Re-reading My Favourites
26 Jul 2011 1 Comment
in My Life
I’ve been re-reading some of my favourite novels, including Peter Ackroyd’s Chatterton and Graham Swift’s Waterland. The first examines the relationship between history and fiction (and their interpenetration and contingency) and the second explores history and human affairs using metaphors of land reclamation. Both are deeply moving and extremely well written. Next will be an older book, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a novel investigating immigration and the rise of unionism in the United States.
I once took an undergraduate English course at the University of British Columbia. It was on the post-World War II British novel. Some of the most excellent books I’ve ever encountered were on the reading list for that class. I remember the instructor’s name was Graham Good. He certainly was good at picking books!
Aug 11, 2011 @ 06:41:33
Hey, UBC had one of my favourite classes too – French Literature in translation… Flaubert, Camus, Zola – to this day, one of the things I want to do in my life is stand under the Pont Neuf in Paris and drink wine and yell “Dirty Swine” – a big afternoon for the characters in L’Assomoire… just struck me as very funny…
Actually I am reading Vanity Fair again, wallowing in Victorian England, but I’ve forgotton almost everything about it so it is kind of new to me.