Literature

I came across the above image today. One of those neat, confident grids listing the “Top 100 novels.” A canon in miniature. Ambitious, serious, well argued. I recognized many of the spines. I have read several of them. Some are better than others. Some mattered deeply at one point in my life and then receded. Others I admire more than I love. Lists like that always tempt us to believe that reading is cumulative, that it works by completion, by coverage. As if one could finish literature. But novels do not really work that way. They are not milestones so much as encounters. And encounters depend on timing, on who one is, on what one is carrying at that moment. ...

I’m listening to The Rise of the Novel from The Great Courses—a fascinating journey through a genre we take for granted today, yet which wasn’t always part of our cultural landscape. Many scholars agree that the first true novel was Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. I had known this for a while, but never really explored why—or what that meant at the time. In this course, professor Leo Damrosch, an expert in literature, guides us through these questions with a rare clarity. He reminds us to approach them from a distance, aware that we belong to a different culture and time. We inevitably bring our own lens to the discussion, yet must also imagine how the people of that era understood these issues. ...