Jacob’s
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(group member since Sep 17, 2012)
Jacob’s
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from the Completists' Club group.
Showing 1-8 of 8
2400-or-so pages in. I read The Story of the Stone (5-volume Penguin edition translated by David Hawkes and John Minford) earlier this year, and I recently bought the 4-volume Foreign Language Press Yang translation because I'm contemplating a slow and leisurely reread of the novel at some point in the future. First half of next year, maybe. I also have The Scholars, which I may get to sometime in November or December. As for the rest, I'm considering Journey to the West next, probably sometime next year.
Yeah, when I say epic, I do mean epic. The Trilogy is close to 4000 pages long (The Deluge is 1800 pages, in 2 volumes, so calling it "The Trilogy" is a bit of a stretch), and most of his other novels are fairly long. I don't know what his short fiction is like yet, but I'll probably get to "Charcoal Sketches" (and "The Little Trilogy," if I can find it) before I tackle The Trilogy again.
I've read "With Fire and Sword," which I intend to re-read next year with the rest of the Trilogy. I also have "Charcoal Sketches and Other Tales."
Henryk Sienkiewicz (Sin-KAY-vitch), Polish writer and journalist (1846-1916), winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize for "outstanding merits as an epic writer." Some readers will be familiar with his novel Quo Vadis, but in Poland he is most famous for his epic trilogy (called "The Trilogy") of historical novels set in 17th-Century Poland. Much of his work was published in the US by Hippocrene Books, but most of it is out of print and very hard to find (unless you have a good library and/or a lot of money)Novels
-The Trilogy
--1. With Fire and Sword
--2. The Deluge (2 vols.)
--3. Fire in the Steppe
-The Teutonic Knights (also called "The Knights of the Cross")
-Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero
-On the Field of Glory
-In Desert and Wilderness
-The Polaniecki Family
-Without Dogma
-Vortices
Short fiction
-Charcoal Sketches and Other Tales
-"The Little Trilogy"
-Yanko the Musician and Other Stories
Other works
See here
I'm going to read False Gods and the Collected Stories later this year/early next, but I think I might reread some of the others. That doesn't help you now, I know, but it means we can talk about the books later if you read them too.
Brian wrote: "Jacob - is there a short fiction collection of his that you've read that stands out from the others?"Hard to say, really. I read them over a broad period of time, only one or two collections per year, so it's really hard to say which is better. The Young Apollo stands out a bit, but that might just be because it was my first. The Atonement and The Friend of Women were also pretty strong contenders, but that's not to say that The Anniversary and Manhattan Monologues weren't as good. I think your best bet is to pick one at random and give it a try, see what you think.
I've only read his later short fiction and his memoirs so far, but I intend to get to his earlier work soon. If I can find it. Most of his older stuff is out of print and very hard to find...
From Wikipedia:"Louis Stanton Auchincloss (September 27, 1917 – January 26, 2010) was an American lawyer, novelist, historian, and essayist. He is best known as a prolific novelist who parlayed his firsthand knowledge into dozens of finely wrought books exploring the private lives of America's East Coast patrician class (especially the world of Wall Street bankers, lawyers and stockbrokers). His dry, ironic works of fiction continued the tradition of Henry James and Edith Wharton."
He has over sixty books, so I'm putting the lists under spoiler tags to save space.
Novels: (view spoiler)
Nonfiction: (view spoiler)
Short story collections: (view spoiler)
