Anti-Climacus

LITERARY PREFERENCES IN SEARCH OF A THEORY:

In Russian literature, Dostoevsky and not Tolstoy. Gogol but not Pushkin. Lermontov. The strangeness of Bulgakov.

In French literature: Balzac when I was younger, Zola now (who surprises me by how well he understands the things he hates). Flaubert as writer perhaps more than his works. Rimbaud when I was his age, but not Baudelaire; now, the idea of Mallarme. The first half of The Red and the Black, the first hundred pages of The Charterhouse of Parma (Stendahl was Italian). Liked Notre Dame de Paris well enough, but dislike Victor Hugo.

In German literature, basically none.

In Italian, Dante, though I now think of it as one thousand characters all with the same voice. Not Calvino, though the idea is intriguing.

Milosz in prose but not in poetry, where his energy is too unfocused, 'Campo dei Fiori' aside. Best in his least consequential works.

In Latin America: Borges and Bolaño, though Borges' best ideas are rarely more than fifteen pages long (his best essays no more than five pages) and Bolaño's rarely fewer than one hundred. Not Garcia Marquez, whose politics I am not supposed to like, but also not Cortazar, whose politics I am supposed to like. Vargas Llosa for his ideas, but not his writing. And maybe not for his ideas.

In Britain: little of any use prior to 1800, though: the idea of Tristam Shandy (Elizabeth Taylor boasted of reading it backwards, but the technique has not worked for me), Swift in ideas more than execution. Mansfield Park and Persuasion because they are not 'Jane Austen novels.' Dickens who writes a pleasurable and memorable book which fades into the background. Cakes and Ale and The Burnt-Out Case, but none of the following: G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse, Joseph Conrad, Henry James.

In America: The Blythedale Romance. Huckleberry Finn and "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences" in equal measure. In Our Time and The Sun Also Rises (I could never quite understand why I always felt his work after this to be considerably worse until I learned this is when he converted). The Great Gatsby above all other works, most of Fitzgerald's short stories, all of his essays. Babbit, though it is now the common vocabulary of every high school nonconformist. Franny and Zooey, and "For Esme--With Love and Squalor," where the tragedy and sadness intensify until they somehow transform into hope, which is (I have discovered) exactly how it happens in life.

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Theses already rejected:
* Realism (doesn't work with Bulgakov and Borges, dislike of Baudelaire)
* Realism plus magical realism, for some reason: (don't really like Rushdie all that much, also dislike Garcia Marquez)