Well, I know you weren’t looking for sympathy, but sorry to hear that.
The first time I read Proust I got about 5/6 of the way through all of it, but I think I dropped not because I didn’t like it, but something or the other interrupted me and I never went back to it. The edition I was reading was the big Moncrieff translation, the gray and black books. Moncrieff was famously similar in sensibility to Proust, and contemporaneous, and people love or hate his translation. Here’s a good description:
You mention the Penguin edition, and I think that’s the Lydia Davis translation, and that also interests me. This last Christmas I received a book of essays I’d requested, Essays Two, by that same Lydia Davis - I’d read a positive review in the New York Review of Books, and the first quarter of the books bears that out so far - her thoughts on the act of translation are really interesting and well-described.
I suspect I’ll reread Proust as well (I picked up Davies last night and had forgotten how arch his writing was)…I just want to think about which translation. Good luck, feel free to share any thoughts as you go along…
I reread selected books each year, usually choosing something I hadn’t read in a decade or more. Most recent was John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor, which I enjoyed a lot more now that I realized more of what he was doing.
Before that, it was The Einstein Intersection. I think my next reread will be another of Chip’s novels, most likely Nova or Tales of Nevèrÿon.
Every few years I revisit The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, at least the first four books. H2G2 is as close to a holy text this atheist has; I even have a tattoo of a fanart version of the thumb logo.
I think I’ve also dipped into the last two printed editions of The Trouser Press Record Guide enough times that I can recite some of the reviews from memory. Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung is another comfort book to which I can always return.
I’ve read the Sherlock Holmes stories at least a dozen times over the years. Modern mysteries are re-read much less often, though occasionally I’ll pull one by a good author off the shelf and start reading, realizing that while I may have an inkling as to how it turns out, I’ve forgotten much of the plot.
Excellent histories get re-read. I dig back into Barbara Tuchman’s “The Proud Tower” once in a awhile, to appreciate the era and how great a writer she was at delineating it.
I reread the science fiction books I enjoyed in my youth from time to time - Isaac Asimov, A.C. Clarke, etc… I am currently working through Asimov’s Robots series
Every five or ten years I’ll reread Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises probably my favorite ever.
I’ll occasionally pull out Richard Feynman’s memoirs and read a few chapters at random.
The book I’ve reread the most is the Tao Te Ching, ‘The Book of Perfectability’, by Lao Tzu, which I first discovered in College. It’s a very short book, so not that difficult to reread, but its meaning can be very difficult to grasp for newcomers. I’ve read various translations over the years in an effort to best ‘triangulate’ the most accurate meaning of an ancient Chinese text translated into English.
My first translation was an edition that lists Raghavan Iyer as the ‘general editor’, so I assume the translator as well. That’s my favorite translation to this day, partly because it’s my first, partly because the English is very poetic. It’s not the most accessible version for a first-time reader, though. I bought my wife, when she was still my girlfriend, a more accessible translation that I thought was still very true to the original meaning. Unfortunately she lost it soon after (intentionally? ).
I’m not a dedicated Taoist, but I find that, since I tend to try too hard at too many things at once, and overthink things far too much at times, the closer I’m able to live according to the teachings of Lao Tzu, the calmer and happier I am.
I used to read Huck Finn every ten years, but I am way overdue. Read A Clean Well Lighted Place once in a while as a mantra for meditation. But. my most common re-read is Moby Dick. Each chapter is an individual essay. I savor the imagery of the Try-Works. A huge inferno in the center of a wood. canvas and rope ship. And. the law of Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish is both relevant and humorous.
I don’t regularly re-read the Tao Te Ching, but I’ve got at least three different translations.
When I first started listening to audiobooks I didn’t have many of them, so I listened to them over and over on commutes and long road trips. One of the ones I had was a translation of the Tao Te Ching, read in a gravelly voice by someone who sounded like he’d normally be playing cowboys. Hearing elegant and cryptic Asian philosophy delivered in a cowboy voice was a very weird experience.
(Almost as weird was the translation of The Odyssey read by a professor with a powerful Southern accent. It was like being in a parallel reality where Christianity never took hold, so the conservative Southern fundamentalist was a Homerian.)
Don’t really have a favorite, and don’t recall the translators (I had to look them up). The Mentor edition (translated by R.B. Blakney back in 1955) tries to be too rational, though, with lengthy “explanations” that I suspect a Taoist would disown. If I need to look at one, I generally go for the Penguin edition, translated by D.C. Lau in 1964.
Only books I re-read are ones I first read as a child. In those cases re-reading as an adult allows for a newer understanding and perspective that would have passed me by as a youth. These are typically classics. Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne are the ones that come to mind. I found Great Expectations a chore to get through as a kid and I am pretty certain I never ended up finishing it but I view it differently now having completed it.
Thanks for the kind thoughts, and the links. I’m feeling fine. You obviously know that Proust is someone you read when you are feeling reasonably on top of things, so I would like to get this done while circumstances allow.
The Penguin edition has a different translator for each volume. Lydia Davis was the translator for the first volume (entitled The Way by Swann’s – although that was not the title she would have chosen). Davis has some interesting things to say about CK Scott Moncrieff’s translation in her introduction – she is mostly a fan of it – and about translation in general. (These probably occur also in the articles to which you sent the links, and her book.) The translation that I read first was CKSM, with emendations by Enright and Kilmartin. I do also have the un-amended CKSM, in 4 volumes (Random House, I believe), which I bought second-hand. (Of course CKSM didn’t get through the entire cycle, the final volume being done by someone else.)
Outing myself as a Proust geek, I have also ordered the first 3 volumes in the translation by William C Carter. (He has only gotten up to Vol. 4, but this one is extremely expensive, so I will see how I like the first three!) I am enjoying Davis’ translation, but proceeding very slowly with it – I only get to read a few pages each night. It is less dressed-up than CKSM.
You could consider going back and reading the final volume – Time regained? (I forget exactly). There is a magnificent set piece scene towards the end of that – the third such in the cycle, of which the narrator’s consuming the madeleine dipped in tea was the first – for which all the preceding volumes prepare, but which is magnificent in its own right. It is worth it just for that.
I was introduced to Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau in high school english lit. And re-read it as I went through college and into my career. Then, just a few years ago, I got a copy of the Cliff Notes for it. Wow - THAT opened new insights.
So if you have a favorite classic, you might try rereading it along with an exegesis.
Someone mentioned Starship Troopers. It was apparently highly criticized at the time, because Robert Heinlein wrote a short piece defending it. In my opinion that defense should be part of the any new book edition - in the same way that Civil Disobedience is typically “packaged” with Walden.
A few years ago I read The Annotated Walden, with annotations by Philip Van Doren Stern, part of “The Annotated [Whatever]” series (I’ve got a large collection of those). It certainly illuminated a lot of things, possibly better than Cliff’s or Monarch notes (although I never used any other commentary, so I can’t say). Definitely worth doing. I wrote a magazine column as a result.
I love Starship Troopers (I’ve reread it some 30 o 50 times since it was a favorite of mine when I was young) but it’s fascist as fuck.
(I think I’ll re read it again this year, but in the original language this time, the version I read was in spanish (which is good because I didn’t know enough English at the time))
Starship Troopers: The defense I mentioned is hard to find. It is in the Heinlein book Expanded Universe, as an AFTERWORD to the article titled “Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry”.
I’ll summarize. (Don’t argue with me if you don’t like these points - argue with Heinlein.)
In Starship Troopers:
Veteran (and henceforth franchised) means anyone who has volunteered for government service, which may include the military - at the government’s option. The book states that 19 out of 20 veterans did not serve in the military.
Anyone serving as a volunteer may resign at any time .
There is no conscription (no draft).
“The government is militaristic”. The word “militaristic” has many definition, none of which apply to the government in the novel. No one can hold office until discharged from service. The military tends to be despised by most civilians - this is made explicit.
“The book glorifies the military.” Yes, specifically the poor bloody infantry mudfoot.
“I think I know what offends most of my critics…It is the dismaying idea that a voice in governing the state should be earned instead of being handed to anyone who is 18 years old and has a body temperature near 37 C…”
I don’t know how many times I read Henry Miller’s Rosy Crucifixion: Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus. I should say I read most of it, there were stretches of metaphysical ramblings that were, for me, a bit tedious. But you take the bad with the good
I think it is really dismaying,because “earning it” involves having to serve under the orders (potentially lethal or extremely hard to comply with ) of the people working for the current government, so it would be extremely easy for that people to treat the “correct” (say white, anglo-saxon and republican) people in one way (“Recruit Bush!, please order this list of 10 items before tomorrow”) and the “incorrect” people in another way ("Recruit Clinton!, I need you to count all the feet on this box of 1000 caterpillars before 10 o’clock or so help me god!).
It works well in the novel, but in the real world it would be abused pretty quickly.
).
