Great list! Quick reply on footnote 9. On Faulkner, I think S&F has the virtue of featuring everything he can do technically and all of his themes in a single book, so it's a good place to start, despite its difficulties, and has that Greek/Shakespearean tragedy and Bronte-sisters Gothic quality that connects it to everything outside itself in the canon; in that way, it is my favorite of what I've read by him, and was his own fave. And on Freud, I think CivDis is him at his most humanistic-essayistic, without too much jargon or theory, more philosophy than psychology, therefore a Great Book.
That totally makes sense. I've read his short stories and Light in August (Southern Gothic), and As I Lay Dying (Southern Gothic Modernist). I'm not worried about Sound and Fury being too difficult or unpleasant, I just never happened to read it, but if you think it's the best book of 1929, I'll move it up the queue. I like 1929 a lot---A Room of One's Own would definitely sneak into other years if I didn't like Woolf so much otherwise, Countee Cullen and Louise Bogan have some good poems, and while both of my picks for the year are short and accessible, I think they also have plenty of depth (I haven't read Nella Larsen's Quicksand, but I've also heard good things about it and simply didn't have room for it in 1928). I didn't really consider Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's Some Prefer Nettles in that spot since I haven't read any of his work, but it sounds like it could also be a [secret] candidate for 1929.
As far as CivDis, I totally agree---it's not at all what anyone means when someone says something is "Freudian," and more than that, he manages to act as a Cassandra for the coming apocalypse in a way that augurs the shift from a hopeful, constructive, energetic Modernism to a necessarily darker and more destructive trend in literature (probably best bridged by Camus, who we both had on our lists in 1942).
A Room of One's Own and Quicksand would definitely make my list. I think Quicksand is essentially just as good as all the other great non-Faulkner modernist-era American novels (Cather, Hemingway, Fitzgerald), stipulating that Faulkner is probably in a different category. If you love Wharton, you'll love Quicksand. (Though Larsen said she was inspired by Stein's Three Lives! Which you won't really be able to detect, stylistically, despite the subject matter it shares with "Melanctha.") Back to Faulkner, S&F also contains every Faulkner difficulty level, as it progresses on a steady gradient from its totally incomprehensible beginning to its perfectly clear ending. Absalom, Absalom! is Faulkner's technical achievement and political testament, but S&F, along with Light in August, have more heart. I do like As I Lay Dying, but its darkly farcical quality, for all that it's a tour de force, makes it seem slighter than these. Re: Tanizaki, I've only read In Praise of Shadows and his scandalous novel Naomi (sort of a proto-Lolita satirizing westernization). They say his best is the long saga-like Makioka Sisters, but it seems intimidating!
Wonderful. Personally I don't understand FOMOOMAL as a sentiment (I possess, instead, fear of being made to make a list), but I'm glad everybody else is feeling it, because each list has provided juicy new things for my own TBR.
Thanks! Yeah, I kind of want this list to settle my TBR for a while: I’ll just read a book in red and also read a Great Book from before the 20th century at the same time, and avoid reading anything new.
Great list! Quick reply on footnote 9. On Faulkner, I think S&F has the virtue of featuring everything he can do technically and all of his themes in a single book, so it's a good place to start, despite its difficulties, and has that Greek/Shakespearean tragedy and Bronte-sisters Gothic quality that connects it to everything outside itself in the canon; in that way, it is my favorite of what I've read by him, and was his own fave. And on Freud, I think CivDis is him at his most humanistic-essayistic, without too much jargon or theory, more philosophy than psychology, therefore a Great Book.
That totally makes sense. I've read his short stories and Light in August (Southern Gothic), and As I Lay Dying (Southern Gothic Modernist). I'm not worried about Sound and Fury being too difficult or unpleasant, I just never happened to read it, but if you think it's the best book of 1929, I'll move it up the queue. I like 1929 a lot---A Room of One's Own would definitely sneak into other years if I didn't like Woolf so much otherwise, Countee Cullen and Louise Bogan have some good poems, and while both of my picks for the year are short and accessible, I think they also have plenty of depth (I haven't read Nella Larsen's Quicksand, but I've also heard good things about it and simply didn't have room for it in 1928). I didn't really consider Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's Some Prefer Nettles in that spot since I haven't read any of his work, but it sounds like it could also be a [secret] candidate for 1929.
As far as CivDis, I totally agree---it's not at all what anyone means when someone says something is "Freudian," and more than that, he manages to act as a Cassandra for the coming apocalypse in a way that augurs the shift from a hopeful, constructive, energetic Modernism to a necessarily darker and more destructive trend in literature (probably best bridged by Camus, who we both had on our lists in 1942).
A Room of One's Own and Quicksand would definitely make my list. I think Quicksand is essentially just as good as all the other great non-Faulkner modernist-era American novels (Cather, Hemingway, Fitzgerald), stipulating that Faulkner is probably in a different category. If you love Wharton, you'll love Quicksand. (Though Larsen said she was inspired by Stein's Three Lives! Which you won't really be able to detect, stylistically, despite the subject matter it shares with "Melanctha.") Back to Faulkner, S&F also contains every Faulkner difficulty level, as it progresses on a steady gradient from its totally incomprehensible beginning to its perfectly clear ending. Absalom, Absalom! is Faulkner's technical achievement and political testament, but S&F, along with Light in August, have more heart. I do like As I Lay Dying, but its darkly farcical quality, for all that it's a tour de force, makes it seem slighter than these. Re: Tanizaki, I've only read In Praise of Shadows and his scandalous novel Naomi (sort of a proto-Lolita satirizing westernization). They say his best is the long saga-like Makioka Sisters, but it seems intimidating!
Wonderful. Personally I don't understand FOMOOMAL as a sentiment (I possess, instead, fear of being made to make a list), but I'm glad everybody else is feeling it, because each list has provided juicy new things for my own TBR.
Thanks! Yeah, I kind of want this list to settle my TBR for a while: I’ll just read a book in red and also read a Great Book from before the 20th century at the same time, and avoid reading anything new.