Most
of us resist the idea of our own mortality but, come the sudden passing of
younger people who had some significance in our lives, we develop an almost
morbid fascination with the prospect……
We
expect 98-year olds like Denis Healey, Helmut Schmidt and Albert Hirschman to
pass away but the sudden deaths of David Bowie and Alan Rickman bring a
powerful wake-up call to people of my age
I
was, as it happens, in the middle of a large biography of Hirschman - Worldly
Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman (the link gives an
excellent overview of both the man and the book) - who died 3 years ago and was one of the greatest exponents of the nature and
importance of challenging the “conventional thinking” and of “intellectual
trespassing”…This has inspired me to devote a post to him…,,
But bear with me for a day or so while I collect and edit the numerous other goodies which cyberspace offers
about the various sides to his life which I think his biographer has caught
well with the term “odyssey”.
In
the meantime, Daniela and I were intrigued by the list of David
Bowie’s 100 “Must-Read” books which is part of a current exhibition in
Ontario. Daniela is Romanian and had access in the 70s and 80s to the Romanian
translations of not only Western classics but contemporary American and
European texts which (despite the repression) were available after Ceaucescu
struck his maverick stance in the Eastern bloc (most Romanians are proud of
their country’s refusal to join the 1968 repression of Czechoslovak liberties).
But
she recognized only a few of the titles in Bowie’s list – and has raised the interesting question of the “East-West
gap” in mutual understanding of one another’s literature (and cultures
generally).
My
Balkans residency of the past decade has made me more sensitive to the wonder
that was 20th century Central European literature (my five
page recommended reading list for Romania can be accessed at section 4 of Mapping Romania
- notes on an unfinished journey – although I cheated by
including some English novels with a Romanian theme!).
The
reading public, it seems, are developing a new interest in translations of
older writers such as Joseph
Roth and Hans Fallada
who, however well-known in their home country, made little or no impact in
English-speaking countries. The New
York Review of Books classic series started a few years back to repair this fault – and there are also some great titles of mid-century central european books at small publishers such as the
Pushkin Press.
Most
of the works offer much more powerful writing than that from contemporary writers
of the English-speaking world – however hyped the latter is. So there is every incentive to start using
these catalogues.
Five years ago, the Guardian actually ran a
fascinating series on world literature, inviting readers to suggest books eg
this was its
Polish invitation and this a nice tabular
presentation of the final results. Chinese
and then Russian
literature were also presented in the same way -
No
fewer than 200 books get close analysis in these
results of a reader’s survey about French literature – and more than 150 in
this survey of German
literature. Almost
100 novels get the treatment in this
table about Indonesia
Other countries were covered but without the tabulated results s but, with this link, you can hunt down the ones of interest......
But
a few hundred responses don’t suggest English readers’
familiarity with foreign – let alone “Eastern” - literature. And of course most of this material covers novels –
whereas Bowie’s list is more general. It also makes
me realize that there at least three
types of lists of what we might call “significant reads”
- Those we once liked - which made an early personal impact eg early seminal reading – some examples of mine were captured in this
2009 post
- Those which matter - which made an impact on our collective social understanding (many of which we may not actually have read personally - let alone liked. (here's a short list I made for for the period from the 1970s)
- Those which matter - which made an impact on our collective social understanding (many of which we may not actually have read personally - let alone liked. (here's a short list I made for for the period from the 1970s)
- Those we like now - which might be recommended or bought for family and friends. I have apparently done one list of favourite book – but it was some time ago (December 2010)
Interestingly,
central Europeans dominate that second list (although, thanks to
Hitler, many of then wrote their most famous work in American English). And that's where perhaps a major shift has taken place.....in the 1930s European intellectual and literary writing was at the heart of the world's thinking - now it's at the periphery.....
Five years on - and while the snow lies thick on the ground, it will be interesting to do an update of the last list
