When we lived in Paris we had a little B&W TV that spoke only French, and the interwebs were just a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee's eye, so we would take the metro to the American Library and load up on books and, y'know, read them. One thing I did was try to fill in some canonical gaps by catching up on authors I'd never quite gotten around to reading. Graham Greene and Mario Vargas Llosa were two of those I enjoyed. Another was Jane Austen, who really could tell a story. The social attitudes seem outdated, except when they don't, but a lot of the tales feel surprisingly modern (I thought the same thing when rereading the first chapter of Anna Karenina at lunch last week). Also, the way her heroines measure the economic value of prospective mates by annual income instead of net worth is pretty astute.

Comments

[justcorbly]

May be time for me to reread some Graham Greene. Novels tend to change if you leave them alone for a few decades.

I've never tried any Austen, frightened away, I suspect, by TV adaptations. I did try Eliot's Middlemarch a few months ago. Stopped after about 200 pages: Little people in little towns doing little things.

I think I can recognize good writing when I read it, and Eliot sure could write. But, serialization was the curse of Victorian writers.

[Cunningham]

The central message of "great" literature: Cash flow! (Obviously).

[Ashley Bryant]

During Hemingway’s Paris expatriate days, he enjoyed reading Russian novels. According to him the translator was crucial to capturing the true essence of the book. His favorite translator was Constance Garnett.
Regarding how historical and modern attitudes from a gender perspective about certain issues have not changed. Check out Ms Garnett’s translation of “Anna Karenina.” In part one, chapter ii, read the first paragraph.

[Ed Cone]

Here's a link to that translation, and an article about Garnett and translation.

A pithy and sexist aphorism on the topic: Translations are like mistresses, they can be either beautiful or faithful.

Also, I meant to come back to this thread to mention another writer I enjoyed during those great reading days: Paul Bowles.