May 18, 2004
Catching up on my Reading List
I'm actually reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time. Don't blame me. I was raised in a culture where chick books were considered, well, inferior. No Little Women for this Little Man. They were always about a passel of well-to-do sisters looking for a passel of rich husbands. Giggle, and twitter. And didn't you just love the intelligent, witty sister? Oh, split my sides.
I must confess I've missed out on some good literature here, tho. And not just Austen and the Bronte slags. Here is my catch up list. I'm sure, at some point, in some drunken argument, I've not only claimed to have read these books, I've actually deconstructed a few to the occasional unconscious barfly:
Great Expectations: my sisters read it, I didn't realize at 12 it was Dickens, thought it was a chick book. There's other Dickens, too: Bleak House, Little Dorritt, Nicholas Nickleby. Woe is me, to reckon Dickens by Copperfield and Twist. Actually, I didn't. I think Cratchit was a borderline welfare case who couldn't keep his pecker in his pants, and had no gumption, but that's just me. I LOVE Scrooge. A true entrepeneur.
Bartleby the Scrivener: love Melville, never got to this one. Scribbling versus whaling, I suppose.
Madame Bovary: Flaubert. Damn! Top of the list. I understand black stuff came out of her mouth, but only because Faulkner told me. Understand she was a slut.
Remembrance of Things Past: Proust. Sorry. Not only do the experts now claim that is a bullshit translation of the TITLE, they also claim we misunderstood the boy all along. Here's the deal: reading the straighjacket ramblings of a desperate homosexual who wrote this entire trilogy standing on his head in a cork-lined room reeks of an equally desperate need to seem relevant. Fuck Proust.
Iliad, and Odyssey. Never in the original Greek. I'm told it is very powerful. Brad Pitt told me this.
Next: unread poetry. That will fill a few stanzas.