Steven Moore's The Novel: An Alternative History: 1600-1800 is due out soon -- the second volume in his novel survey, after The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600 (which I continue to enjoy, even though I haven't managed to put up a review yet -- and I'm very much looking forward to seeing this second volume, too); see the Bloomsbury publicity page, or pre-order you copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
Promoting it, Moore now suggests 10 Forgotten Classics You Need To Read at The Huffington Post. While I pretty much head in the other direction as soon as anyone tells me I "need" to read something, I'm always eager to learn about forgotten classics -- and Moore's list half delivers.
Still, quite a bit here is not forgotten: I'd suggest Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther is, in fact, one of the best-known 18th century novels around (even in English -- an Amazon search for the title (in quotation marks) turns up 1326 results ...), and while Cao Xueqin's The Story of the Stone (presented here under one of its alternate title, A Dream of Red Mansions) may not be quite so well-known in English, it is near -- if not at -- the top of the Chinese classics hierarchy. (Moore suggests The Story of the Stone is: "Recommended if you like Proust", but that seems based largely on its length (it's a very different kind of narrative, in almost every respect); I'd suggest the only similarity lies in their positions as (world) literary standards of the highest order.) And, seriously -- Tristram Shandy ? "Not exactly forgotten", Moore admits (though I don't think the Winterbottom adaptation (surely already far more forgotten) has anything to do with that), and yet he includes it .....
(As far as the Grimmelshausen goes -- well, okay, that's a German thing; still, you'd figure the Huffington folk could have dug up an English-language cover; there have been several translations, most notably Mike Mitchell's, published by Dedalus; see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.)
Still, an interesting glimpse -- but I'm looking forward to the whole, big fat book and all the obscurer novels Moore covers .....
Promoting it, Moore now suggests 10 Forgotten Classics You Need To Read at The Huffington Post. While I pretty much head in the other direction as soon as anyone tells me I "need" to read something, I'm always eager to learn about forgotten classics -- and Moore's list half delivers.
Still, quite a bit here is not forgotten: I'd suggest Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther is, in fact, one of the best-known 18th century novels around (even in English -- an Amazon search for the title (in quotation marks) turns up 1326 results ...), and while Cao Xueqin's The Story of the Stone (presented here under one of its alternate title, A Dream of Red Mansions) may not be quite so well-known in English, it is near -- if not at -- the top of the Chinese classics hierarchy. (Moore suggests The Story of the Stone is: "Recommended if you like Proust", but that seems based largely on its length (it's a very different kind of narrative, in almost every respect); I'd suggest the only similarity lies in their positions as (world) literary standards of the highest order.) And, seriously -- Tristram Shandy ? "Not exactly forgotten", Moore admits (though I don't think the Winterbottom adaptation (surely already far more forgotten) has anything to do with that), and yet he includes it .....
(As far as the Grimmelshausen goes -- well, okay, that's a German thing; still, you'd figure the Huffington folk could have dug up an English-language cover; there have been several translations, most notably Mike Mitchell's, published by Dedalus; see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.)
Still, an interesting glimpse -- but I'm looking forward to the whole, big fat book and all the obscurer novels Moore covers .....