Old Classics or New Literature?

[Aere Perennius]

100 Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, The General in his Labyrinth all by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes, 2666 by Roberto Bolano, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, etc.

Thank you? I didn't need examples but these were all written within 60 years from today...Also The Alchemist is Portuguese, but that's okay. I mean, if you can think of some widely-read Spanish novels before 1950 than thank you, but none of these qualify. It's really a minor point and has nothing to do with this thread, so actually best not to ponder it.

[JCamilo]

I did listed novels in spanish that are widely-read, older than 60 years and I will not go further, because there is more than enough, because as I said ,the members of south americam boom, the magic realism, etc were all older than 60 years...

And no, I didn't asked which English Novel compare to Don Quixote, I questioned the novels in the list, which are, as pointed, not even a good list of english novels (really, no Dickens?). There is not point in the list, the bias is so obvious and unreasonable (there may be reasonable bias, but not one as such as the list) that how it can be used as an argument. That is the point.

[kev67]

There are lots of top ten/hundred lists (see here). I only chose that one because it illustrated a point I was trying to make. I agree that reading a British newspaper's top 100 book list is like reading a list of top 100 footballers of all time (that's soccer players to you). They tend to be rather over-represented with British players, while Italian or Argentine lists would be completely different.

[Aylinn]

I just thought that I may add Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. A spanish writer who was very popular at the beginning of 20th century. I don’t think he is so popular now, but I suppose many people at least heard about The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, because of the adaptation made by Hollywood.

[Aere Perennius]

I did listed novels in spanish that are widely-read, older than 60 years and I will not go further, because there is more than enough, because as I said ,the members of south americam boom, the magic realism, etc were all older than 60 years...

I'll end this and say that I don't consider any of those texts to be widely read (some of them I don't even consider novels), even in Spain, but you're experience may be somehow different. This is a silly point, one that you said yourself didn't matter so let's not continue it.

And no, I didn't asked which English Novel compare to Don Quixote, I questioned the novels in the list, which are, as pointed, not even a good list of english novels (really, no Dickens?). There is not point in the list, the bias is so obvious and unreasonable (there may be reasonable bias, but not one as such as the list) that how it can be used as an argument. That is the point.

I think I get your point: the list leaves out what you think are deserving novels and does not incline towards your own bias, therefore it is there is no point to it. I think that ends the discussion as there is nothing I can really argue against that.

However, I would like to hear your definition of reasonable bias. That sounds interesting.

[JCamilo]

It is a reasonable bias to suppose Brazil have a lot of the best football players ever, considering that it is the most succesfull footballing nation. One could overated the brazilians based on this. However, it was very unreasonable spaniards to claim the same because their amazing succes in the recent years. Of course, the bias towards Dickens being mentioned among 10 best english novelist is quite reasonable, not because it is mine, of course.

It is like, how unreasonable that you are arguing 3 novels from spain are not widely read when they are translated to Brazil for example, going way beyond their fronteirs.

[stlukesguild]

I must agree with JCamilo with regards to the bias I sense from the list:

In a top 100 of great novels of all time published by The Guardian, the top 10 were

Don Quixote
Pilgrim's Progress
Robinson Crusoe
Gulliver's Travels
Tom Jones
Clarissa
Tristram Shandy
Dangerous Liasons
Emma
Frankenstein

Pilgrim's Progress is not exactly a book that gets mentioned or studied much today. The most recent book in the list dates from the Romantic period... nothing from the late 19th century... let alone the 20th century. Don Quixote seems but a nod to the non-English world. Dangerous Liasons? That one I can't figure out for the life of me. Zola, Flaubert, Balzac, Stendhal and Prousr (among others) would have offered a greater example of non-British European literature. But what are we to make of a list of the 10 that places something as esoteric as Thomas Love Peacock's Nightmare Abbey above anything by Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky... any Russian, American, or German writer.

No, there can be no truly representative "Top Ten" list... but certainly almost any semi-literate person can come up with something more balanced with little effort:

1. Don Quixote- Cervantes
2. Madame Bovary- Flaubert
3. War & Peace- Tolstoy
4. The Brothers Karamazov- Dostoevsky
5. In Search of Lost Time- Proust
6. Lawrence Sterne- Tristram Shandy
7. Lolita- Nabokov
8. Moby Dick- Melville
9. Doctor Faustus- Thomas Mann
10. A Tale of Two Cities- Dickens

I suspect most here can do as well.

[JCamilo]

I can see some vallue on Dangerous liaisons, but who with any sanity will pretend hugo, balzac,flaubert sequence has huger impact on the world of novels unlike anything else since rabelais in france. go figures...

[Aere Perennius]

Yeah, nevermind, I'll just let this go—I'll agree to disagree. Checking this thread on this site is becoming a pain. For some reason my browser won't remember my password?

[Marcus1]

Looking at the list of essential 21st century books selected by 'Die Zeit',

2000 Smith, White Teeth
2000 Esterhazy, Celestial Harmonies
2002 Pamuk, Snow
2003 Modiano, Accident Nocturne
2004 Enquist, The Book about Blanche and Marie
2005 Kehlmann, Measuring the World
2005 Nadas, Parallel Stories
2008 Tokarczuk, Bieguni
2008 Tellkamp, The Tower
2009 NDiaye, Three Strong Women

I am quite confident that Nadas's Parallel Stories and A Book of Memories will be canonized. Many have called him the successor of Proust and Musil which certainly indicates that he is a colossal talent. I haven't read the rest on the list yet.

[Marbles]

No, there can be no truly representative "Top Ten" list... but certainly almost any semi-literate person can come up with something more balanced with little effort:

1. Don Quixote- Cervantes
2. Madame Bovary- Flaubert
3. War & Peace- Tolstoy
4. The Brothers Karamazov- Dostoevsky
5. In Search of Lost Time- Proust
6. Lawrence Sterne- Tristram Shandy
7. Lolita- Nabokov
8. Moby Dick- Melville
9. Doctor Faustus- Thomas Mann
10. A Tale of Two Cities- Dickens

A list 10 times better than the one produced by Guardian nincompoops.

[TheFifthElement]

No, there can be no truly representative "Top Ten" list... but certainly almost any semi-literate person can come up with something more balanced with little effort:

1. Don Quixote- Cervantes
2. Madame Bovary- Flaubert
3. War & Peace- Tolstoy
4. The Brothers Karamazov- Dostoevsky
5. In Search of Lost Time- Proust
6. Lawrence Sterne- Tristram Shandy
7. Lolita- Nabokov
8. Moby Dick- Melville
9. Doctor Faustus- Thomas Mann
10. A Tale of Two Cities- Dickens

I suspect most here can do as well.

Yes, a very balanced list of white male writers.

[Paulclem]

Reading living authors is a suckers game. Say you find someone you like. You read their stuff. Then you wait for the next book to come out. And you wait. And you wait. And you wait. Meanwhile, I still have stuff from the middle ages and the Eastern Canon to read.

Why would you limit yourself to one writer? I don't see why you couldn't read a mixture - they are not mutually exclusive. Also if you read modern authors, then you are going to reach a point where you've read all their stuff. I'm waiting for George RR Martin's next instalment, and Philip Kerr's next thriller. I don't limit myself to modern, classic or by genre. Why would you?

[ladderandbucket]

Don Quixote
Pilgrim's Progress
Robinson Crusoe
Gulliver's Travels
Tom Jones
Clarissa
Tristram Shandy
Dangerous Liasons
Emma
Frankenstein

The books in this list you're all slating are not supposed to be the ten best novels. They are listed in order of publication. The full list is here:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/200...atures.fiction

[Pompey Bum]

I know I'm going to regret this, but If my 20-something niece (who loves literature, thank God) were to ask me to name ten novels I found especially worthwhile, I would give her a list that looked something like this:

Anna Karenina
War and Peace
The Brothers Karamazov
The Idiot
Journey to the West
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Dream of the Red Chamber
Don Quixote
Tom Jones
Tristam Shandy

The names appear in no particular order. The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Iliad, and the Odyssey were omitted only because they are not novels. The Golden As s is a sentimental favorite, but it surely belongs in a list of eleven novels I found especially worthwhile.

I have made no attempt at diversity or inclusiveness. There is no need to do so since I am not proposing any kind of canon or standard. As it happens, four of the books are by Russians, three are by Chinese, two are by English, one is by a Spaniard, and none is by a woman. Plenty of novels by women would have been worthy of such a list, but personally I prefer the books I chose. In the case of my niece, I would advise her to get a list of serious novels by woman from someone who knew what she was talking about.

I have also made no concessions to a writer's significance within a given national literature. I love to read Dickens but I have made the unpopular choice of favoring Fielding. For all his genius, I find Dickens tainted by literary association with Richardson's pedantic nonsense, whereas Fielding is the anti-Richardson. Besides, I'm a fool for picaresque novels.

And my apologies to the acolytes of Marquez, Fuentes, Bolano et al., but I really have to hand it to the Don. Because of Cervantes early appearance in the history of the novel, he is innocent of the publisher's mendacious concern for producing a book that could be digested in a few sittings (to followed by the purchase of another). Don Quixote is made to be read over a period of one's life, without concern for how long it takes to finish it (in fact, the longer one reads, the better). The same is true of the Chinese novels, Tom Jones (given Fielding's self-conscious debt to Cervantes), and Tristam Shandy--because how else are you going to read the damn thing? It was also true, for me, of the Russian novels, which I lived as much as read.

No French! No Germans! I haven't read them yet! No Americans! I don't like them enough! One or another can be said of all the other writers I have snubbed. But ten is an arbitrary number--and too small a canon to cause much damage.