world and elevate the people around him, because Don Quijote is not the man who dies, and because the man who does die earns a 'good' death (for the Christian values of the time). !<

- Its camaleonic nature. A consequence of the previous point and the themes that come from its brilliant premise. The book was misunderstood for more than a century, and it was a different society (the British) who started to untap its potential. Ever since, it appears differently to different cultures at different times. Even at the scale of one person, I know it won't feel the same the next time I read it. I am sure Cervantes wasn't aware of the full depth of the book, for all we know he might have truly just wanted to do a parody of the Chivalry genre, but he probably sensed there was something magical about the story and wrote it in a way that welcomes interpretations.

And some things are very personal and probably won't translate to most readers:

- Emotional connection and national identity. I am from Spain but I live abroad, and I really miss my country. This book truly captures the essence (good and bad) of our society (even today's).

- Linguistic archaeology. Part of the fun was to peek at the language of the time, and see which phrases have disappeared and which still prevail (in part thanks to this book).

Hey friends!!

As of now I have only really delved into modern literature but recently I have become more drawn to literature with more classical tropes.

I decided to get into works by Leo Tolstoy, at the behest of fellow Redditors and my father too... 😂

I'm trying to avoid any Google searches about the novel as I'm not really looking for any spoilers, but I would like some insight into how difficult the storyline is to follow? I looked it up (against my instincts), and it yielded a result saying that there are more than two protagonists, which surprised me as I initially thought the book was about an affair between two individuals in late 19th century Russia.

Just some general info would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!!!

Some might say this critique is legitimate, and that his ability to make well-rounded characters is one of his (few?) weaknesses as a writer.

Others might say the types of stories he tells don’t require the same kind of in-depth characters as other authors’ works, so it’s a misguided critique.

Still, others might say his characters are, in fact, well-rounded, thus the critique is false.

Where do you stand?

I'm planning a visit to the Goethe and Schiller archives in Weimar this summer, most likely in the first two weeks of July, and I discovered that the theme this year is the celebration listed in the title.

It would be really cool to meet up with other literature enthusiasts if you happen to be in Germany in that timeframe.

My goal is to shoot a lot of video and meet as many people as possible who are interested in German literature, especially Faust and Goethe.

I'm also planning on researching ETA Hoffman, Gustav Meyrink, Herman Hesse, Alfred Doblin, and Ernst Junger, and I'd appreciate any recommendations or ideas on how to make the most of this literary pilgrimage.

I’m a little over a third of the way through this novel, and while it’s beautiful and haunting, and I’m sure there’s more to come, I’m struggling a bit with how Tiffany McDaniel approaches writing about her mother. It’s fictional, but it’s still her mother’s life—so how does she balance that? How does she decide what to keep true and what to change?

I don’t mean to be hateful or judgmental at all, but I can’t help but wonder how her mother feels about this. Even if it comes from a place of love, I imagine it would be really hard to see parts of your life turned into fiction, especially when dealing with deeply painful experiences. There’s also the wider conversation about romanticizing or even fetishizing sadness—especially since this book often gets compared to A Little Life.

I just want to understand more about how McDaniel navigates that line between honoring her mother’s story and turning it into a novel. Does she talk about this anywhere?

At the same time, I’m also a little confused—how does an author write a book about their mother but make it fictional? Like, how is she writing about her mother with a sense of empathy while also fictionalizing certain aspects? It’s commendable, but I feel like there’s such a thin line between what’s respectable and what could be downright hurtful.

I don’t know where Tiffany McDaniel separates fiction from fact and how that affects her relationship with her mother, especially since she’s writing from her perspective. And if it is fiction, isn’t that a bit weird in retrospect? I just want to know more. What are your thoughts? Are there any articles where Tiffany discusses this?

In the "One Hundred Years of Solitude" book (a translated version to my mother tongue), >!I am not understanding on what happens to the memories of the people of Macondo after Melquiades gives them the cure for sleeping? Do they recover their memories or start afresh ?!<>!After they wake up from sleep, they seem to return to normal state. !<

Also, what languages do the people of Macondo speak - is it Wayu or Spanish or English ?

In Bleak House, one of Dickens' most famous works, a wealthy estate is tied up in probate court for decades because of the delays of the Court of Chancery. This fictional case, Jarndyce v Jarndyce, took direct inspiration from an active case, Jennens v Jennens, which had dragged on for 55 years at the time of publication. Like the fictional Jarndyce estate, the real-life Jennens estate was devoured by legal costs by the time the true heir was determined in 1915.

Given the ongoing nature of the suit that inspired the novel, was there every any comment or reaction by the litigants to Dickens' work?

I finished this book a couple of weeks ago and I loved it. I thought it was a fantastic novel but it struck me particularly because Huxley wrote on a few subjects that I had been spending time with about and I found his perspectives meaningful and profound. I am wondering if anyone has thoughts on this book or any of his other books (I've read Brave New World, parts of The Perennial Philosophy and Island). I would also LOVE any suggestions for further readings that explore some of these ideas further:

- Ideology: The book was written from 1932 to 1936. Europe was seeing the rise of fascism and the rise of communism and these competing ideologies created an intense ethical/philisophical conversation across the continent. People were really wrestling with these ideas in aa way that cut to the heart of our social dilemas and our responsibilities as active thinkers and participants in the unfolding of the world.

- Art and Aesthetics. With growing prosperity and decreasing religiosity, people were looking for meaning and connection to the divine. Huxley shared perspectives on art as an ideal, a guiding principle, how it serves us, and what are its limitations.

- Mysticism, Optimism, and Nihilism - Aldous Huxley's interests in religion and his involvement in spiritual movements. This book weaves these ideas into the main thesis of the book in which he set compassionate, pacifistic optimism against nihilist/existentialist questions.

I've never met anyone that has read much of Huxley beyond Brave New World so I a am open to any and all perspectives on him and his writing!

I know this is maybe not quite the right place to post this, but I wanted to ask if anyone had read 'The Voyage Home', the latest of the Pat Barker Greek myth books?

I haven't read the Silence of the Girls or the Women of Troy, so I was wondering if I would be totally lost if I read it first, or if it could be read as a standalone piece. I love the Oresteia so this book has really piqued my curiosity.

Level 1:: Roald Dahl
Down in the valley there were three farms. The owners of these farms had done well. They were rich men. They were also nasty men. All three of them were about as nasty and mean as any men you could meet. Their names were Farmer Boggis, Farmer Bunce and Farmer Bean.
Boggis was a chicken farmer. He kept thousands of chickens. He was enormously fat. This was because he ate three boiled chickens smothered with dumplings every day for breakfast, lunch and supper. Bunce was a duck-and-goose farmer. He kept thousands of ducks and geese. He was a kind of pot-bellied dwarf. He was so short his chin would have been under water in the shallow end of any swimming-pool in the world. His food was dough-nuts and goose livers. He mashed the livers into a disgusting paste and then stuffed the paste into the doughnuts. This diet gave him a tummy-ache and a beastly temper. Bean was a turkey-and-apple farmer. He kept thou-sands of turkeys in an orchard full of apple trees. He never ate any food at all. Instead, he drank gallons of strong cider which he made from the apples in his orchard. He was as thin as a pencil and the cleverest of them all.

Level 2:: Ernest Hemingway
The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert. Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.
"Santiago," the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. "I could go with you again. We've made some money. The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him. "No," the old man said. "You're with a lucky boat. Stay with them." "Rut remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks." "I remember," the old man said. "I know you did not leave me because you doubted." "It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him." "I know," the old man said. "It is quite normal." "He hasn't much faith."

Level 3:: Mary Shelley
As the circumstances of his marriage illustrate his character, I cannot refrain from relating them. One of his most intimate friends was a merchant who, from a flourishing state, fell, through numerous mischances, into poverty. This man, whose name was Beaufort, was of a proud and unbending disposition and could not bear to live in poverty and oblivion in the same country where he had formerly been distinguished for his rank and magnificence. Having paid his debts, therefore, in the most honourable manner, he retreated with his daughter to the town of Lucerne, where he lived unknown and in wretchedness. My father loved Beaufort with the truest friendship and was deeply grieved by his retreat in these unfortunate circumstances. He bitterly deplored the false pride which led his friend to a conduct so little worthy of the affection that united them. He lost no time in endeavouring to seek him out, with the hope of persuading him to begin the world again through his credit and assistance.

Level 4:: William Burroughs
The Vigilante copped out as a schizo possession case: "I was standing outside myself trying to stop those hangings with ghost fingers.... I am a ghost wanting what every ghost wants -- a body -- after the Long Time moving through odorless alleys of space where no life is only the colorless no smell of death.... Nobody can breathe and smell it through pink convolutions of gristle laced with crystal snot, time shit and black blood filters of flesh." He stood there in elongated court room shadow, his face torn like a broken film by lusts and hungers of larval stirring in the tentative ectoplasmic flesh of junk kick (ten days on ice at time of the First Hearing) flesh that fades at the first silent touch of junk.

Level 5:: Lawrence Sterne
I think I told you that this good woman was a person of no small note and consequence throughout our whole village and township;—that her fame had spread itself to the very out-edge and circumference of that circle of importance, of which kind every soul living, whether he has a shirt to his back or no,——has one surrounding him;—which said circle, by the way, whenever ’tis said that such a one is of great weight and importance in the world,——I desire may be enlarged or contracted in your worship’s fancy, in a compound ratio of the station, profession, knowledge, abilities, height and depth (measuring both ways) of the personage brought before you.

Level 6:: Christine Brooke-Rose
One day but not yet I might regret the clouding over of Orion whose doublesided sword so blunt so sharp will mar the memory of a menippean love. Soon the term will be over and Ethel Thuban will start up her chemicycle, gleeful at the clouding over and pouncing on my newfound plenitude. She will arrive on her motorbike and park it in the garage yard behind the block and press the bell marked Enketei downstairs and helplessly I shall let her come up.
Well Miss Inkytie she will say you should be apprised of certain facts which, I must warn you, may come as a shock to you so you'd better be relaxed and comfortably seated. Thank you how kind I'll murmur but she'll look around with distaste and criticize any changes she might notice or non-changes despite her insistent recommendations or perhaps praise something insistently as well.

Level 7:: William Gaddis
The Pleiades had set while the Purdue Victory was still at sea, but no one sought them now, that galaxy of suns so far away that our own would rise and set unseen at such a distance: a constellation whose setting has inaugurated celebrations for those lying in graves from Aztec America to Japan, encouraging the Druids to their most solemn mystery of the reconstruction of the world, bringing to Persia the month of Mordad, and the angel of death.
Below, like a constellation whose configured stars only hazard to describe the figure imposed upon them by the tyranny of ancient imagination, where Argo in the southern sky is seen only with an inner eye of memory not one's own, so the ship against the horizon-less sea of night left the lines which articulated its perfection to that same eye, where the most decayed and misused hulk assumed clean lines of grace beyond the disposition of its lights. "Obscure in parts and starless, as from prow / To mast, but other portions blaze with light," the Purdue Victory lay in the waters off Algeciras, and like Argo, who now can tell prow from stern? Vela, the sails? Carina, the keel? where she lies moored to the south celestial pole, and the end of the journey for the Golden Fleece.

Level 8:: Geoffrey Chaucer
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

Level 9:: Gertrude Stein
In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is resting, in feeling anything is mounting, in feeling there is resignation, in feeling there is recognition, in feeling there is recurrence and entirely mistaken there is pinching. All the standards have steamers and all the curtains have bed linen and all the yellow has discrimination and all the circle has circling. This makes sand.
Very well. Certainly the length is thinner and the rest, the round rest has a longer summer. To shine, why not shine, to shine, to station, to enlarge, to hurry the measure all this means nothing if there is singing, if there is singing then there is the resumption.

Level 10: James Joyce
And all the way (a horn!) from fiord to fjell his baywinds' oboboes shall wail him rockbound (hoahoahoah!) in swimswamswum and all the livvylong night, the delldale dalppling night, the night of bluerybells,her flittaflute in tricky trochees (O carina! O carina!) wake him.With her issavan essavans and her patterjackmartins about all them inns and ouses. Tilling a teel of a tum, telling a toll of a teary turty Taubling. Grace before Glutton. For what we are, gifs à gross if we are, about to believe. So pool the begg and pass the kish for crawsake. Omen. So sigh us. Grampupus is fallen down but grinny sprids the boord. Whase on the joint of a desh? Finfoefom the Fush. Whase be his baken head? A loaf of Singpantry's Kennedy bread. And whase hitched to the hop in his tayle? A glass of Danu U'Dunnell's foamous olde Dobbelin ayle. But, lo, as you would quaffoff his fraudstuff and sink teeth through that pyth of a flowerwhite bodey behold of him as behemoth for he is noewhemoe. Finiche! Only a fadograph of a yestern scene. Almost rubicund Salmosalar, ancient fromout the ages of the Agapemonides, he is smolten in our mist, woebecanned and packt away. So that meal's dead off for summan, schlook, schlice and goodridhirring.

I finally read Crime and Punishment (revised Garnett translation). I am familiar with the story, mainly by watching movies. It must be one of the most influential books on cinema, especially film noir. Bresson's Pickpocket is a fairly close adaptation, and that was enormously influential for Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver. Woody Allen is obsessed with the story (see Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point).

I think the virtue of the novel is its depiction of extreme mental states: unrelenting poverty, insanity, alcoholism, murder, suicide, the irrational power of faith. I especially like how Raskolnikov switches between extreme arrogance and disdain for mankind to extreme generosity at the drop of a hat: giving away all his money, proposing marriage to his landlady's sickly daughter. This switching back and forth between extreme opposites feels very compelling, and reminds me of, for example Holden Caulfield's alternating self-regard and self-hatred.

However, the book itself is just so sloppily constructed. Up until the murder it's fairly compelling. We have Raskolnikov, isolated, his mind turning in on itself, feeling as though the world is sending him signs. But after the murder, the book consists of an endless series of brain-dump conversations. This is the most isolated guy, but all of a sudden he has one guest leaving his apartment as another guest arrives, allowing the endless conversations to continue. The worst one I remember is him coming home and finding Porfiry in his room. Porfiry then begins speaking for two pages straight. Good god. I think a better writer would have his character say far fewer words, and psychologize them in his narration. This is what Tolstoy would do, for example. But Dostoyevsky has his characters psychologize themselves out loud. It's not that I object to the book's psychological insight, it's that the method of conveying the insight, the writing, is so unbelievably sloppy. The book is absolutely rife with absurd coincidences, as if Dostoyevsky couldn't be bothered to spend a few minutes thinking about a plot that would bring these characters together in a reasonable way.

Upon finishing, it struck me that one reason the book may be so influential is that people read it, are deeply impressed by its insight, but think "I could convey my insights far better than Dostoyevsky."

Knut Hamsun's Hunger is clearly inspired by Crime and Punishment, but completely avoids its sloppy excesses. My favorite contemporary, Dostoyevskian writer is the Norwegian Karin Fossum. She writes about insanity, murder, isolation, with simple, clear, quiet, language. Her books penetrate without seeming to try. I think she's generally marketed as a genre writer, which is unfortunate.