Critic's Shelf of Shame

[Otto Sell]

Works fine for me, at least.  Keep trying, Otto.  But
Garry Wills isn't really quite playing in the spirit
of teh game, is he?  And too bad they weren't able to
ask Louis Althusser, now THERE was an interesting
admission of omission.  But here's the gist of it ...

  "In his novel Changing Places, David Lodge describes
a literary parlor game called "Humiliations" in which
                                       participants
confess, one by one, titles of books they've never
read. The genius of the game is that each player gains
a point for each fellow player who's read the book-in
other words, the more accomplished the reader, the
lower his or her score. Lodge's winner is an
American"--of course ...--"professor who, in a rousing
display of one-downmanship, finally announces that
he's never read Hamlet.
   "What would happen if book critics and literary
journalists played a round of Lodge's game?"

This is what we find out.  My guess is that I'd be a
contender, at least.  Only recently (past few years)
read Moby-Dick (and I preferred the whaling stuff),
have never read War and Peace, moved my eyes over the
various pages of Finnegans Wake, largely in sequence,
at least, a la adding vermouth to an exceedingly dry
martini.  And so forth ...

> >
> > Even the hot-shot critics haven't gotten around to
> reading some of the
> > literary canons:
> >
> >
>
http://slate.msn.com/culturebox/entries/01-03-06_101969.asp
> >
> > but apparently they've all read Gravity's Rainbow
> :-)
> >
> > H Musik
>
>

Now it works. Blame it on msn or my old system. Gonna buy an 800 mhz machine
next week.

But anyway - great game. I liked this one:

"The Man Without Qualities, by Robert Musil. If you're not going to read one
allegedly great modern novel, this is the one not to read, it seems to me.
It looks great on the shelf, though, especially in its latest multi-volume
trade paperback edition. My basic problem: If the man has no qualities, why
does it take so long to tell his story? No literary professional I've ever
met has answered this question to my satisfaction."

The book has been given to me by a long-time friend, actually the guy who
drives my cab on the weekend at daytime. He had got it from his father (a
veterinarian who later had studied psychology and became a successful
shrink, using the doctor title of his former profession for his later,
charging the people 250 an hour). My friend, a ZZ-Top-looking ex-biker an'
beer-loving fellow, has never read it, never reads any literature at all.
Just gave it me because I'm the one to collect printed paper ...
I made several attempts but never got past the first, let's say 200 pages of
that book, but will keep on trying.

And shame on me, after trying "The Magic Mountain," "Felix Krull" and "Lotte
in Weimar" I've decided not to read Thomas Mann anymore.

One I'd like to read but didn't get to yet is "Samuel Pepys Diary" which is
available at
http://www.bibliomania.com/NonFiction/Pepys/Diary/index.html

Otto