The 10 Best Literary Works - the envelope please!

[Robert J. Cordingley]

What a terrific response!  Thanks to everyone who shared their recommendations.  I've closed the list because with 119 candidates we now can see 10 clear winners.  Here are the top 10 Titles with Author and (No. of Recommendations) that were recommended 3 or 4 times.

• Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha (Don Quixote) by Miguel de Cervantes (4)
• Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville (4)
• Ulysses by James Joyce (4)
• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (3)
• The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse (3)
• Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life by George Eliot (3)
• Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse (3)
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (3)
• Siddartha by Hermann Hesse (3)
• War & Peace by Lyev Nikolayevich (Leo) Tolstoy (3)

17 titles were recommended by 2 people, the remaining 92 only by 1.  25 people sent their recommendations.  I believe I've actually read 7 of the recommended titles but none of them made the top 10, so I do have a long way to go with my literary education!

I compiled the list from the posted emails using these guidelines:

• I only included the first 10 mentioned if you went over the limit.  Thanks to those who stopped at 10 or less.
• I didn't include any series, tho' I allowed one trilogy to remain on the list
  
• I didn't follow up on any referred lists because I wanted FRIAM list members' recommendations, not someone else's, sorry.
• I tried to exclude non-fiction.
• I've sorted them by recommendations then alphabetically on title to help you find your choices (with 'A' and 'The' at the end of their titles).

The complete list is in the attached .xls file.  Let me know if you have any problems opening it.

Thanks again.
Robert C



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[glen e. p. ropella-2]

Robert J. Cordingley wrote  circa 10/12/2010 06:57 PM:
> The complete list is in the attached .xls file.  Let me know if you have
> any problems opening it.

Thanks very much for the compilation.  I've only read 30 of them, a
failing grade of 25%.  And I've only read 4 of the top 10, still
failing. [sigh]  I suppose I'll start with Don Quixote:

   http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/996

--
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[Nick Thompson]

All,

 

I wonder what everybody thinks of this list?  Has our collective wisdom made a monster?  Will Robert become a happier wiser man when he sits down and reads, these ten books?

 

When I was a kid I slept on a sleeping porch in the summer, where there was a pile of old magazines, Old Dick Tracy comic books, illustrations of world war II fighting aircraft, etc, that somehow never got cleaned up, summer after summer.  Among them was a copy of “Pageant” magazine,  kind of the equivalent of People Mag and Reader’s Digest mashed together: the worst sort of Dentist Office trash.  In that issue, somebody had compiled a photo of a woman who was made up of the best features of all the beautiful women of the day.   “Huh?!”

 

Is that what we have here?  This is NOT a rhetorical question. 

 

Comments, please.

 

Nick  

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Robert J. Cordingley
Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2010 7:58 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] The 10 Best Literary Works - the envelope please!

 

What a terrific response!  Thanks to everyone who shared their recommendations.  I've closed the list because with 119 candidates we now can see 10 clear winners.  Here are the top 10 Titles with Author and (No. of Recommendations) that were recommended 3 or 4 times.

• Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha (Don Quixote) by Miguel de Cervantes (4)
• Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville (4)
• Ulysses by James Joyce (4)
• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (3)
• The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse (3)
• Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life by George Eliot (3)
• Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse (3)
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (3)
• Siddartha by Hermann Hesse (3)
• War & Peace by Lyev Nikolayevich (Leo) Tolstoy (3)

17 titles were recommended by 2 people, the remaining 92 only by 1.  25 people sent their recommendations.  I believe I've actually read 7 of the recommended titles but none of them made the top 10, so I do have a long way to go with my literary education!

I compiled the list from the posted emails using these guidelines:

• I only included the first 10 mentioned if you went over the limit.  Thanks to those who stopped at 10 or less.
• I didn't include any series, tho' I allowed one trilogy to remain on the list
• I didn't follow up on any referred lists because I wanted FRIAM list members' recommendations, not someone else's, sorry.
• I tried to exclude non-fiction.
• I've sorted them by recommendations then alphabetically on title to help you find your choices (with 'A' and 'The' at the end of their titles).

The complete list is in the attached .xls file.  Let me know if you have any problems opening it.

Thanks again.
Robert C

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[glen e. p. ropella-2]

Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 10-10-13 10:34 AM:
> In that issue, somebody had compiled a photo of a
> woman who was made up of the best features of all the beautiful women of the
> day.   "Huh?!"
>
> Is that what we have here?  This is NOT a rhetorical question.  

No.  What we have are credible (etymologically and semantically related
to the other thread about expertise) hooks into what it means to be human.

There are plenty of other hooks, some much less credible but no less
insightful (e.g. Crowley's "The Book of the Law" or Anton Lavey's
"Satanic Bible").

What we engaged in, here, is an exercise in credibility and reputation.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com


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[Roger Critchlow-2]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 11:34 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

All,

 

I wonder what everybody thinks of this list?  Has our collective wisdom made a monster?  Will Robert become a happier wiser man when he sits down and reads, these ten books?

 

When I was a kid I slept on a sleeping porch in the summer, where there was a pile of old magazines, Old Dick Tracy comic books, illustrations of world war II fighting aircraft, etc, that somehow never got cleaned up, summer after summer.  Among them was a copy of “Pageant” magazine,  kind of the equivalent of People Mag and Reader’s Digest mashed together: the worst sort of Dentist Office trash.  In that issue, somebody had compiled a photo of a woman who was made up of the best features of all the beautiful women of the day.   “Huh?!”

 

I am giggling helplessly at the thought of a chimeric literary work which blends these ten books into one.  Moby Dick + Ulysses + War and Peace + Don Quixote = WTF?

I would pick one Hermann Hesse and promote two from the next rank by lottery.  If you enjoy one Hesse, you'll find the rest.

And Gravity's Rainbow is by Thomas Pynchon, not Vernor Vinge.

-- rec -- 

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[Jochen Fromm-4]

I guess Don Quixote is named as the best
book mainly because it was perhaps the most
influential: it was the first of its kind. The author
Miguel de Cervantes is comparable to Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe, he is for Spanish what
Goethe is for German, or Shakespeare for English.
Many sayings in Spanish and German come from
Cervantes and Goethe. "Instituto Cervantes"
are Spanish culture institutes where you can
learn Spanish, similar to the "Goethe Institutes"
where you can learn German.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes

-J.

----- Original Message -----
From: "glen e. p. ropella" <[hidden email]>
To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <[hidden email]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 3:54 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The 10 Best Literary Works - the envelope please!

> Robert J. Cordingley wrote  circa 10/12/2010 06:57 PM:
>> The complete list is in the attached .xls file.  Let me know if you have
>> any problems opening it.
>
> Thanks very much for the compilation.  I've only read 30 of them, a
> failing grade of 25%.  And I've only read 4 of the top 10, still
> failing. [sigh]  I suppose I'll start with Don Quixote:
>
>   http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/996
>
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org 

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[glen e. p. ropella-2]

Jochen Fromm wrote circa 10-10-13 12:17 PM:

> Cervantes and Goethe. "Instituto Cervantes"
> are Spanish culture institutes where you can
> learn Spanish, similar to the "Goethe Institutes"
> where you can learn German.
>
> see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "glen e. p. ropella"
>>
>>   http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/996

Yeah, I suppose the translator matters more than the original author,
since my Spanish is limited to ordering in restaurants.  Robert
mentioned Grossman.  The Project Gutenberg one is by Omsby.  Maybe I
should get one of those "readers" or "annotated" volumes so that I'm not
as limited by the translation.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com


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[Robert J. Cordingley]

  Just a reminder the list was ordered by the number of recommendations
then alphabetically by title.  Don Quixote ended at the top because of
'Ingenious' in the expanded/full title.  Thanks to those who found the
'deliberate error' :-( : Gravity's Rainbow is by Thomas Pynchon, not
Vernor Vinge, sorry.  I hope that's the only error.

Thanks Robert

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[Victoria Hughes]

Would be interesting to see response to the same question in other venues. 

Neil Stephenson being a particular favorite here, for instance, but not well known in other areas. Bummer for them. 

Just a reminder the list was ordered by the number of recommendations then alphabetically by title.  Don Quixote ended at the top because of 'Ingenious' in the expanded/full title.  Thanks to those who found the 'deliberate error' :-( : Gravity's Rainbow is by Thomas Pynchon, not Vernor Vinge, sorry.  I hope that's the only error.

Thanks Robert

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-----------------------------------

Tory Hughes

[hidden email]

Tory Hughes website

Tory Hughes facebook

------------------------------------

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[Nick Thompson]

Wow, Glen.  If somebody else doesn't ask you to spell this out, I will.
Oooops, I just did!

N

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of glen e. p. ropella
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 11:48 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The 10 Best Literary Works - the envelope please!

Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 10-10-13 10:34 AM:
> In that issue, somebody had compiled a photo of a woman who was made
> up of the best features of all the beautiful women of the
> day.   "Huh?!"
>
> Is that what we have here?  This is NOT a rhetorical question.  

No.  What we have are credible (etymologically and semantically related to
the other thread about expertise) hooks into what it means to be human.

There are plenty of other hooks, some much less credible but no less
insightful (e.g. Crowley's "The Book of the Law" or Anton Lavey's "Satanic
Bible").

What we engaged in, here, is an exercise in credibility and reputation.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com


============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org


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[glen e. p. ropella-2]

Nobody else will ask. [grin]  Everyone knows I'm a wacko; so rational
people steer clear.  Your strength is your ability to wade into the
irrational. ;-)

Anyway, what's to expand?  We have a list of recommended literature.
I'm inclined to do this by definition:

1) to commend - To represent as worthy, qualified, or desirable.
com-mend, put your trust in.

2) credible - Capable of being believed; worthy of confidence; reliable.

Robert asked for recommendations from a group of people he, if not
exactly "trusts", knows fairly well, which is a type of credential.  He
then ranked them by the number of hits each recommendation got.  More
recommendations means more credibility.

Of course, one could do that with anything, coffee makers, gasoline
vendors, art vendors, etc.  He chose literary fiction, which is mostly
considered to be highly literate _stories_ with some psychological
depth.  All those components (literacy, story-telling, psychology) are
usually considered uniquely human.  So, it's fair (but arguable, of
course) to say that literary fiction is mainly about what it means to be
human.  Someone in the thread even made the comment that good literary
fiction transcends many cultures, time, and space more so than, say,
non-fiction, which I take to mean that those transcendent works capture
something essential about humans.

So, this list is simply a collection of friam-accredited works about
what it means to be human.

There are many other works that might be ... oh, SFI-accredited works
... or Nobel-accredited works ... or *-accredited works.  And there are
probably many more that aren't accredited at all!  I end up listening to
lyrics and reading short stories written by friends of mine all the
time.  Nobody recommends them to me except the author, which is just
about the minimum credibility something can have... other than finding
something arbitrary in the street.  Yet, these uncredited works often
carry (what seems to me) a lot of insight into what it means to be human.

Since I'm a big fan of wackos (being one myself, of course), I tend to
turn to extreme people to circumscribe what it means to be human.  That
means people like LaVey (humanism), Crowley (exploitation), RA Wilson
(enlightenment), Feyerabend (rebelliousness), Lima-de-Faria (testability
of evolution), Thomas Gold (testability of fossil fuels), Richard
Lindzen (testability of AGW), etc.  This is why I recommended "The
Magus" by Fowles.  The teacher in that story plays a role similar to Don
Juan in Castaneda's stories and, with a series of complicated mind
games, tricks the protagonist into a more synoptic view of the world.

I hope that large bowl of spaghetti-sentences helps clarify what I
meant. ;-)

Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 10-10-13 01:43 PM:

> Wow, Glen.  If somebody else doesn't ask you to spell this out, I will.
> Oooops, I just did!
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
> Of glen e. p. ropella
> [...]
> No.  What we have are credible (etymologically and semantically related to
> the other thread about expertise) hooks into what it means to be human.
>
> There are plenty of other hooks, some much less credible but no less
> insightful (e.g. Crowley's "The Book of the Law" or Anton Lavey's "Satanic
> Bible").
>
> What we engaged in, here, is an exercise in credibility and reputation.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com


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[Scott R. Powell]

Ich habe zweimal an Goethe Institute studiert (Kochel a. See und Brannenburg-Degerndorf), danach Universität Basel.

Scott

Sent from my iPhone


On Oct 13, 2010, at 1:17 PM, "Jochen Fromm" <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I guess Don Quixote is named as the best
> book mainly because it was perhaps the most
> influential: it was the first of its kind. The author
> Miguel de Cervantes is comparable to Johann
> Wolfgang von Goethe, he is for Spanish what
> Goethe is for German, or Shakespeare for English.
> Many sayings in Spanish and German come from
> Cervantes and Goethe. "Instituto Cervantes"
> are Spanish culture institutes where you can
> learn Spanish, similar to the "Goethe Institutes"
> where you can learn German.
>
> see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes
>
> -J.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "glen e. p. ropella" <[hidden email]>
> To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <[hidden email]>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 3:54 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The 10 Best Literary Works - the envelope please!
>
>
>> Robert J. Cordingley wrote  circa 10/12/2010 06:57 PM:
>>> The complete list is in the attached .xls file.  Let me know if you have
>>> any problems opening it.
>>
>> Thanks very much for the compilation.  I've only read 30 of them, a
>> failing grade of 25%.  And I've only read 4 of the top 10, still
>> failing. [sigh]  I suppose I'll start with Don Quixote:
>>
>>  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/996
>>
>> --
>> glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org 
>
>
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[Pamela McCorduck]

the Grossman translation is a work of art in itself. Translation is so very difficult--to be true to the meaning, true to the spirit, yet use language that modern readers can relate to. Edith Grossman wins for me, hands down. The "Quixote" I read in college was leaden.

On Oct 13, 2010, at 3:31 PM, glen e. p. ropella wrote:

Jochen Fromm wrote circa 10-10-13 12:17 PM:

Cervantes and Goethe. "Instituto Cervantes"

are Spanish culture institutes where you can

learn Spanish, similar to the "Goethe Institutes"

where you can learn German.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes

----- Original Message ----- From: "glen e. p. ropella"

 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/996

Yeah, I suppose the translator matters more than the original author,
since my Spanish is limited to ordering in restaurants.  Robert
mentioned Grossman.  The Project Gutenberg one is by Omsby.  Maybe I
should get one of those "readers" or "annotated" volumes so that I'm not
as limited by the translation.

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com


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"How quickly weeks glide away in such a city as New York, especially when you reckon among your friends some of the most agreeable people in either hemisphere."

	Fanny Trollope, "Domestic Manners of the Americans"

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[Steve Smith]

I wonder what everybody thinks of this list?

Top ten things we like about the list? (argh!)

  Has our collective wisdom made a monster?

Yes, but an interesting and mostly friendly one.  Ala "Where the Wild Things Are"

  Will Robert become a happier wiser man when he sits down and reads, these ten books?

Hard to tell, and the answer probably is more about Robert's personality than the list or the responses he got.

Seriously, I think a "frequency of reference" with a strict (cut off at 10) is not the best measure of "collective judgement".    The key to good collective decision making (support) is to apply the apt fusion operators with good weighting vectors (for example, one might want to completely dismiss my contributions or even use them with negative weights). 

  In that issue, somebody had compiled a photo of a woman who was made up of the best features of all the beautiful women of the day.   “Huh?!”

 

Is that what we have here?  This is NOT a rhetorical question. 

I think what we have (had) here was a lively discussion not unlike the one held by the blind men groping the elephant!   We each grabbed our favorite part of the poor creature and while dangling from his various appendages and groping vigorously at whatever folds or flaps or hunks of flesh our little greedy hands could clasp onto, we loudly reported, quite authoritatively *exactly* what an Elephant was... of course we sounded like a cacophony of contradictions.   But in that cacophony might have been "everything you need to know about reading fiction for the modern FRIAMer".

I myself felt highly informed by the raving and clatter... the resulting list is nearly abhorrent and certainly aberrant by my measure, but the discussion along the way was great.   Thank *especially* to Guerin for the must read Chinese Novels.   I feel that I understand more what motivates others on this list to read fiction, what they (roughly) consider to make fiction literature (or at least transcendent in some way)...

I know it may have sounded like a lot of noise to the majority (lurkers?), especially with me piping up nearly every other comment, but it might have entertained and informed others as well.

- Steve

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[Steve Smith]

  Glen -
> I hope that large bowl of spaghetti-sentences helps clarify what I
> meant. ;-)
Oddly enough, It worked for me.
> What we engaged in, here, is an exercise in credibility and reputation.
I also particularly liked your endorsement of a wide variety of
recommendation (provided by self-proclaimed wackos, as it were).   I
could have used *even more* radical suggestions but there were certainly
some and your own list of authors in your explanation was a good
reminder of how broad our collective knowledge/wisdom base is *even*
while sticking to (mostly) dead (or soon to be) white men.

- Steve

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[Ted Carmichael]

Yes ... I would have "voted" for a few Stephenson books as well, if I weren't too busy trying to come up with new examples.

-t

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 4:41 PM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Would be interesting to see response to the same question in other venues. 

Neil Stephenson being a particular favorite here, for instance, but not well known in other areas. Bummer for them. 

Just a reminder the list was ordered by the number of recommendations then alphabetically by title.  Don Quixote ended at the top because of 'Ingenious' in the expanded/full title.  Thanks to those who found the 'deliberate error' :-( : Gravity's Rainbow is by Thomas Pynchon, not Vernor Vinge, sorry.  I hope that's the only error.

Thanks Robert

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-----------------------------------

Tory Hughes

[hidden email]

Tory Hughes website

Tory Hughes facebook

------------------------------------

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--

Ted Carmichael, Ph.D.

Complex Systems Institute

Department of Software and Information Systems

College of Computing and Informatics

310-A Woodward Hall

UNC Charlotte

Charlotte, NC 28223

[hidden email]

[hidden email]

Phone: [phone]

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[Stephen Thompson]

  Back to the original purpose of the 10 literary fiction works one
should read to
be considered literature literate:   what was the purpose of the
original question?

What does it mean to be literate in literature?

1.  Just to have read the 'great works' of fiction?
2.  To read a great example of **character development**?
        (a) early seminal works?
        (b) later development of the technique?
        (c) the development of the technique over a period of decades or
centuries?
        (d) the fully developed epitome of the "technique"?

Now insert any of the following words in place of "character development"
 > plot and episode development
 > descriptions (details,  word-pictures of the settings etc)
   (in movie terms: the cinematography behind the story)
 > verisimilitude to real life (at that time in history)
 > a great yarn
 > a lesson of behavior, morals, etc.
 >  others?

Doesn't literate mean to be able to know why a particular book is
in the great fiction canon?  There are works in that may be depressing
as hell
to read, but they exhibit something that make the work great.

So are you reading these books because you are looking for "a great yarn"?
To say you have read the great books?
To compare character development between dead
white-northern-European-male and live-Hispanic-female writers?

Presumably you want to increase your understanding of the human condition
as illustrated in certain works.  As well as just knowing a few
"cultural facts"
such as what is conjured up in the mind by "..what light through yonder
window breaks?"
or "..if his chest were a cannon he would have shot his heart upon it."  
(that's the idea ,but
I can't quite recall the exact quote.

Will the reader be able to come to a greater understanding by reading
the work
alone?  Need a commentary or study guide to develop the sensitivity to the
value of that particular work?  Study group?

The list of 10 to 100 are great books all.  But what do you want to
accomplish
by the end of 6-months, 12-months, 24-months?
Just know the story or **why** its a great story?

Steph T




On 10/13/2010 10:27 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

>  Glen -
>> I hope that large bowl of spaghetti-sentences helps clarify what I
>> meant. ;-)
> Oddly enough, It worked for me.
>> What we engaged in, here, is an exercise in credibility and reputation.
> I also particularly liked your endorsement of a wide variety of
> recommendation (provided by self-proclaimed wackos, as it were).   I
> could have used *even more* radical suggestions but there were
> certainly some and your own list of authors in your explanation was a
> good reminder of how broad our collective knowledge/wisdom base is
> *even* while sticking to (mostly) dead (or soon to be) white men.
>
> - Steve
>
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[Robert J. Cordingley]

  As the poser of the original question...

The Case for a Literary Education (as portrayed in my Joseph Epstein
post) did little to justify the effort in my mind.  I felt I could come
up with a better justification.  But then I reflected that it depends on
one's time of life.

For college age students a Literary Education may bear directly on one's
career/life style goals.  By studying the tales spun, not only might it
increase one's vocabulary it might improve one's written communication
skills for the benefit of many professional careers.  Reports (technical
and otherwise) have to be written, news stories submitted and other
literary works created.  All economic reasons.

Later, it tends to fall into the category of entertainment either for
the sheer fun of it, or in order to share a common interest with other
like-minded fellow human beings.  These days I am led more by curiosity
to see what all the fuss is about than anything else.  I don't buy into
the idea that it would help understand the 'human condition' because
after all we are talking about fiction.

If Nick is successful in finding one, I see value in a
leader/facilitator helping us potential seminar attendees get a better
perspective, see the deeper meaning - if there is one - and feel
personally enriched from the experience. And after all (someone posted)
it is Art and isn't that what Art is for? And perhaps by acknowledging
Peter's "I truly can't believe anyone, even a Friamer, could pick up the
volume cold and derive anything from it" avoid said problem with the
right teacher.

Thanks
Robert C


On 10/14/10 7:13 PM, Stephen Thompson wrote:

>  Back to the original purpose of the 10 literary fiction works one
> should read to
> be considered literature literate:   what was the purpose of the
> original question?
>
> What does it mean to be literate in literature?
>
> 1.  Just to have read the 'great works' of fiction?
> 2.  To read a great example of **character development**?
>        (a) early seminal works?
>        (b) later development of the technique?
>        (c) the development of the technique over a period of decades
> or centuries?
>        (d) the fully developed epitome of the "technique"?
>
> Now insert any of the following words in place of "character development"
> > plot and episode development
> > descriptions (details,  word-pictures of the settings etc)
>   (in movie terms: the cinematography behind the story)
> > verisimilitude to real life (at that time in history)
> > a great yarn
> > a lesson of behavior, morals, etc.
> >  others?
>
> Doesn't literate mean to be able to know why a particular book is
> in the great fiction canon?  There are works in that may be depressing
> as hell
> to read, but they exhibit something that make the work great.
>
> So are you reading these books because you are looking for "a great
> yarn"?
> To say you have read the great books?
> To compare character development between dead
> white-northern-European-male and live-Hispanic-female writers?
>
> Presumably you want to increase your understanding of the human condition
> as illustrated in certain works.  As well as just knowing a few
> "cultural facts"
> such as what is conjured up in the mind by "..what light through
> yonder window breaks?"
> or "..if his chest were a cannon he would have shot his heart upon
> it."  (that's the idea ,but
> I can't quite recall the exact quote.
>
> Will the reader be able to come to a greater understanding by reading
> the work
> alone?  Need a commentary or study guide to develop the sensitivity to
> the
> value of that particular work?  Study group?
>
> The list of 10 to 100 are great books all.  But what do you want to
> accomplish
> by the end of 6-months, 12-months, 24-months?
> Just know the story or **why** its a great story?
>
> Steph T
>
>
>
>
> On 10/13/2010 10:27 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
>>  Glen -
>>> I hope that large bowl of spaghetti-sentences helps clarify what I
>>> meant. ;-)
>> Oddly enough, It worked for me.
>>> What we engaged in, here, is an exercise in credibility and reputation.
>> I also particularly liked your endorsement of a wide variety of
>> recommendation (provided by self-proclaimed wackos, as it were).   I
>> could have used *even more* radical suggestions but there were
>> certainly some and your own list of authors in your explanation was a
>> good reminder of how broad our collective knowledge/wisdom base is
>> *even* while sticking to (mostly) dead (or soon to be) white men.
>>
>> - Steve
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>
>
> ============================================================
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> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>

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[Alfredo Covaleda Vélez]

Let me introduce my big and brown nose in the middle of your interesting conversation. Titles are in Spanish but are easy to translate.

El Quijote de la Mancha. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 

Cien años de Soledad. García Márquez (Colombiano) 

El amor en los tiempos del colera. García Márquez (Colombiano)

El Astillero. Juan Carlos Onetti (Uruguayo) 

Las Lanzas Coloradas. Arturo Uslar Pietri (Venezolano)  --> historical about independence

La Vorágine. Jose Eustasio Rivera (Colombiano)

La hora 25. Constant Gheorghiu. (Rumano) 

El nombre de la Rosa. Umberto Eco. (Italiano)

Maybe It is heretical to include next two books in a list of ten. I agree. Probably are not depending what literature means.

Pulp. Charles Bukowsky   (Estadinense nacido en Alemania)

Mucho después de media noche . Ray Bradbury (You know)

In a broad list I'll include:

El Perfume. Patrick Suskind (Alemán).

La Rayuela. Julio Cortazar (Argentino).

La Despedida. Milan Kundera. (Checo)

At least one book of stories of Horacio Quiroga like Cuentos de la Selva or El Hombre Muerto (Uruguayo)

La Servidumbre Humana. William Somerset Maugham (Inglés). 

La aventura equinoccial de Lope de Aguirre. Ramón Sender (España). --> Did you see Herzog film witk Klaus Kinsky representing Lope de Aguirre? 

La Odisea del Rencor. Emil Ciorán. (Rumano). (Philosophy).

Un Cuento de Navidad or maybe Tiempos Difíciles de Charles Dickens

I know what does  "El Ulises de Joyce" represent in Literature. I have tried. Believe me... but I can't. I prefer thousands of times Samuel Beckett than his fellow Joyce.

Alfredo

2010/10/12 Robert J. Cordingley <[hidden email]>

What a terrific response!  Thanks to everyone who shared their recommendations.  I've closed the list because with 119 candidates we now can see 10 clear winners.  Here are the top 10 Titles with Author and (No. of Recommendations) that were recommended 3 or 4 times.

• Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha (Don Quixote) by Miguel de Cervantes (4)
• Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville (4)
• Ulysses by James Joyce (4)
• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (3)
• The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse (3)
• Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life by George Eliot (3)
• Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse (3)
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (3)
• Siddartha by Hermann Hesse (3)
• War & Peace by Lyev Nikolayevich (Leo) Tolstoy (3)

17 titles were recommended by 2 people, the remaining 92 only by 1.  25 people sent their recommendations.  I believe I've actually read 7 of the recommended titles but none of them made the top 10, so I do have a long way to go with my literary education!

I compiled the list from the posted emails using these guidelines:

• I only included the first 10 mentioned if you went over the limit.  Thanks to those who stopped at 10 or less.
• I didn't include any series, tho' I allowed one trilogy to remain on the list
  
• I didn't follow up on any referred lists because I wanted FRIAM list members' recommendations, not someone else's, sorry.
• I tried to exclude non-fiction.
• I've sorted them by recommendations then alphabetically on title to help you find your choices (with 'A' and 'The' at the end of their titles).

The complete list is in the attached .xls file.  Let me know if you have any problems opening it.

Thanks again.
Robert C

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--
Alfredo

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[lrudolph]

On 14 Oct 2010 at 20:32, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:

> I don't buy into
> the idea that it would help understand the 'human condition' because
> after all we are talking about fiction.

What Nick elided when he brought that up (and what,
to my memory, always *did* get elided when he brought
it up before [and I was around, which was certainly
only a fraction of the times he did it]) is that a
(modern) work of fiction surely must (although, e.g.,
Nabakov furiously denied it, according to Martin
Gardner in the _Annotated Alice_ [and why isn't
that on the list?]: but he did so in the context
of Freudian literary analysis) be a rich source of
data about the particular "human condition" of its
author (given what appear to be modern Western
norms about "creating fiction"--norms that don't
or needn't necessarily apply to Cervantes or
_The Tale of Genji_, and *maybe* not to [some]
contemporary [maybe not "modern"?] non-"Western"
authors).  Extrapolating from that to the idea
that the same data tells anything, much, about
the general "human condition" (assuming that
there is such a thing) is a big leap, and one
that needs its own justifications (in addition
to whatever justifications might need to be made
for the word "surely" I used above).

That is (to slip into a jargon I hear a lot, now,
but which isn't really native to me), a work of
fiction can (probably) be used as an *idiographic*
study of the "human condition" (if one wants to
use it that way), but getting from one idiographic
study (or a whole batch of them) to general
conclusions is ... difficult.

Lee Rudolph

P.S. I didn't say a *single* *mean* *thing*
about "Freudian literary analysis".  The reader
is invited to do so on my behalf (or, if of a
literary turn, could track down what Nabakov
had to say about it, which surely used longer
words than "piece of shit" to convey contempt;
personally, I can't bear to read Nabakov,
give me Martin Gardner and Lewis Carroll
any day).



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