Gold-plating the Calf: These should be classics.

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This is the reverse of the Slaying the sacred cow thread: Books or authors who in your considered opinion should be rated much higher than they are. Or already classic but somewhat neglected authors who don't inspire much enthusiasm in other ppl, but do in you. Do you think X is in the same league as Shakespeare or Dante and you'd like the world to agree? Tell us why.

My example: Dryden. As good as Pope, but doesn't get the same love.

― pete s, Wednesday, 24 December 2003 16:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Bonus points if your choice(s) is pre-20th century.

― pete s, Wednesday, 24 December 2003 16:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I'll start with one that seems unlikely to cause contraversy hereabouts, just fer warm-ups: Wodehouse. And as long as I'm thinking in that vein... Saki.

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Thursday, 25 December 2003 00:13 (twenty-two years ago)

saki is terrific in small doses, but i much prefer wodehouse. i tire of reading the former fairly quickly whereas i think could read the latter and nothing but for eternity if it came to that.

― lauren (laurenp), Thursday, 25 December 2003 00:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Saki: forget the novels, there's only one really good one... it's the short stories you want.

Wodehouse: hell yes. Could read nothing but. Did you hear he used to pin the pages of his novels up around his work space and keep fixing the lines till he considered them perfect? Whatta man!!!!!!!

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Thursday, 25 December 2003 00:19 (twenty-two years ago)

second wodehouse,if he's not considered classic already
also,life:a user's manual by perec
and replace catch 22's classic status with any vonnegut

― robin (robin), Thursday, 25 December 2003 01:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Second Wodehouse and Saki, but they are sort of classics of their forms.

My list:

Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Arnold Bennett.

James.M.Cain (his first two novels)

Keith Douglas (the poetry and "Alamein to Zem Zem")

Damon Runyon.

Apsley Cherry-Garrard's "The Worst Journey in the World" (travel classic;should be a literary one).

Goldoni (probably is a classic in Italy, but not here).

John Whiting's "A Penny for a Song".

George Duhamel's "Confession de Minuit".

― Roderick the Visigoth. (Jake Proudlock), Thursday, 25 December 2003 12:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Zola owns all French authors ever.

― adam (adam), Thursday, 25 December 2003 17:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Anna Kavan, formerly Helen Ferguson, 20th Century novelist who became a heroin addict in the 40s and went from writing trad. english drawing room novels of manners to bizare paranoid claustrophibic impressionistic books where characters shift identies and unexplainable shit happens (she changed her name to Anna Kavan after a character in one of her earlier books around the same time her writing got weird). "Ice," "Mercury," "Eagles Nest" are all amazing and give Kafka a run for his money. These go in and out of print, when I discovered her last year they were hard to find, but I think they just got reprinted in England this year.

― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Thursday, 25 December 2003 18:43 (twenty-two years ago)

second Arnold Bennett, whose The Old Wives' Tale should be VERY required the way it used to be
George Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody
James Stephens, The Crock of Gold

I'll explain these later.

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Friday, 26 December 2003 14:29 (twenty-two years ago)

i have that 'the diary of a nobody', matt. it's the penguin classics edition! :) i take it it's worth the read?

― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 26 December 2003 18:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Diary of a Nobody is ace. Vicious too. It's actually by George AND Weedon Grossmith, and Weedon did the drawings.

― pete s, Friday, 26 December 2003 18:26 (twenty-two years ago)

pete you are so right
I am so very damn wrong
yes, David, READ IT

as for James Stephens,
he was tiny, Irish, drunk,
a friend of James Joyce;

The Crock of Gold pits
philosophers, leprechauns,
devils and lawyers...

it's all feckin' ace
even though misogyny
oozes from its pores

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Saturday, 27 December 2003 07:55 (twenty-two years ago)

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