Top ten works of literature ever?

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I think Hop on Pop would've contrasted better with The Brothers Karamazov, but it still works. Cest la vie.

I don't believe that I've ever read Hop on Pop. Just goes to show how truly limited my literary horizons are...

However, I've just remembered that I read one of those books titled something like H is for Homicide or F is for Flatulence, I can't remember the specific book. So, that book (whatever it was called) takes 5th place on my list by default.

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by El Leon
I will look up Camille Paglia now, but curious about the comparison.

I am sure she would have approved of your chastisement of the thread for omitting the classics.

[molly bloom]

Well, it's very difficult to choose which are the best items, because there are so many excellent ones to choose from. It's also dificult to be inclusive, because there so many great contributions to world literature from languages other than the big three, Spanish, English and Mandarin.

My ten for the moment:

Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal

Satire at its best- how to solve the problems of overpopulation in 18th Century Ireland? Easy- encourage them to eat their children....

Jorge Luis Borges: Ficciones/ Labyrinths

One of the great contributors to fantasy fiction, and a bridge between Britain and Argentina, with his love of Anglo-Saxon poetry. 'Funes the Memorious' is one short story I will never forget. His short tales cry out to be filmed- by Guillermo del Toro, preferably.

Sophocles: Antigone

I never get over the tension in this play- the dilemma, the conflict between familial, sacred obligations and duty to the state. In fact, why not all of his Theban trilogy considered as a unified work?

James Joyce: Ulysses

A book as big as the world, and as small a single day in a single city in one country on the westernmost edge of Europe. One of the most compassionate portrayals of fatherhood and Jewish identity ever created by a gentile, and a great celebration of life, and simple pleasures- like eating fried kidneys, and having afternoon sex.

E. Annie Proulx: The Shipping News

Tremendously funny, and melancholy, with beautiful character studies and inventive use of language, both English and Newfie speak. The film cannot lick its bootstraps.

Samuel Beckett: Malone Dies

Humour, pathos and isolation and death. And again, inventive wordplay and a love of the sound and richness of language for its own sake.

Cavafy: Collected Poetry

Spanning the centuries of diasporic Greek culture and history for inspiration, with wry looks at tragedy and heroism, love and lust, his poetry is of, and for, all time.

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Wife of Bath's Tale

One of the not so many writers who can create a character, and endow it with life so it reaches beyond the printed page. Bawdy and full of verve, she transcends stereotyping.

Thomas Nashe: The Unfortunate Traveller and other works

A writer who captures an intimation of mortality in his song in Summer's Last Will and Testament, 'Adieu, farewell earth's bliss'. He epitomizes the burgeoning Elizabethan literary scene.

Robert Henryson: The Testament of Cresseid

One of the greatest writers in English (Lallans Scots) between Chaucer and the Elizabethans. I love his use of imagery, and the way he shows compassion for Cresseid. His poems have a visual style that would be familiar to anyone who has seen John Boorman's Excalibur- I suspect there may be an unacknowledged debt...

[Ned]

Illiad by Homer
History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.
Anabasis by Xenophon
Gallic Wars by Caesar
The Aneid by Virgil
Hamlet by Shakespeare
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
David Copperfied by Charles Dickens
Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson
War and in Peace by Tolstoy
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

[Faboba]

Originally posted by MosesPresley
Does anyone else here think Kafka was misunderstood? It seems most people find him depressing. I always thought his works were humorous.

Well yeah they were but in a 'laugh to hide the tears' kind of way. He was a nut, which has been well documented, and a lot of his work is kind of autobiographical about his experiences growing up. Humourous yes, but with a very stark and depressing edge to them.

[El León]

Originally posted by Ned
History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.
Gallic Wars by Caesar
Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson

Literature? Fiction, in part, but literature in the strictest sense...

[monolith94]

Sort of like Brazil, then.

[Tingkai]

deleted.

[Zkribbler]

Odyssey
Shakespear's Julius Caesar
Marriage of Figaro
Frankenstein
Uncle Tom's Cabin
All Quiet on the Western Front
Johnny Got His Gun
1984
To Kill a Mockingbird
Catch-22

[Kepler]

I'm glad Marquez and Borges came up.

From GGM I'll take One Hundred Years of Solitude even though it's the obvious choice. Honestly I haven't cared for his other stuff. Many generals slowly dying of tuberculosis in stuffy, allegorical rooms. I get it, I get it.

From JLB I'll take the Ficciones collection and the Labyrinth collection provided I can leave behind his poetry, which is dreadful.

I haven't cited drama... sign me up for Stoppard's Rosencranz & Guildenstern are Dead. And if an operatic libretto is literature, sign me up for the (albeit partially, um, "borrowed") libretto of Verdi's Aida.

[Wernazuma III]

Yes, Borges' Ficciones are a good choice in here (and his poetry is really almost unreadable)

[monolith94]

Oscar Wilde - Salomé

[Kropotkin]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
...
All Quiet on the Western Front
...

Damn, how could I forget about that one?! There it is just between Hermann Hesse's books and Luke Rhineharts 'The Dice man'. Both on my list. I must have been temporarly blinded by something when i glanced through my shelfs before.

[Ned]

Originally posted by El Leon


Literature? Fiction, in part, but literature in the strictest sense...

Compositions may be written with a functional intent, but their language may be so inspiring as to change a culture, I would argue that all of these works are landmarks both functionally and as literature.

[El León]

Originally posted by Kepler
I'm glad Marquez and Borges came up.

From GGM I'll take One Hundred Years of Solitude even though it's the obvious choice. Honestly I haven't cared for his other stuff. Many generals slowly dying of tuberculosis in stuffy, allegorical rooms. I get it, I get it.

From JLB I'll take the Ficciones collection and the Labyrinth collection provided I can leave behind his poetry, which is dreadful.

I haven't cited drama... sign me up for Stoppard's Rosencranz & Guildenstern are Dead. And if an operatic libretto is literature, sign me up for the (albeit partially, um, "borrowed") libretto of Verdi's Aida.

Maybe it's just me, but the only book of GGM i would re-read is El Otoño del Patriarca, but I agree, it is difficult. Slowly dying generals... Never even begin reading El General en su Laberinto unless you are willing to drop it or are in for one of those "reader discipline" exercises.

In terms of Drama, I agree that the Theban Trilogy of Sophocles has not been surpassed, to my knowledge.
Though my favourite drama wirter is Brecht and once I even did a couple of bit parts in "Galileo".
And contemporary US english, I'd go for David Mamet, even if he is "trendy," for the sheer fact that he is not Newyorkian.
How about Fo? "Can't pay, won't pay!" is a treat.