Guide to modern world literature

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1. didymosplDec 2021
   Thanks, I'll add "The Guide to Modern World Literature" to my reading list (and I guess it will transitively keep this list filled for the next decade or so)
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2. gruseomJan 2014
   I noticed that this list was made by Martin Seymour-Smith. He was an English poet and critic whose masterpiece was called Guide to Modern World Literature. It is a monster of a book that covers hundreds (thousands?) of writers, a tour de force that is nearly impossible to believe was put together by one person. I used to spend hours poring over it in the reference section of the library. For such an encyclopedia, it's remarkable how idiosyncratic and addictive it is. He makes no attempt to be balanced or standard about anything; he just gives his personal views—for example he pooh-poohs Eliot and says that the greatest poet of the 20th century was César Vallejo. So, unlike most reference works, it's wonderfully intimate. It's like having an uncle who knows everything and will happily tell you all about anyone you name.

   Sometimes it's even perverse, as he loves nothing better than to champion the obscure and take the famous and well-established down a peg. So I suppose it's fitting that basically no one has heard of his work.

   I discovered him years ago on a long bus trip with a layover in Salt Lake City, where I went to a used bookstore. His book--actually an earlier one called "Who's Who in 20th Century Literature", smaller but still massive--was on a shelf in the basement of the store. I looked someone up in it and thought "this is interesting", sat on the floor and looked someone else up, and then another and so on. Hours later I woke up and realized that I was sitting on the basement floor of a bookstore in a strange city. I remember I had to run to the bus station and barely made it. That book, and then later the astonishing one I described above, became my companions for years, the sort of thing where the author is your mentor and friend and you feel vividly that you know him. Thank you Martin Seymour-Smith!

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3. gruseomMay 2013
   It depends on what you like. Flannery O'Connor's fiction is extraordinary. I bet you'd like Nabokov based on what you've said so far; I like his earlier Russian novels best (which have excellent English translations), like The Defense, for example. If you want to go whole hog into postmodernism then try Pynchon or Gaddis.

   The 19th century Russians from Gogol to Chekhov are pretty much can't-lose. Turgenev's Fathers and Sons is beautiful and captures the spirit of youth.

   Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier is a short masterpiece. The Great Gatsby is as good as its reputation says. Read Dickens if you want the essence of the English language and character. Read Kafka for the strangest articulation of modernity. Bruno Schulz is more whimsical. Borges is another whom your list suggests you should try.

   If you really want to go down a rabbit hole, find Martin Seymour-Smith's Guide to Modern World Literature and browse through it to blow your mind. It covers everything and seems impossible, except it exists so it can't be.

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