Always one classic behind

Just got off the phone with my pal Steve.  He and his wife spent last week in Jamaica.  He said he worked in a lot of heavy-duty lounging.  Lounged day and night.  Lounged hour upon hour on the beach with all the other lazy tourists, he said.

"Of course, I was the only one reading the Iliad," he added.

"That's because they'd all moved on to the Odyssey," I said.

"Right," he said, "They all read the Iliad last summer."

"Next year when you're reading the Odyssey, they'll have moved on to the Aeniad."

"Yep," he said, "I'm always one classic behind."

Your turn, folks:  I read the Iliad in back in March.  I should move on to the Odyssey, but I'm tackling Flaubert's Sentimental Education instead.  Which classic will you be reading this summer?  Put another way, which classic have you been meaning to get around to reading or re-reading? Nevermind the classics, what will you be taking to the beach or reading by the pool or snuggling up with in your tent or snatching up and gobbling down in little bits whenever you can wrangle a few quiet minutes for yourself?

Comments

[Cryptic Ned]

I will be reading Tony Judt's "Postwar"; it's not a novel, but I think it will be considered an epic classic sometime soon.

Devoting an entire summer to reading one classic book is a good idea. I've only done it with "Crime and Punishment" and "The Charterhouse of Parma" so far in my life. And "Sophie's World" when I was 19.

[Maria]

This summer, I shall continue slogging through Tasman's Psychiatry, with detours through McHugh's Perspectives of Psychiatry, blah blah blah...

... but Chandler's The Big Sleep is on the list, and I hope to receive a copy of Shakespeare's Titus in the mail soon....

[Jim]

In a fit of self-agrandizing optimism on B&N.com, I ordered Vanity Fair and Anna Karenina. They arrived the other day. Damn, they're both thick. I also have a copy of Marley and Me that will probably get read first.

[maurinsky]

I'm taking Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs to the pool with me every day. I read an chapter or two while I'm drying off. I doubt I'll get to any classics this summer.

[mac macgillicuddy]

I will read Lance Mannion.

(suck up!)

I will also be reading this.

[blue girl]

I'm taking Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs

I love him. But, I do wonder if he'll ever get the James Frey treatment...

Maurinsky, did you read "Dry" or "Running with Scissors?"

[Jennifer]

I will be trying to read my husband's mind. He's a classic and takes awhile to get the hang of. He will probably spend the summer trying to read my mind... No, he will ask me for the Cliffs Notes. He told me long ago he couldn't read my mind.

[Linkmeister]

It's not a classic, but Philip Hopkirk's The Great Game is sitting on the end-table awaiting my greasy thumbs.

[Exiled in New Jersey]

Very clever, Mr. Mannion, getting your readers and a purported friend to write your posting for you, but I'm wise to you. Hot weather is time to read something on the lighter side, something to make you smile like Jude The Obscure. But that is my suggestion for you. As for me, when I must wait two hours for a table at Mud City Crab House, I take along "You and Your Income Tax" by Willie Nelson.

[misterjoel]

The Odyssey was assigned (and read) in both high school and college, but the Illiad was not. One of these days... I've found that summer is a good time for Russian literature, such as War & Peace, Anna Karenina, or Crime & Punishment. Reading about winter during winter would be a double whammy. Right now, however, I'm working on The Thin Red Line by James Jones and The Wolf Pack of Lobo Butte by W.C. Tuttle.

[Likeable Friend]

Thanks to you, Lance, and your post about Lana Turner, I'm inspired to reread Madame X. That will be my poolside reading this week. I have a really old, first edition book with yellowed pages. It must be read with care. After that, who knows? I have a couple Dicken's books calling to me. Perhaps I'll answer.

[fightingdem]

Since the Illiad and the Odyssey were both performed originally by aural tradition, you owe it to yourself to listen to them via audiobook.

The Aenied not so much.

[Mike Schilling]

_Uncle Fred in the Springtime_. (Go ahead, try to tell me it isn't a classic.)

[burritoboy]

I'm not quite sure Sentimental Education is a good book to read for the current political moment - it is Flaubert's master-stroke to prove that literally everything is irrelevant and trivial in capitalist democracy, there is nothing and no-one salvagable from it's vast wreckage. While that's a very valuable viewpoint to have (and my favorite American novel, Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road, is really a Sentimental Education for modern American suburbanites), it's not a useful viewpoint to have for what we must do politically in the near future.

I'll be spending the summer trying not to get crucified by the auditors.

[velvet goldmine]

Every summer it's the Brontes. I might even get around to poor Ann this year.

[Kit Stolz]

"The Dark," the first novel by the late great Irish writer John McGahern, published in l964. Just finished it, actually. McGahern was compared to Joyce by some critics, because he's almost as elegant a writer, and because he had about as hard a time with the authorities. "The Dark" was banned in Ireland for forty years, because it so horrified the Catholic Church. In its quiet, mercurial way, it's probably the best book ever about a son dealing with an impossible and sometimes abusive father; it shows how he hated his father; how he loved him; and how he survived him.

Great book.

[Mudge]

Moby Dick.

[Azbob]

I was going through my garage last Saturday in search an old football jersey I promised to a former student of mine when I ran across my box of classics. Needless to say I never found the jersey as I idly pondered each book and refreshed my dormant memories briefly. I picked out three and brought them into the house so that I might glean some newfound wisdom from them. It had been almost twenty years since I read them last and I had the double incentive to maybe try to incorporate them in more detail in my classes for next year. The books (pamphlets) are:
"The Prince" by Machiavelli
"The Federalist Papers" by Hamilton, Madison and Jay
"The Communist Manifesto" by Marx
For light reading I am rereading the Dune series; I am presently on the "God Emperor of Dune."
For light light reading I have been browsing my various historical atlases and lurking in various blogholds.
Life is good without TV.

[David Glynn]

Reread?

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.

And Infinite Jest.

And Slaughterhouse Five.

And Madame Bovary.

Or Giles Goat Boy and Stranger In A Strange Land, just for the perverse enjoyment of watching re-tellings of age old tales declared radical and new again.

Ah, life in a class-less society, eh?

Meanwhile, the Tivo is grabbing "Kiss Them For Me" off of some movie channel's 4th of July celebration lineup(Mansfield is good? It must be a great movie.). Somebody's a sardonic programmer with an appreciation for Suzy Parker.

[CK]

Roarke: The old man and the boy, and The old man's boy grows older
Rand: Anthem and We the Living
And since it appears that every dem running is a new vet, I think it is time to reread Starship Troopers.
And Fred Reed has a new one coming out this month, A Brass Pole in Bangkok: A thing I aspire to be.

[Strangefate]

Maybe As I Lay Dying and/or Herodotus's The Histories if I can get around to them. Last summer I spent far too much time slogging through Gravity's Rainbow, a thankless labor in my mind.

[velvet goldmine]

Maybe LM readers can help me with this, if the thread still has life left: Given that I have a mere B.A. in Literature, it's a given that there are great gaps in my education in that area alone. Heck, even the Illiad and Odyssey are misty high school memories at this point. I'm undertaking a self-study -- no, not a self-study; that's a horrifying thought -- but rather planning to begin, without benefit of classes, working my way lazily and luxuriously through the classics. I'll stick with dead white writers for now; what the hell?

Do the readers here have any thoughts of the best way to begin the Beguine? Start with one "culture," for example, classical Greece, and work my way toward modern times before moving on to, say, medieval English lit?

I came across a reference in a novel recently to "the twelve great cultures" -- a learned professor, upon his retirement, was planning to plunge himself into the study of these cultures. But nowhere else have I found this reference, even after consulting (nonfiction) learned professors.

So -- Lance, readers? Any advice for a poor pilgrim?

[Linkmeister]

Ms. Velvet, you could do worse than start with Plutarch's Lives, or so I've been told.

[harry near indy]

of the classics, i plan to read a midsummer night's dream again this month. a friend will be in an amateur production near the end of july, so i might as well re-read it to remind me who's who and what's what.

(an aside--when you folks read shakespeare, do you often ponder the action? i find it hard to follow what's going on the first time i read one of his plays. i usually read them two times -- once for the words, and then for the plot.)

i probably will finish stalin: the court of the red tsar, by simon s. montefiore, before i return it to the library and if i can renew it. and i will probably re-read lenin's tomb, by david remnick. after that, i will read whatever strikes my fancy.

[Kit Stolz]

Velvet Goldmine's question is a great one, but we may need more information. How much time do you want to devote to this? Do you have specific types of gaps (literature vs. philosophy)? Do you like to follow the thread of an idea through time, or do you prefer to get a sense of a time, a place, and an era?

With that said, my first suggestion would be start with the Greeks. Either their poetry and drama: Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Or philosphy: Plato, Aristotle, and Heraclitus. Others in both literature and philosophy come to mind, but that would be a good start.

[Kevin Wolf]

Catching up with your blog, Lance, after a holiday break.

I picked up Patrick Horgan's audio book The Detection of Sherlock Holmes as recommended by Neddie Jingo, and have dug up my copy of Conan Doyle's Memoirs of SH and hope to begin these immediately.

The list of what I want to read is huge, but I've not been reading like I used to, and primarily non-fiction. I'd still love to re-read Moby Dick and the list of Russian classics would make a stack as tall as I am.

And all the titles in your sidebar, rotating without end, is a rebuke to my reading habits. I'd like to read all of them. No foolin.'