any of you guys or gals literature professors or majors, or perhaps just knowlegable on world literature in general? id like someone to dicuss my readings with…
Re: literature
Signs point to Yes…
well, my email is trip_glazer@hotmail.com and my aim is muniracer.
here is some of the stuff ive read in the last couple months:
heart of darkness (conrad)
war and peace (tolstoy)
the duel (chekhov)
taras bulba, inspector general, etc (gogol)
dead souls (gogol)
idiot, bros. karamazov, crime and punishment (dostoevsky)
uncle vanya, seagull (chekhov)
dolls house, hedda gabbler, etc. (ibsen)
eugene onegin, short stories (pushkin)
etc.
as you can see, ive been in a russian mood lately…
maybe i will hear from you.
-trip
Have you read “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov? Basically an anti-Stalinist treatise disguised as fantasy to try to fly under the censorship radar, which I believe it failed to do. Great reading in my view. No trees died in vain.
I checked it out from the library about a week ago but I havent started it! I’ll tell you what i think when im finished.
Quite a Russian trip.
I’ve been on more of a chinese one recently with a sprinkling of Japanesse chucked in, Unicon might have someting to do with that. On the shelf waiting to read is Jane Austen “Pride and Prejudice” and Ian Cross “God Boy” Neither of which are oriental at all, but there you go:-)
Sarah
I read for fun
Too busy reading stuff for school to read much for fun. Much less great literature for fun.
You guys read “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?” Dostoevsky I believe… I read that one and enjoyed it.
Sarah, I am actually minoring in japanese and I hope to read stuff in japanese soon. What have you been reading, specifically?
i havent read theat one rayden, ive been mostly focusing on dostoevsky’s longer works.
quite…
i read some of the books on your list quite a while ago
mostly the russian ones
never did get around to ‘war and peace’ and since i’ve just finished ‘the lord of the rings’ and have mailer’s ‘ancient evenings’ lined up, i’m just about at my thick book quote for this year
i’m in a tom robbins, thomas pynchon, norman mailer kinda mood at the moment and might dip back into phillip roth to read ‘the human stain’ before seeing the movie
if i see it
i picked up a book about the Loch Ness Monster quite by accident recently and then started reading the autobiography of Nancy Cartwright (the woman who does bart simpson’s voice) inbetween
i’m horrible like that
i can quiet easily have three books going at one time
recently read ‘life of pi’ which i thought was quite a trip
i’m waiting to get my grubby lil’ mitts on ‘the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime’ by mark haddon
sounds like fun
a while ago this thread got quite interresting
I was once close to fluency in Russian. Reading literature in Russian is difficult. I have a collection of John Updike novels translated into Russian. I would try to read it (Rabbit, Run) side-by-side with the English version for when I got stuck, which was often. For me, reading that way was too slow to get through an entire book. It was fun to do sentence by sentence. I just couldn’t keep at it for very long.
I’m also a fan of Nabakov. I believe he wrote some of his works in English.
Have you ever gone to a book store and compared the first pages of several translations of the same book. That is interesting to do while also looking at the untranslated version. If you are into Russian literature, I’d be interested if you have a preference for a certain translator.
-Eric
by the way, since you’re in dc. there used to be a great travel store on the corner of wisconson ave and brandywine st near the tenleytown metro station. i bet it’s still there. they have the best selection of foreign language reference and untranslated literature as well as travel books.
-eric
Wowzers. I am at AU, which is at the tenley metro stop! I have not seen that store but i will certainly look for it. And I do compare translations often, if I have the chance. I dont really look at the translator’s name, so i cant name a favorite, but i will read the first couple of paragraphs to see which i prefer. This is especially important if the piece is in works. i remember doing this for Pushkins’s Eugene Onegin and for Dante’s Divine Comedy. If the original rhymed, i want the english to rhyme too.
Anyway, hell-on-wheel (Frank) is studying Russian at UVA. i have not heard him speak but I am sure he is amazing at it (just like unicycling!).
Anyhoo, since i last chatted i read
Crime and Punishment, Dostoevesky
The Anthropological Principle in philosophy, Chernyshevsky
Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky
and tonight i will start the master and the margarita
so is that store still there? -eric
sorry for the delay, but i just saw it tonight!!! its called tempo bookstore and it was closed but ill check it out next week. it may have moved, its on wisconsin, not brandywine.
sarah, have you read any mishima yukio?