Read Until You Drop

Have you read a book today?  Time is running out if you want to finish 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. This list of books (novels, actually)  was compiled by Peter Boxall of Sussex University who asked 105 critics, editors and academics to submit lists of the most important novels.  From their responses he constructed this mandatory reading list.  The Listology Blog was kind enough to put the list in a very readable format according to date of publication. As one would expect, the list is rather English-language centric, but the selection of German language novels is good and often pleasantly surprising.  Let's have a closer look (all titles are in English translation, as they are on the list).

The list makers were definitely partial to Austrian writers. Peter Handke is represented with 3 novels, Jelinek with one, but Thomas Bernhard has FIVE novels (too much of a good thing?).  The older great writers are represented as well: Joseph Roth, Karl Kraus, Robert Musil (2 novels), Stefan Zweig.  Sadly missing is Elias Canetti; but what is unforgivable is the absence of Hermann Broch - generally regarded as a great modernist equal to James Joyce.  And what happened to Schnitzler?

German novels are well-represented by the triumvirate of Thomas Mann, Günter Grass, and Heinrich Böll but the list also goes much deeper with novels of Heinrich Mann, Uwe Johnson, two women novelists - Anna Seghers and Christa Wolf (2 novels). Hermann Hesse is honored with 3 titles on the list, as is W.G Sebald (who is perhaps more British than German?).  As expected, Wolfgang Koeppen is missing, but this great postwar novelist remains all but invisible to Anglo-American readers, despite excellent translations by Michael Hofmann. On the other hand, the inclusion of Bernhard Schlink and Patrick Süsskind (2 novels apiece) left me a bit cold.

There were two German writers on the list I have not read:  Uwe Timm and Gert Hofmann (Michael's father).  I was able to order Timm's DIe Entdeckung der Currywurst  from Amazon without difficulty, while it appears to easier to find Michael Hofmann's English translation of his father's book The Parable of the Blind than the German original (Der Blindensturz).

In terms of cross-over novelists - writers better known for their works in drama or poetry - I was puzzled by the inclusion of Bertolt Brecht's Three Penny Novel; Rilke's The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge would have been a better choice.

The offerings  get a bit skimpy  once we move back to the 19th century, although Fontane's two masterpieces: Effi Briest and The Stechlin are thankfully listed.  And the list-makers partially atone for their omission of Broch by listing Hölderlin's Hyperion on the very short list of 18th century novels (along with Goethe).

Don't have time to read 1001 novels?  Then try to read the 50 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century  compiled by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.  Here you will find Koeppen (Das Treibhaus), Schnitzler (Traumnovelle), Rilke (Malte) and Canetti (Die Stimmen von Marrakesch).  Still missing: Hermann Broch!

Comments

[steve]

Just a quick note: Christopher Middleton translated "The Parable of the Blind", not the author's son. I think he translated only the later work (The Film Explainer, Luck, Lichtenberg & the Little Flower Girl). Don't miss any one of them.

[leftclick]

Got to admit that I haven't read much books during the past 10 years - and those I've read were those I've already read before...like Marc Aurel's Self-Reflections or Cicero's De legibus. Books worth publishing even 2000 years after they were written. Right now I'm reading more profane stuff: David Sklansky on No Limit Holdem. :)

[David]

We would all benefit from reading more Cicero.

@Steve,

Thanks for pointing out my mistake. Christopher Middleton is, along with Michael Hamburger, one our greatest translators from German - and, like Hamburger and Michael Hofmann, an accomplished poet in his own right.

[Hattie]

No scholar I, I discover that I have been misspelling Fontane as Fontana all these years.
Wow. I don't know if I have the strength to read all these texts before I die.

[Pat Patterson]

Truce! I better get busy because after scrolling down the list I realized that most recent book I had read was Truman Capote's In Cold Blood but I did read Wolfgang Koeppen's The Hothouse in college and will probably reread it as well as the other two of the triology.

I suppose encouraging people to read is a good thing but no Shakespeare, no Euripides, no Herodotus or Thucydides, no L'Morte D'Arthur or Beowolf leaves me scratching my head in wonder.

As to German translations I would have to ask why no Hans Kirst or Karl May. Just kidding on the latter!

[David]

@Pat,

A good reading experience would be to read Mann's "Death in Venice" (Michael Henry Heim's translation) and then Koeppen's "Death in Rome" (Michael Hofmann's translation)