I hate being a book snob right now. Nothing I am dying to read is available for less than a fortune, and I will not buy a cheaper antiquarian copy with water damage and no spine. Argh. Things would be less difficult if I were a mass-market rubbish-loving Philistine, but I can’t help my snobbery. I’ve tried in the past, trust me, to read light, contemporary fiction, but ever since I started reading, I’ve read and enjoyed actual works of literature. I barely know anything else; the trivial books I’ve read were picked up out of curiosity for what everyone other than me was reading. I just don’t enjoy being stupefied when I choose books, to which I’m addicted because the good, serious ones engage, challenge, question, and ultimately effect me in ways other than, “this book was thrilling omg!”. Sure, I do read forgotten Victorian literature, but I study the damn things. Some are great, like the short stories of Olive Schreiner and George Egerton. Some are average but enjoyable nonetheless, like Gissing’s The Odd Women and Oliphant’s Salem Chapel. Many are neither.
It’s really no fun being a brat about literature, but it would be if I were so snotty as to don a tuxedo, wear a monocle, and look down my nose at anyone reading a novel because – gasp! – novels are not a form of art. Monocles are nifty, that’s why. I hate going to a small library and not finding anything to read because, due to my literary pompousness, most things in libraries, the books that bring people into libraries, are off-limits, and the books that do meet my criteria are either a) classics I have already read or b) classics I have no interest in ever touching (adventure stories, Sherlock Holmes, etc). The places that have the books I want to read are central libraries in large cities – and the books are usually in off-site storage if they’re obscure – and university libraries. It is a pain in the arse to acquire a hard copy of something I want to read, and so I’m driven to using GoogleBooks and re-learning French so that I can read Mirbeau and Huysmans.
And I’m lucky to find a book in its entirety, thanks to the three-decker phenomenon and GoogleBooks being crummy and only having the second or third volume available to read (or the book’s been scanned, has been in the public domain for aeons, yet still is “sin vista previa.” REALLY?!).
I wish I were a Philistine. Do not become a snob, ever. It is not enjoyable.
Do you have any recommendations in terms of 19th-century Japanese literature? Any good Japanese poetry?
ResponderEliminarI'm doing that with French literature right now, but that's a great idea. I'm doing a French lit challenge in 2012 and have been reading 19th-century French things like a fiend recently. The issue's mainly getting what I'm dying to read -- like Mirbeau, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, and Huysmans -- in English, preferably for free. I can read French, but literary works take some time.