And time yet for hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions
says T.S. Eliot, and time to read those neglected classics. Or, perhaps, time to forget about them and give it up as a bad job, like these famous authors who confess their literary blanks to Slate, along with some page-turners they’d rather read instead of, say, Middlemarch or Moby-Dick.
All right, I have read Moby-Dick, thanks to Professor Louis Rubin’s American Literature course at UNC-CH, but I probably would never have gotten through it without his guidance and the combined carrot/stick encouragement of a grade. Middlemarch—sorry, but I have read a boatload of Dickens.
What’s the point of this kind of feature? I’d say—read all you can, at least give the “great books” a try, but few of us will have time or inclination (or, perhaps, ability) to read everything. If you’ve found at least a few authors and books among the “greats” that feed your soul, you’re well on your way.
I know you know this, but Middlemarch was George Eliot, who could (and did) run circles around Dickens. It’s a lot of fun, in my opinion. MD can be a heady rush in the right sort of circumstances, but it (like most longer literary classics) goes down easier when it’s a voluntary experience.
I never quite got past the first chapter of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
I knew I was going to get in trouble for Middlemarch! I only mentioned Dickens because he, like Eliot, is a Victorian novelist. But my interest in 19th c. literature remains random and, as I say, there’s time yet, so maybe I’ll pick up Eliot eventually.
As for Moby-Dick, I didn’t mean to imply that I didn’t like it once I actually read it, just that I might never have gotten around to it if I hadn’t (a) taken a class and (b) had a good professor (see above re: 19th c.).