The countries we know

It is no surprise that the country I know the best in literature is Britain. The 19th century especially: from Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, the Bronte sisters… to Robert Louis Stevenson, Wilkie Collins, Sherlock Holmes, Lewis Carroll, Dracula, Frankenstein…; my main blind spot is poetry, apart from a handful of poems by John Keats, John Clare, Wordsworth, the Brownings, Christina Rossetti, the Brontes… The 20th century I know less well: mostly Virginia Woolf (with preference for the essays), Muriel Spark, and Wodehouse; Daphne du Maurier, George Orwell, one E. M. Forster, one D. H. Lawrence, one John Fowles, one Graham Greene, one A. S. Byatt, one Kazuo Ishiguro, one or two by Hanif Kureishi… The more I list, the more ignorant I’ve realised I am. The late 16th century, early 17th century: Shakespeare particularly (The Rape of Lucrece left to read), and some of his contemporaries like Marlowe, Webster, Jonson; a bit of John Donne—my greatest humiliation is Milton (attempted a few months ago). I look through my reading of British literature, the 18th century glares back at me and a certain reader of this blog is going to shout, but take it easy, it is in the plan this year. 

But apart from being able to read things in the original, I’ve also got the advantage of going back and forth between London and Yorkshire. London is the city of Dickens and Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes and plenty of great writers and historical figures. Yorkshire is Bronte Country, not just Haworth and the moors: I go to Filey and Charlotte has stayed there; I take a trip to Scarborough and that’s where Anne was buried; I visit Oakwell Hall and the house inspired one of the settings for Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley. 

(me at Oakwell Hall recently)

American literature is next, again because I’m not hindered by (lack of) translation. Mostly 20th century: back when I was still reading a lot from the 20th century, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, Vladimir Nabokov, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison…; Edith Wharton, though she feels more like the 19th century; and in the recent years, Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor. Some of the 19th century: mostly Herman Melville and Henry James, The Awakening, The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer…

It is interesting to realise that British literature is the only literature I know through a relatively long span of time (some of you are going to bring up Beowulf and Chaucer, but late 16th century – 20th century is not too bad, yes?). I can roughly see the big picture. With other countries, I only see a small piece. 

Take Russian literature. I think I could say I know the 19th century quite well and with some depth, having read not only Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, and Turgenev, but also Lermontov and Leskov (I know my greatest humiliation is Pushkin). But the 20th century I only know a bit: Vladimir Nabokov, Vasily Grossman, Doctor Zhivago, a minor Bulgakov (Heart of a Dog), Isaac Babel, plus a few Soviet writers I read back in Vietnam like Maxim Gorky, Paustovsky, Ostrovsky’s How the Steel Was Tempered. The interesting part is that Tolstoy and Chekhov are the two prose writers closest to my heart, despite me knowing no Russian. 

Japanese literature I have read with some range but not much depth, I think. 20th century: Soseki, Akutagawa, Kawabata, Tanizaki, Kobo Abe, Haruki Murakami, Ryu Murakami… Heian literature: Murasaki Shikibu (The Tale of Genji and her diary), Sei Shonagon, and Sarashina Nikki (known in one translation as As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams). But what happened between the 11th century and the 20th? No clue. All I know is a couple of Basho’s poems from the 17th century. My Japan is mostly cinema. 

It is even worse when I look at other countries. 

See Spain, for instance. I only know the first half of the 17th century: Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón, Tirso de Molina… What happened afterwards? No idea. And even if we talk about 17th century Spain, I’ve only read a couple of plays by Calderón and Lope de Vega when these madmen wrote hundreds.

More embarrassing is the case of France. Whereas Russian literature or American literature has had quite a short period, French literature has a long, rich history like English literature. But I’ve only read a couple of French books from the 19th century: three from Flaubert, one from Zola, one from Balzac. A tiny bit from the 20th century, like Albert Camus. No excuse except my long-held prejudice against the French. 

I haven’t even mentioned the rich literary traditions with which I haven’t got acquainted. 

But perhaps the worst, most embarrassing for me is my ignorance of Vietnamese and Norwegian literatures, considering my background. With Vietnamese literature, I can tell you next to nothing about the books I read as I was growing up in Vietnam; the only thing that helps me score more than zero is that I have read Truyện Kiều, Chinh phụ ngâm, Cung oán ngâm khúc, and quite a bit of Hồ Xuân Hương, and Hàn Mặc Tử is one of my favourite poets. As for Norwegian literature, those of you who have followed this blog for a long time probably remember that I have mentioned multiple times and failed to do a Norwegian literature challenge, but forgive me, at least I have read Henrik Ibsen and plan to get to know well his plays. 

Why did I decide to take a long hard look at my reading? How narrow! How ignorant!