Is the short story not as prestigous as the novel?

[r4nd0m Variable]

I understand that they are different forms with their own goals and style. However, it seems that we put the novel above the short story. The top 100 book list confirms this bias. I would like to know if a short story could ever be as good as the novel; if not, why?

[ladderandbucket]

I suppose short stories are easier to forget. I don't think they are a lesser form. I would say that the best short stories are ranked alongside the best novels, but maybe the second and third tier short stories are less likely to be remembered.

I agree with JG Ballard, from the introduction to his complete short stories:

"Short stories are the loose change in the treasury of fiction, easily ignored beside the wealth of novels available, an over-valued currency that often turns out to be counterfeit. At its best, in Borges, Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe, the short story is coined from precious metal, a glint of gold that will glow for ever in the deep purse of your imagination."

"Young writers, myself included, have always seen their first novels as a kind of virility test, but so many novels published today would have been better if they had been recast as short stories. Curiously, there are many perfect short stories, but no perfect novels."

[Jackson Richardson]

Did he say which short stories were perfect?

[Dreamwoven]

But is it not so that short stories are fun to write and enjoyable to read? We normally write not in order to win prestige but for the shear joy of it.

[Emil Miller]

Obviously the development of a story in a novel will require a greater input by the writer than that of a short story but they are different disciplines that have one thing in common: imagination.
Most novelists will also write short stories because an idea that comes to them may not support the development needed for a novel but is nevertheless interesting enough to be written down.
Having written in both genres, I have found that the process of writing short stories is not difficult but trying to find acceptable subject matter is.

[ladderandbucket]

Did he say which short stories were perfect?

He did not. I can think of some possible candidates, which would doubtless be contested, but I'm sure I've never read a perfect novel. Novels - especially great ones - are too ambitious to be perfect, and very often their flaws are part of their charm.

[stlukesguild]

Those 100 Greatest Books/100 Books You Must Read lists are largely written by idiots with little real knowledge of literature. Most of the lists are Anglo-American-centric, ignoring all but a few books not originally written in English. Most of the lists center upon novels from the mid-19th century and 20th century. Most of the lists avoid any poetry, drama, short-fiction, essay or non-fiction. J.L. Borges, himself a master of short-fiction, non-fiction, and poetry (but no novels) tackled the question of the merits of the perfect gem-like small poem vs the great sprawling novel. While he preferred the shorter "perfect" work of literature he suggested that a good many writers can achieve that single "perfect" small poem at least once, where a great sprawling novel or epic poem may be found to have flaws... whether we are talking of War & Peace, the Bible, Les Miserables, Don Quixote, Lolita, etc... but ultimately it contained repeated passages of perfection.

Having said that, most poetry or short-stories are part of a collection or body of such: Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Blake's Song's of Innocence and Experience, Borges Ficciones, Donald Barthleme's 40 Stories, Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales, etc... I have no problem with placing the finest short-fiction and poetry... as well as drama and essay/non-fiction on par with the finest novels. The novel is simply the favorite literary form of our time... not always the best.

[Jackson Richardson]

Saki's Sredni Vashtar every time for me.

PS. The Bible is NOT a book. It is an anthology.

[Margerma]

I think they are different genres. Chekhov is famous for his short stories. If a writer is capable to create masterpieces like Chekhov I would say it is prestigious enough:-)

[UlyssesE]

Certainly it is not. Novels win critical acclaim, as well as commercial, and the awards that most seem to matter to authors and readers. Yes, there are awards and acclaim to be found from the occasional short, but they don't sell, and are rarely spoken off around the water cooler.

[Ian Thomson]

Unfortunately the short story is not as prestigious as the novel nor are other forms of literature. I disagree with this and think that people should be more open minded as to what constitutes great literature.

[mortalterror]

Those 100 Greatest Books/100 Books You Must Read lists are largely written by idiots with little real knowledge of literature. Most of the lists are Anglo-American-centric, ignoring all but a few books not originally written in English. Most of the lists center upon novels from the mid-19th century and 20th century. Most of the lists avoid any poetry, drama, short-fiction, essay or non-fiction. J.L. Borges, himself a master of short-fiction, non-fiction, and poetry (but no novels) tackled the question of the merits of the perfect gem-like small poem vs the great sprawling novel. While he preferred the shorter "perfect" work of literature he suggested that a good many writers can achieve that single "perfect" small poem at least once, where a great sprawling novel or epic poem may be found to have flaws... whether we are talking of War & Peace, the Bible, Les Miserables, Don Quixote, Lolita, etc... but ultimately it contained repeated passages of perfection.

Having said that, most poetry or short-stories are part of a collection or body of such: Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Blake's Song's of Innocence and Experience, Borges Ficciones, Donald Barthleme's 40 Stories, Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales, etc... I have no problem with placing the finest short-fiction and poetry... as well as drama and essay/non-fiction on par with the finest novels. The novel is simply the favorite literary form of our time... not always the best.

But the novel does offer greater scope for the artist to explore and develop a complex idea. Short stories work best with short simple ideas. Besides, you yourself have several times suggested people read Philip G. Goulding's book The 50 Greatest Composers and their 1,000 Greatest Works which is the musical equivalent of the literary 100 greatest books you must read list. It's mostly centered around 18th and 19th century Germans the way you accuse those lists of being 19th and 20th century Anglo centric.

[stlukesguild]

Besides, you yourself have several times suggested people read Philip G. Goulding's book The 50 Greatest Composers and their 1,000 Greatest Works which is the musical equivalent of the literary 100 greatest books you must read list. It's mostly centered around 18th and 19th century Germans the way you accuse those lists of being 19th and 20th century Anglo centric.

33 of the 50 recommended composers in Goulding's book are non-Austro-Germanic. Certainly the "Austro-Germanic Hegemony" accounts for the largest portion of the list by any national group... for the simple reason that they account for the greatest body of classical music. We're talking Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Schubert, Handel, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, Biber, etc... What other classical tradition comes even close? The Anglo-American centric nature of most of these literary lists is owed to ignorance. Ignorance of other languages and the achievements of other national traditions and other eras. "The 100 Greatest Books"? And no Homer, no Virgil, no Dante... and quite often no Shakespeare. He lacked to good sense to write novels.

As for the idea that novels allow for the exploration of complex ideas while shorter works of fiction work best with smaller simple ideas... I'll just let that simple idea be.

[mortalterror]

Besides, you yourself have several times suggested people read Philip G. Goulding's book The 50 Greatest Composers and their 1,000 Greatest Works which is the musical equivalent of the literary 100 greatest books you must read list. It's mostly centered around 18th and 19th century Germans the way you accuse those lists of being 19th and 20th century Anglo centric.

33 of the 50 recommended composers in Goulding's book are non-Austro-Germanic. Certainly the "Austro-Germanic Hegemony" accounts for the largest portion of the list by any national group... for the simple reason that they account for the greatest body of classical music. We're talking Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Schubert, Handel, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, Biber, etc... What other classical tradition comes even close? The Anglo-American centric nature of most of these literary lists is owed to ignorance. Ignorance of other languages and the achievements of other national traditions and other eras. "The 100 Greatest Books"? And no Homer, no Virgil, no Dante... and quite often no Shakespeare. He lacked to good sense to write novels.

As for the idea that novels allow for the exploration of complex ideas while shorter works of fiction work best with smaller simple ideas... I'll just let that simple idea be.
1.Bach (Austro German)
2.Mozart (Austro German)
3.Beethoven (A. G.)
4.Wagner (A.G.)
5.Haydn (A.G.)
6.Brahms (A.G.)
7.Schubert (A.G.)
8.Schumann (A.G.)
9.Handel (A.G.)
10.Tchaikovsky (Russian) the first non-German composer on the list.
11.Mendelssohn (A.G.)

You really think he's being unbiased when 10 of the first 11 composers are Germans composing between 1700-1900? I don't see any Asian or Middle Eastern composers. I don't see anybody who didn't compose in the European classical genre either. Sounds like " Ignorance of other languages and the achievements of other national traditions and other eras" to me.

[Dreamwoven]

Unfortunately the short story is not as prestigious as the novel nor are other forms of literature. I disagree with this and think that people should be more open minded as to what constitutes great literature.

I agree.

[stlukesguild]

1.Bach (Austro German)
2.Mozart (Austro German)
3.Beethoven (A. G.)
4.Wagner (A.G.)
5.Haydn (A.G.)
6.Brahms (A.G.)
7.Schubert (A.G.)
8.Schumann (A.G.)
9.Handel (A.G.)
10.Tchaikovsky (Russian) the first non-German composer on the list.
11.Mendelssohn (A.G.)

You really think he's being unbiased when 10 of the first 11 composers are Germans composing between 1700-1900? I don't see any Asian or Middle Eastern composers. I don't see anybody who didn't compose in the European classical genre either. Sounds like " Ignorance of other languages and the achievements of other national traditions and other eras" to me.

I would assume that most understand that Goulding's book deals with the Western Classical tradition... not Chinese or Middle Eastern music... not Jazz or Pop. Which composers from outside the Austro-Germanic Hegemony do you believe are seriously worthy of replacing any on that list? The only two that I see that are truly open to to be challenged are Schumann and Mendelssohn. And who could replace them? Immediately I think of two other Austro-German composers: Mahler and Richard Strauss. Debussy? He might be the composer for whom the strongest case could be made. Dvorak? Verdi? Vivaldi? Puccini? Schoenberg?:lol: Honestly, after the list of the first 10, things get cloudy.

One could possibly make an argument for various Medieval and Renaissance composers... but outside of specialists how many are really qualified to offer a valid opinion? Can you discern Duffay from Des Prez from Tallis from Palestrina? Or Monteverdi from Sigismondo d'India from Adriano Banchieri from Carlo Gesualdo?

[Jackson Richardson]

Verdi, obviously. Then Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. Mozart's three great works are all with Italian words. Handel became a British citizen and wrote scores of operas to Italian words. His oratorios are to English words as well.

[mortalterror]

I would assume that most understand that Goulding's book deals with the Western Classical tradition... not Chinese or Middle Eastern music... not Jazz or Pop.
So then why shouldn't people give the 100 books lists the same latitude? Besides, the title doesn't say that. It says the 50 best period.


Which composers from outside the Austro-Germanic Hegemony do you believe are seriously worthy of replacing any on that list? The only two that I see that are truly open to to be challenged are Schumann and Mendelssohn. And who could replace them? Immediately I think of two other Austro-German composers: Mahler and Richard Strauss. Debussy? He might be the composer for whom the strongest case could be made. Dvorak? Verdi? Vivaldi? Puccini? Schoenberg?:lol: Honestly, after the list of the first 10, things get cloudy.

I could drop Schubert, Brahms, Haydn, Schumann, Handel, and Mendelssohn for Verdi, Monteverdi, Vivaldi, and Rossini whom I like better. I'm not as enamored of the German aesthetic as you are.


One could possibly make an argument for various Medieval and Renaissance composers... but outside of specialists how many are really qualified to offer a valid opinion? Can you discern Duffay from Des Prez from Tallis from Palestrina? Or Monteverdi from Sigismondo d'India from Adriano Banchieri from Carlo Gesualdo?
I don't claim to be an expert. I just claim to notice the bias which is clear. If you don't see it, that's because you've bought into the same aesthetic principles and Goulding's biases are your own.

[Jackson Richardson]

(Making up lists of greatest is a nice parlour game, but not to be taken seriously, partly because individuals differ in their tastes.)

Back to short stories. Try the musical analogy. Schubert's An die Musik (five minutes or so with two performers) against Wagner's Gotterdamerung (five hours or so with a hundred odd performers.)

You may prefer one to another on occasions, but they aren't seriously comparable.

Ditto with short stories against novels.

[JCamilo]

A list has to be biased, anyways, in the case of short stories, just as it is the came of short poems, it is hard to identify which book they belong to. Several of the stories with appear in anthology or the complete works, unless they are frammed like 1001 Nights (which I believe the frame is superior to the content) or Decameron. I am not sure which story of Decameron I would single out just like I am not sure which of stories of Ovid I could single from Metamorphosis.

[easy75]

Maybe it as to do with perceived difficulty. It is hard to credit a great short story the same as a great novel, because the perception is that "It's great and all, but just a short story". How much actual work went into it is irrelevant. In most cases it is true that it couldn't have taken the same amount of time and effort to produce a great short story as it would a great novel. That said, there are some authors that are so masterful at the form that I think they should be grouped with the great writers of their time. Alice Munro leaps to mind. To be honest though, I've read many of her stories and enjoyed them all, but I can't think of the title of a single one... which goes back to the thing about short stories not being very memorable.

[Emil Miller]

Maybe it as to do with perceived difficulty. It is hard to credit a great short story the same as a great novel, because the perception is that "It's great and all, but just a short story". How much actual work went into it is irrelevant. In most cases it is true that it couldn't have taken the same amount of time and effort to produce a great short story as it would a great novel. That said, there are some authors that are so masterful at the form that I think they should be grouped with the great writers of their time. Alice Munro leaps to mind. To be honest though, I've read many of her stories and enjoyed them all, but I can't think of the title of a single one... which goes back to the thing about short stories not being very memorable.

That's a matter of opinion. I can name a half-dozen short stories by W S Maugham as well as all of his novels; the same goes for Guy de Maupassant.
As I have written above, some of the best short stories are as original as their authors' novels but they don't have sufficient content to allow for the same development as a novel because they are intended to encapsulate a theme within a limited number of pages.

[Ian Thomson]

Would you agree that comic books could be considered a serious form of literature and that comic book / graphic novels be given consideration for literary awards?

[stlukesguild]

Originally Posted by stlukesguild- I would assume that most understand that Goulding's book deals with the Western Classical tradition... not Chinese or Middle Eastern music... not Jazz or Pop.

So then why shouldn't people give the 100 books lists the same latitude? Besides, the title doesn't say that. It says the 50 best period.

Actually, the title of the book is "Classical Music; The 50 Greatest Composers and their 1000 Greatest Works". The author also makes it quite clear in his preface that he is not an expert in classical music and so his list is not the result of personal opinion but based upon data. He tallied radio playlists, available recordings, available books and essays in an attempt to discern which composers and which musical works were the most respected among the "experts" in the field. Goulding himself admitted that he had little liking for Telemann or Gluck and would prefer to have included Aaron Copland, but his list was not based upon personal taste.

As for giving those lists of the best books more latitude... how seriously could you take a list of the "greatest works of classical music" that excluded opera and vocal music as a whole, and wholly ignored the achievements of the Russians and French? Too many lists that I have stumbled upon ignored poetry, drama, non-fiction, and almost anything not written in English within the last 150 years. Too many of such lists include far too many recent works that are period pieces at best. A good many such lists include only works published by the publisher of the list (Modern Library, Eaton Press, etc...).

I could drop Schubert, Brahms, Haydn, Schumann, Handel, and Mendelssohn for Verdi, Monteverdi, Vivaldi, and Rossini whom I like better. I'm not as enamored of the German aesthetic as you are.

I'm sorry, but Handel is far greater than Vivaldi... as much as I agree that Vivaldi is underrated... dismissed by those who haven't heard his operas and other vocal works, and his instrumental works beyond the usual concertos. Rossini is largely fluff (William Tell excepted). I like fluff, but I'd take Offenbach before Rossini. A legitimate argument can be made for Monteverdi and Verdi... but certainly not at the expense of Schubert, Brahms, Haydn, or Handel. You may like them. I like Debussy, Ravel, Massenet, and many others... but I suspect that there is a reason that certain composers consistently are consitently ranked among the greatest just as Shakespeare and Homer and Dante are consistently ranked among the greatest Western writers.

[stlukesguild]

A list has to be biased...

Perhaps. But one would do better with your list, or Mortal's, or JBI's, or mine than with many of these thrown together by editorial staff's of publishing firms.

[stlukesguild]

That's a matter of opinion. I can name a half-dozen short stories by W S Maugham as well as all of his novels; the same goes for Guy de Maupassant.
As I have written above, some of the best short stories are as original as their authors' novels but they don't have sufficient content to allow for the same development as a novel because they are intended to encapsulate a theme within a limited number of pages.

I largely agree with Emil. There are indeed short stories by Borges, Hawthorne, Calvino, Landolfi, O'Connor, Gogol, Maupassant, Gautier, etc... that continue to resonate within my memory as much as any novel. The same is true of many short poems by Baudelaire, Whitman, Dickinson, Blake, Shelley, Coleridge, etc...

[stlukesguild]

Would you agree that comic books could be considered a serious form of literature and that comic book / graphic novels be given consideration for literary awards?

I would agree that such is not beyond a possibility, but I'll have to admit that I am not familiar enough with the genre and where I am, I tend to focus more upon the visuals than the narrative. I would also suggest that comic books are a unique genre combining both visuals and text. I don't think one can separate the text from the visuals any more than one can separate the text from the music in a song, the libretto from the music in an opera, or the text from everything else in a film.

[mortalterror]

Actually, the title of the book is "Classical Music; The 50 Greatest Composers and their 1000 Greatest Works".
Well shoot, it looks like you are right.


The author also makes it quite clear in his preface that he is not an expert in classical music and so his list is not the result of personal opinion but based upon data. He tallied radio playlists, available recordings, available books and essays in an attempt to discern which composers and which musical works were the most respected among the "experts" in the field. Goulding himself admitted that he had little liking for Telemann or Gluck and would prefer to have included Aaron Copland, but his list was not based upon personal taste.
So that limits the origin of the list's bias to his method of compiling data, the education of his experts, dilution of opinion in a large sample, and the commercial appeal of various styles and works.


As for giving those lists of the best books more latitude... how seriously could you take a list of the "greatest works of classical music" that excluded opera and vocal music as a whole, and wholly ignored the achievements of the Russians and French? Too many lists that I have stumbled upon ignored poetry, drama, non-fiction, and almost anything not written in English within the last 150 years. Too many of such lists include far too many recent works that are period pieces at best. A good many such lists include only works published by the publisher of the list (Modern Library, Eaton Press, etc...).
Not terribly seriously.


I'm sorry, but Handel is far greater than Vivaldi... as much as I agree that Vivaldi is underrated... dismissed by those who haven't heard his operas and other vocal works, and his instrumental works beyond the usual concertos. Rossini is largely fluff (William Tell excepted). I like fluff, but I'd take Offenbach before Rossini. A legitimate argument can be made for Monteverdi and Verdi... but certainly not at the expense of Schubert, Brahms, Haydn, or Handel. You may like them. I like Debussy, Ravel, Massenet, and many others... but I suspect that there is a reason that certain composers consistently are consitently ranked among the greatest just as Shakespeare and Homer and Dante are consistently ranked among the greatest Western writers.
Or they are being judged by a German aesthetic standard which has current cultural hegemony. It reminds me of how Johann Winklemann's theories were so in vogue for a time, and everything was judged by the standards of Ancient Greece which E.M. Butler referred to as "the tyranny of Greece over Germany." Or the way that France took over for a time, and the English all tried to write like them while observing the classical unities of time and space, and employing rhyming couplets. And I'm reminded of how every work of art since the twentieth century is judged by a standard of "originality" that gained currency in Picasso's time. Remember that there have been times when Shakespeare was not Shakespeare and Dante was not Dante. There was even a long period in western history when Homer was forgotten, like Beowulf.

[mortalterror]

A list has to be biased, anyways, in the case of short stories, just as it is the came of short poems, it is hard to identify which book they belong to. Several of the stories with appear in anthology or the complete works, unless they are framed like 1001 Nights (which I believe the frame is superior to the content) or Decameron. I am not sure which story of Decameron I would single out just like I am not sure which of stories of Ovid I could single from Metamorphosis.
The best story in Ovid's Metamorphoses is probably Book XI, The Quest of Ceyx. For the Decameron I liked the story where Calandrino's friends convince him he's become invisible and then they pelt him with rocks by 'accident': Day 8 story 3.

Would you agree that comic books could be considered a serious form of literature and that comic book / graphic novels be given consideration for literary awards?
They can be, although most of the time they aren't. However, like most genre fiction they have their own awards such as the Eisner Award and the Harvey Awards in America, the Eagle Award in the UK, the Yellow Kid Award at the Lucca Comics festival in Italy, the Alfred Awards at the Angouleme International Comics Festival in France, the Shogakukan manga award in Japan, etc.

A lot of Alan Moore's work like Saga of the Swamp Thing or Miracleman qualifies as good literature, as does Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and Garth Ennis' Preacher.


I largely agree with Emil. There are indeed short stories by Borges, Hawthorne, Calvino, Landolfi, O'Connor, Gogol, Maupassant, Gautier, etc... that continue to resonate within my memory as much as any novel. The same is true of many short poems by Baudelaire, Whitman, Dickinson, Blake, Shelley, Coleridge, etc...
Yes, but that's sort of like appreciating a small detail in a larger painting. The larger work is made up of many such things.

[Methinks]

Would you agree that comic books could be considered a serious form of literature and that comic book / graphic novels be given consideration for literary awards?

Unlikely. I'm sure it is theoretically possible that a comic book could transcend to the level of literature, but I have not witnessed it personally. Even Sandman, thrilling as it was, owed more to its artwork than prose. Feel free, anyone, to prove me wrong. If such a work exists I would love to read it for novelty sake, if nothing else.

[mortalterror]

Unlikely. I'm sure it is theoretically possible that a comic book could transcend to the level of literature, but I have not witnessed it personally. Even Sandman, thrilling as it was, owed more to its artwork than prose. Feel free, anyone, to prove me wrong. If such a work exists I would love to read it for novelty sake, if nothing else.

The Walking Dead has really good writing as evidenced by it's wild popularity and adaptation on AMC. Preacher is even better and is getting an adaptation in either late 2015 or 2016. Fables had a television adaptation in the works and got bounced around from NBC to ABC but it looks dead in the water; so it will be a while before the masses hear about this one.

People said there would never be a good comic book movie and then Christopher Nolan made The Dark Knight, Joss Whedon made Avengers, Sam Mendes made Road to Perdition, and David Cronenberg made A History of Violence. Comic books are just a medium like any other that require a good serious artist to bring out their potential. There's a reason why so many Alan Moore graphic novels have been turned into films like Watchmen. The man knows how to write. Then there's all that Indy stuff that's a little more artsy and gets some hipster cred like Maus, Persepolis, Ghost World, Epileptic, Palestine, etc. They tend to be more serious, lack action, are more naturalistic, and are about regular people, but I don't think they are actually any better. They are just giving people what they already expect from their art. There is a very prudish streak running through our culture that thinks art shouldn't ever be fun.

[easy75]

That's a matter of opinion. I can name a half-dozen short stories by W S Maugham as well as all of his novels; the same goes for Guy de Maupassant.
As I have written above, some of the best short stories are as original as their authors' novels but they don't have sufficient content to allow for the same development as a novel because they are intended to encapsulate a theme within a limited number of pages.

Emil, I was only speaking to the question raised by the OP : Possibilities why the short story isn't as widely esteemed as the novel.
Personally I love short stories, but against the novel they have an uphill battle. From a publishing standpoint, shorts are published either in a collection from one author, or in an anthology from a number of sources. Right from the beginning any individual story has to fight it's way out of the barrel and resonate with the reader. The short story is born in relative obscurity. The publisher, especially in an anthology does not promote any individual story by title. Maybe a selection of authors are mentioned. My point is that it is harder for a short story to win the same acclaim as a novel because of this and also because it just isn't perceived as requiring the same amount of time and effort.
It's like comparing appetizers to main courses. I mean, I love mozzarella sticks, but if I'm really hungry and it comes down to those sticks or a nice juicy medium rib eye steak....... sorry mozzarella. :)

[JCamilo]

Mortal:

The question is rethorical, but sort like, since I always had a liking for Teseus, Creta, Ariadne stories and Pygmallion those are the Metamorphosis stories that I recall best. As Decameron, the one I usually enjoy (at work, not going to google) is about the widow that is mourning her husband in the graveyard and finds a new lover. But often, because I think i found this story in several different places. (The same goes with Canterbury, I recall more one about the brothers (or friends) that kill themselves after meeting the devil and one arturian old version of sir gwaine marriage that others, because i find their versions scattered around).

Anyways, about Comic Books, just like cinema, they aren't just literature and certainly many are good as the best literature, musical, drama, movie, paintings, etc. You mentioned some, but even those comic strips have great work (Calvin, Peanuts, Spirit for example) and the influence on movies is quite old, Alex Raymond is influential to science fiction/horror, perhaps more than guys like Asimov or Clarke. But Avengers is not such good movie. It is popcorn. When it is dropped on the ground, very few will bother to bow down to get it. The second Batman yes, very good movie. But still, the best movie from comic books is Richard Donner Superman. It is no wonder, the two best comic book super heroes (and that have the best writers eventually albeit most of time crap) are those who provided the best adaptation. The original source for Batman and Superman is good. (But it will not be enough for the new movie).

[Emil Miller]

Emil, I was only speaking to the question raised by the OP : Possibilities why the short story isn't as widely esteemed as the novel.
Personally I love short stories, but against the novel they have an uphill battle. From a publishing standpoint, shorts are published either in a collection from one author, or in an anthology from a number of sources. Right from the beginning any individual story has to fight it's way out of the barrel and resonate with the reader. The short story is born in relative obscurity. The publisher, especially in an anthology does not promote any individual story by title. Maybe a selection of authors are mentioned. My point is that it is harder for a short story to win the same acclaim as a novel because of this and also because it just isn't perceived as requiring the same amount of time and effort.
It's like comparing appetizers to main courses. I mean, I love mozzarella sticks, but if I'm really hungry and it comes down to those sticks or a nice juicy medium rib eye steak....... sorry mozzarella. :)

You are right that an individual short story cannot be judged within the same context as a novel and is most likely to be published as part of a collection. However, in cases where the originality of the story is outstanding, it will resonate to a similar degree as a novel.
In the case of the two authors I have mentioned, W S Maugham's short story 'Rain' has been filmed a number of times because it is striking in its portrayal of the weakness and hypocrisy that are part of human nature.
Similarly, Maupassant's short story 'Boule de Suif' has been adapted for the theatre and cinema for much the same reasons.
Both writers produced novels of exceptional quality but were also capable of creating stories that, though smaller in scale, are equally telling in their impact.

[easy75]

You are right that an individual short story cannot be judged within the same context as a novel and is most likely to be published as part of a collection. However, in cases where the originality of the story is outstanding, it will resonate to a similar degree as a novel.
In the case of the two authors I have mentioned, W S Maugham's short story 'Rain' has been filmed a number of times because it is striking in its portrayal of the weakness and hypocrisy that are part of human nature.
Similarly, Maupassant's short story 'Boule de Suif' has been adapted for the theatre and cinema for much the same reasons.
Both writers produced novels of exceptional quality but were also capable of creating stories that, though smaller in scale, are equally telling in their impact.

The connection to film is a good point, and a good measure of a story's resonance, impact, etc. Now that you mention it, I can think of several films that are adapted from short stories. Another way to judge resonance might be literary pop culture references. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly, but what I am thinking of are things like the Looney Tunes caricatures of George and Lennie from Of Mice And Men. Or the phrase "Catch 22", or "All that glitters is not gold".
If short stories could (or have) left a lasting impression like those on the cultural mainstream, maybe someone could view them with the same significance as the long novel. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but it might be fun to see if there are any out there.

[Emil Miller]

The connection to film is a good point, and a good measure of a story's resonance, impact, etc. Now that you mention it, I can think of several films that are adapted from short stories. Another way to judge resonance might be literary pop culture references. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly, but what I am thinking of are things like the Looney Tunes caricatures of George and Lennie from Of Mice And Men. Or the phrase "Catch 22", or "All that glitters is not gold".
If short stories could (or have) left a lasting impression like those on the cultural mainstream, maybe someone could view them with the same significance as the long novel. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but it might be fun to see if there are any out there.

I tend to the view that pop and culture are mutually exclusive. Consider the genre of the novella for example: this form of the long short story or short novel is probably best exemplified in The Great Gatsby in which the author offers the reader a multiplicity of thematic material in less than 150 pp., all encompassed in writing of the highest quality which once again proves that, in the hands of a skilled practitioner, the novel doesn't have to be the first port of call for a reader.

[easy75]

I tend to the view that pop and culture are mutually exclusive. Consider the genre of the novella for example: this form of the long short story or short novel is probably best exemplified in The Great Gatsby in which the author offers the reader a multiplicity of thematic material in less than 150 pp., all encompassed in writing of the highest quality which once again proves that, in the hands of a skilled practitioner, the novel doesn't have to be the first port of call for a reader.

Well played old sport!

Lol, I couldn't resist. :)

[Emil Miller]

Well played old sport!

Lol, I couldn't resist. :)

Touché

[mortalterror]

Mortal:

The question is rethorical, but sort like, since I always had a liking for Teseus, Creta, Ariadne stories and Pygmallion those are the Metamorphosis stories that I recall best. As Decameron, the one I usually enjoy (at work, not going to google) is about the widow that is mourning her husband in the graveyard and finds a new lover. But often, because I think i found this story in several different places. (The same goes with Canterbury, I recall more one about the brothers (or friends) that kill themselves after meeting the devil and one arturian old version of sir gwaine marriage that others, because i find their versions scattered around).
Then they put the corpse of her husband up on the cross. That's one of my favorites too.


Anyways, about Comic Books, just like cinema, they aren't just literature and certainly many are good as the best literature, musical, drama, movie, paintings, etc. You mentioned some, but even those comic strips have great work (Calvin, Peanuts, Spirit for example) and the influence on movies is quite old, Alex Raymond is influential to science fiction/horror, perhaps more than guys like Asimov or Clarke.
Oh sure, comic strips go way back. I often see "Little Nemo" which ran from 1905-1914 cited as an example of an early exemplar of the medium. It's got some pretty nice art, though I've never read the text bubbles to learn the story. Then there's "God's Man" a novel in woodcuts which was published in 1929. That's the modern origins, though I suspect we've had cartoons and caricatures as long as we've had publishing. There were numerous popular chapbooks, woodcuts, broadsides, and pamphlets written for the common people in the Renaissance and late middle ages. Manga in Japan is said to go back to the 12th century, although the modern form dates from after the second world war.


But Avengers is not such good movie. It is popcorn. When it is dropped on the ground, very few will bother to bow down to get it.
It's not a great film, but it is a good one. We shouldn't sneer or turn up our noses just because something is a popcorn movie. There are good popcorn movies and bad popcorn movies. Action movies like Die Hard, The Fugitive, or The Terminator aren't just good action movies, they are good movies period. Not every artistic creation should be about an old married couple coping with Alzheimer's and death. There's space for both, and too often action movies, horror, sci-fi, and comedy get the short end of the critical stick. Right now, one of my favorite authors is George R.R. Martin for his fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, known to most people by it's television adaptation Game of Thrones. Good writing is just good writing, even if it's about dragons, zombies, and medieval warfare. Art doesn't need to be bloodless, anemic, or cerebral to be good. I can't stand those Jane Austen books which are all about negotiating marriages and elaborate courtship rituals in parlours and dining rooms. The Iliad has parts in it where people throw severed heads at each other and hold off armies from the deck of a burning battleship. I could do with more of the latter.


The second Batman yes, very good movie. But still, the best movie from comic books is Richard Donner Superman. It is no wonder, the two best comic book super heroes (and that have the best writers eventually albeit most of time crap) are those who provided the best adaptation. The original source for Batman and Superman is good. (But it will not be enough for the new movie).
You're right. I don't have a lot of confidence in Zack Snyder. He's got a great grasp of the visual part of the medium (300, Watchmen), but I have my reservations about his narrative judgment after Man of Steel and Sucker Punch. Henry Cavill is probably the worst actor cast as Superman yet and I don't think that Ben Afleck can pull off Batman as well as Christian Bale or Michael Keaton did. Batman vs Superman could be as big a bomb as Affleck's 2003 version of Daredevil.

[Dreamwoven]

The connection to film is a good point, and a good measure of a story's resonance, impact, etc. Now that you mention it, I can think of several films that are adapted from short stories. Another way to judge resonance might be literary pop culture references. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly, but what I am thinking of are things like the Looney Tunes caricatures of George and Lennie from Of Mice And Men. Or the phrase "Catch 22", or "All that glitters is not gold".
If short stories could (or have) left a lasting impression like those on the cultural mainstream, maybe someone could view them with the same significance as the long novel. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but it might be fun to see if there are any out there.

Many famous authors put together short stories in the form of published collections. The short stories my or may not have been published previously, perhaps the author judged them unsuitable for a novel length publication. But once authors gain reputation their short stories gain popularity and such collections suddenly become sought after. Sometimes published by the company after the author has died.

[mortalterror]

I tend to the view that pop and culture are mutually exclusive. Consider the genre of the novella for example: this form of the long short story or short novel is probably best exemplified in The Great Gatsby in which the author offers the reader a multiplicity of thematic material in less than 150 pp., all encompassed in writing of the highest quality which once again proves that, in the hands of a skilled practitioner, the novel doesn't have to be the first port of call for a reader.
*Pulls my copy of Gatsby off the shelf* 182 pages. Novels: 40,0000+ words, Novellas: 17,500-40,000 words, Short Stories: -17,500 words. Gatsby is 47,094 words, a short novel, but a novel.

Great Short Stories:
All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury,
The Bad Glazier by Charles Baudelaire,
Ball of Fat by Guy De Maupassant,
To Build a Fire by Jack London,
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe,
Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor,
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry,
A Hanging by George Orwell,
The Hellscreen by Ryunosuke Akutagawa,
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson,
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell,
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad,
Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell,
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemingway,
The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway,
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien,
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Was by William Faulkner,
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Great Novellas
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Heart of a Dog by Mikhael Bulgakov
Lenz by George Buchner
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Bear by William Faulkner
Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
The Dead by James Joyce
I am Legend by Richard Matheson
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Lazarillo de Tormes by Anonymous
Candide by Voltaire
Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot
True Story by Lucian
The True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun
The Scarlet Letter by Nathanael Hawthorne
René by Chateaubriand

Great Novels
Satyricon
Moby Dick
Pere Goriot
Madame Bovary
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Three Musketeers
Les Miserables
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Call of the Wild
Journey to the End of the Night
Mrs. Dalloway
Steppenwolf
The Great Gatsby
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Of Human Bondage
Lolita
1984
The Dwarf
On the Road
The Catcher in the Rye
Slaughterhouse Five
Catch-22
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I'd favor the novella over the short story too.

[ennison]

They do different things. So you would use a different set of judgements. Munro has confined herself to the short story but that seems less confining than liberating in her case.

[JCamilo]

Then they put the corpse of her husband up on the cross. That's one of my favorites too.

Yes, this one.


It's not a great film, but it is a good one. We shouldn't sneer or turn up our noses just because something is a popcorn movie. There are good popcorn movies and bad popcorn movies. Action movies like Die Hard, The Fugitive, or The Terminator aren't just good action movies, they are good movies period. Not every artistic creation should be about an old married couple coping with Alzheimer's and death. There's space for both, and too often action movies, horror, sci-fi, and comedy get the short end of the critical stick.

But I do not sneer at popcorn. I do like everyone else. Grab with the hand more than I can put inside my mouth, so some will always be dropped. And like most people I will rather grab with my hand from the bowl more popcorn than bend down to get those 2 lost in the ground or behind the cushions. Those are popcorn movies for me, enjoyable but not worth the effort because there is more to come. Be it the adventure movies or "movies to have Mery Strepp be nominated an Oscar", "Tarantino jerking off", Star Wars, etc. Those Avengers movie (since they found the formula, they will do it often) will be probally forgotten when the new Avengers movie reboot happens in 10 years. A thousand reboots will not erase the second Nolan's Batman, because that was more than popcorn. It is even better than sliced pizza.


Right now, one of my favorite authors is George R.R. Martin for his fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, known to most people by it's television adaptation Game of Thrones. Good writing is just good writing, even if it's about dragons, zombies, and medieval warfare. Art doesn't need to be bloodless, anemic, or cerebral to be good. I can't stand those Jane Austen books which are all about negotiating marriages and elaborate courtship rituals in parlours and dining rooms. The Iliad has parts in it where people throw severed heads at each other and hold off armies from the deck of a burning battleship. I could do with more of the latter.

Well, the theme is often inferior to the execution. I feel no desire to read Martin, for once, lately I have little or not patience for huge books. I got old probally. I have no problem with bloodfeuds. Shakespeare has it, Homer has it, Ariosto has it, Volsunga Saga is admirable macho man display - even by the woman - with macho talks (things like "drink the poison and let the moustache filter it" at some point), Rolando is a senseless battle story. Also the serie is so bland that it does not make me curious to know anything about story better. I do not mind zombies, witches, dragons, etc. Except zombies which is a more modern thing, those monsters and all are more accepted in classical literature than not, the blame is probally the XIX century realism that turned all those things in faery tales.



You're right. I don't have a lot of confidence in Zack Snyder. He's got a great grasp of the visual part of the medium (300, Watchmen), but I have my reservations about his narrative judgment after Man of Steel and Sucker Punch. Henry Cavill is probably the worst actor cast as Superman yet and I don't think that Ben Afleck can pull off Batman as well as Christian Bale or Michael Keaton did. Batman vs Superman could be as big a bomb as Affleck's 2003 version of Daredevil.

I think Keaton was an awful batman (and I do not swallow that part about him being Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne had no part in either movie - the normal versions of the villains - Jack Naiper or Selina Kyle - had more story and time than Bruce Wayne) but Zack Snyder will win. He is a Comic Book fan and because of that his movies looked like a Comic Book, not a movie. I had the feeling I was seeing a very expensive storyboard in Watchman.

[Ecurb]

I vaguely remember that many 19th century English poets obsessed about writing "major works", by which they meant long poems. I'm not sure, however, that their long poems are now considered any more "major" than their short poems. Maybe they are, and I'm simply expressing my own prejudice in favor of the shorter poems.

From the writers' perspective, of course a long poem is more "major" -- it takes more effort to write it. Also, fashions in literature change. It seems to me (again, vaguely) that the 19th century poets thought long poems "major" because of Homer, Dante, Milton, etc. They aspired to equal the great works of the past. Nonetheless, their shorter poems were often their best (I think).

The novel has been "in fashion" over the past one and a half centuries not only in comparison to short stories, but in comparison to histories, biographies, essays and other forms of literature. While in Jane Austen's day, novels were considered frivolous entertainments compared to poetry or histories or essays, today they are considered to be a bedrock of literature.

Perhaps this is partly due to economic realities: it might be easier to sell a novel than a collection of short stories. When we think of films, for example, most of them are between 1.5 and 3 hours long. I assume there's no specifically artistic reason a 1/2 hour film or a 1 hour film couldn't be as "good" (as stimulating and moving) as a longer movie -- but the public wants to buy what it's used to buying, and would doubtless feel ripped off if paying full price for a 1/2 hour movie.

[Emil Miller]

*Pulls my copy of Gatsby off the shelf* 182 pages.

Leaving out the lengthy introduction, my copy of Gatsby in the Oxford World's Classics edition finishes on page 144. The last sentence being:

'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.'

[mortalterror]

I vaguely remember that many 19th century English poets obsessed about writing "major works", by which they meant long poems. I'm not sure, however, that their long poems are now considered any more "major" than their short poems. Maybe they are, and I'm simply expressing my own prejudice in favor of the shorter poems.

From the writers' perspective, of course a long poem is more "major" -- it takes more effort to write it. Also, fashions in literature change. It seems to me (again, vaguely) that the 19th century poets thought long poems "major" because of Homer, Dante, Milton, etc. They aspired to equal the great works of the past. Nonetheless, their shorter poems were often their best (I think).

Well, Shelley was mostly taught to me with short poems like Ozymandias or Ode to the West Wind, but his longer poems like Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam, and Prometheus Unbound are pretty tight. For my money, the best parts of Keats are the unfinished epics he was working on when he died. Wordsworth was taught to me with short poems like I wandered lonely as a cloud, Tintern Abbey, or London 1812, but his epic The Prelude is often regarded as his masterpiece. Coleridge's best poem is the twenty page Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Goethe is probably known best by his long works such as Faust, or Egmont. Some people think that In Memoriam A.H.H. is Tennyson's best poem though more people are familiar with Ulysses. Blake's best stuff is definitely in works like The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Milton, etc. and not in Songs of Innocence and Experience. Longfellow's best work is in The Song of Hiawatha, Evangeline. The shorter works are probably just better known because they are easier to teach due to brevity of time and simplicity of theme.


The novel has been "in fashion" over the past one and a half centuries not only in comparison to short stories, but in comparison to histories, biographies, essays and other forms of literature. While in Jane Austen's day, novels were considered frivolous entertainments compared to poetry or histories or essays, today they are considered to be a bedrock of literature.

Perhaps this is partly due to economic realities: it might be easier to sell a novel than a collection of short stories. When we think of films, for example, most of them are between 1.5 and 3 hours long. I assume there's no specifically artistic reason a 1/2 hour film or a 1 hour film couldn't be as "good" (as stimulating and moving) as a longer movie -- but the public wants to buy what it's used to buying, and would doubtless feel ripped off if paying full price for a 1/2 hour movie.
Theater's typically bundle short films together to occupy the same time as a feature film would the way that publishers sell groups of short stories in books that would compare to a novel.

I think that there is a reason why a half hour film can't be as good as a longer movie. Critics have been saying it about television for decades, and why for a long time it was an inferior medium to films. You can't say anything meaningful in a seven minute window between commercials. The medium doesn't give time to delve into a really complex thought or develop any artistic idea to it's fullest potential. People speak in sound bites of twenty or thirty seconds. They don't converse. True, some of that is changing, especially with the long format style where themes and ideas can be drawn out and investigated over the course of a whole season but in general television can be pretty vapid.

[Dreamwoven]

I vaguely remember that many 19th century English poets obsessed about writing "major works", by which they meant long poems. I'm not sure, however, that their long poems are now considered any more "major" than their short poems. Maybe they are, and I'm simply expressing my own prejudice in favor of the shorter poems.

From the writers' perspective, of course a long poem is more "major" -- it takes more effort to write it. Also, fashions in literature change. It seems to me (again, vaguely) that the 19th century poets thought long poems "major" because of Homer, Dante, Milton, etc. They aspired to equal the great works of the past. Nonetheless, their shorter poems were often their best (I think).

I would add Byron to that list, especially The Prisoner of Chillon, one of my all-time favourites.

[mortalterror]

I would add Byron to that list, especially The Prisoner of Chillon, one of my all-time favourites.
That reminds me, Byron's Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Victor Hugo's Legend of the Ages, Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Janos Arany's Toldi, Sandor Petofi's Janos Vitez, Lermontov's The Demon, and The City of Dreadful Night by James Thomson.

[ennison]

F this "Must Read" list. Just read.

[Drkshadow03]

The Anglo-American centric nature of most of these literary lists is owed to ignorance. Ignorance of other languages and the achievements of other national traditions and other eras. "The 100 Greatest Books"? And no Homer, no Virgil, no Dante... and quite often no Shakespeare. He lacked to good sense to write novels.


Can you point to a specific list that does this? Most of the time the 100 Greatest Books lists are really just 100 greatest novels list and sometimes 100 greatest 20th century novels mislabeled, which means I see no reason to be annoyed that Homer, Virgil, and Shakespeare are not included.

I recently came across a blog where they decided to create their own master list of Canonical books from 25 different recommended reading lists (https://lettersrepublic.wordpress.com/the-lists-used-to-make-the-master/). They used 12 ALL TIME lists (such as Bloom's Western Canon, 1001 books you must read before you die, St. John's Reading List, etc.) and he also consulted 13 lists of 20th/21st century lists (some specialized like the Nebula and Hugo award for fantasy/sci fi). Now clearly this is still biased towards modern literature to an extent due to more lists covering that period (13) and the all time lists will also included modern works. However, the attempt to create an aggregate like this is interesting.

In order for a book to be included in his aggregate list it had to have made at least 2 lists. Here is the list of books (https://lettersrepublic.wordpress.com/the-list-by-popularity/) broken down by "popularity" or how often it appears on one of the 24 lists. Is it perfect?

For example, Don Quixote is number 1 (appearing on 12 lists), which makes sense. However, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is also tied for number 1 (appearing on 12 list), while Ulysses is lower down (tied for 3rd by appearing on 10 lists). So it's not perfect, but still an interesting attempt to see what books make these lists.

[ennison]

Lists are trivial fun. I guess it is a way of drawing the attention of inexperienced readers to some texts of which they had no knowledge. They prove the tastes of the compilers rather than the relative value of the texts. Clearly there are some writings that have stood the test of time (so far) and appear on multiple lists. If we were entirely honest with ourselves as readers we would not always make lists that included the noble writers of tradition. Some dross is good for the intellectual digestive system. As for Anglo-centrism. Well it's a fair point but if the compilers are English monoglots then the lists will unavoidably give proof of that. By the way, to digress, reading a text in the original language is usually a better experience than reading it in a translation ... but not always.

[CWolfieVan]

Yeah, I enjoy Chekhov page for page more than I enjoy Tolstoy or Dostoyevski, in general. I think Dostoyevski has some incredible scenes, amazingly vivid moments, but I find much of his writing verbose and tiresome when compared to the quality of Chekhov's sentences.
For me personally, as much as I re-read the stories of Joyce, Hemingway, Chekhov, Babel, Lorrie Moore and others, the superior amount of energy and organization that goes into the writing of a great novel (for me, Ulysses or the Magic Mountain or the Sound and the Fury, among others) makes me prefer great novels to great short stories. But sometimes I don't feel like devoting a decade of my life to trying to figure out Finnegan's Wake (which I still can't begin to really digest) and I just want a guaranteed splendid piece of writing, like I've been finding with Isaac Babel or Chekhov lately.

[CWolfieVan]

I love "Best of" Lists. It helps you define what you find effective in a work of Art. Great provokers of discussion. Life is too short to be bored, and when I find a critic I respect (like Harold Bloom or Anthony Lane), I find that they can help me skip out on books/movies I won't enjoy. If I follow the mantra "just read" I end up wading through a hundred books I dislike before I find something I like. It makes me lose my faith in writing.
The Modern Library's list of the top 100 novels of the 20th century seems pretty high-quality to me. Daniel Burt's lists impress me. Harold Bloom's suggestions have been quite useful for me. Not all lists are created equal, but I'm huge believer in the importance of Great Critics, and the Canon.

[CWolfieVan]

Well said, mortalterror.
Just like Beethoven's 9th has the length and range and development and organization to express much more than any minute-long piano piece by Schumann, as much as l love Schumann. Yes, it's subjective to an extent (people have every right to find the 9th boring or repetitive or bombastic). But no short story I've ever read matches the overall power and depth of a timeless novel (for me, Ulysses and the Magic Mountain are two examples).

[Vota]

I think the problem with a lot of the greatest books lists that currently populate the internet are due to the people that make them. I know this is kinda obvious, but many of these people aren't down with the rich heritage of western literature, and prefer more modern work, work which hasn't stood the test of time in comparison to the recognized giants of western literature. Western literature is obviously biased, but I would be hard pressed to believe anyone can come up with a top 100 list of eastern books that compares with a top 100 from the western canon. Don't get me wrong, I cherish several of my books with their eastern origins, but I don't believe the two can be compared. This appears incredibly biased, but western literature has so many heavy weight novelists and poets, from so many different countries.

I went off on a slight tangent there, but my main point with these lists is that the maker's of them do not appreciate this rich western heritage: Homer, Virgil, Dante, Maupassant, Dumas, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Shaw, Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, Rabelais, Cervantes, Dickens, Thoreau, Emerson, Mann, Goethe, Sawyer, Wilde, Plato, Faulkner, Musil, Gogol, Solzhenitsyn, Montaigne, Scott, Plutarch, Austen, Ibsen, Miller, O'Neill, Bronte, Hardy, Joyce, Melville, Balzac, and so many more. Those authors alone represent Greece, Italy, France, Russia, England, Spain, Germany, and America. That's 8 different countries represented, and that's off the top of my head. I specifically did not list certain eastern authors, authors who would appear on any well-read top 100 list, from people that appreciate our classical heritage, as well as authors from other parts of the world that have made huge contributions to literature. You won't find a lot of those names on these current top 100 lists and I suspect we'll continue to see less of them appear as new generations of students read World War Z, rather than War & Peace.

I'd just like to add that I don't buy into modern readers not being able to relate to older books. The great books speak to the human experience which transcends time and culture.

[CWolfieVan]

Vota,
I agree. I'm no doubt biased, being an English major,
but I have yet to read anything from non-Western sources (I only read in English or French translations) that approaches the power and quality of Shakespeare, Joyce, Homer, Dante, Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, Chaucer, and other Western Giants. Although when it comes to religions or wisdom traditions, I find Buddhism makes as much, if not more sense to me than Western religions (though I don't consider myself a Buddhist). But that being said, I don't re-read Eastern religious books (much) for their literary qualities.
But I should definitely read more of the Eastern classics.
If we were going to list the most respected works from the East, from China, India, Japan, Indonesia, and all the others....which ones would make the list? Can anyone help? Mixing in a few religious texts too, we'd have The Tale of Genji (some say the first novel), the Analects, The Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad-Vita, I-Ching, the Dhammapada, Ssu-Ma Chi'en, the works of Kalidasa, the poems of Li Po and Tu Fu, that Chinese novel The Dream of the Red Chamber (has anyone here read it? -- I hear it's the best Chinese novel), the stories of Lu Hsun, some short stories (few of which I've read), and plenty of other stuff I'm forgetting. (I'm looking at the New Lifetime Reading Plan by Clifton Fadiman and John S. Major right now)
Can you or anyone recommend which of these is most worth reading?
I like the poems of Li Po and Tu Fu, I enjoy some of the Dhammapada, but they don't affect me like my favorite works...yet.

[stlukesguild]

Li Po (Li Bai) and Tu Fu (Du Fu) and add Wang Wei. From Persia and the Middle East you should look into Hafez, Saadi, Omar Khayyám, Attar, and most certainly Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and the Arabian Nights, both of which are equal to nearly any work of literature anywhere. From India you should explore the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Then you have Latin-American literature: J.L. Borges, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, and a good many more... equal to nearly any European or American writers of the last 100 years.

[PeachSodaLover]

Li Po (Li Bai) and Tu Fu (Du Fu) and add Wang Wei. From Persia and the Middle East you should look into Hafez, Saadi, Omar Khayyám, Attar, and most certainly Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and the Arabian Nights, both of which are equal to nearly any work of literature anywhere. From India you should explore the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Then you have Latin-American literature: J.L. Borges, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, and a good many more... equal to nearly any European or American writers of the last 100 years.
Absolutely. Li Po, Tu Fu, and Wang Wei are the same as Hafez and those others whose names I happen to forget at the moment. I know you even wrote them, but I tire of repeating each name. Thats clearly because they are the same as each other. I knew they were the same from my studies in school. Ah, school. You never let me down.

[North Star]

Absolutely. Li Po, Tu Fu, and Wang Wei are the same as Hafez and those others whose names I happen to forget at the moment. I know you even wrote them, but I tire of repeating each name. Thats clearly because they are the same as each other. I knew they were the same from my studies in school. Ah, school. You never let me down.
One thing being equal to another doesn't mean that the two are identical.