Vox Hunt: On My Nightstand
Show us what's on your nightstand.
Submitted by Mike E.
1) Alarm clock, complete with the most annoying cock-a-doodle-doo rooster noise known to man.
2) Multiple cans of coke zero. I had a Neuroscience exam on Friday, self-explanatory.
3) Anna Karenina, greatest book ever written.
4) Diary
2) Multiple cans of coke zero. I had a Neuroscience exam on Friday, self-explanatory.
3) Anna Karenina, greatest book ever written.
4) Diary
Comments
"Anna Karenina, greatest book ever written"
A very good book, to be sure -- but you live in a world that was once inhabited by the likes of James Joyce and Marcel Proust.
Ha -- I forgot Flaubert. Thank you.
I think the maker of this list is a little too keen on Russian literature; yet, oddly, decided to leave Crime and Punishment off the list. I think the whole idea of a 10 greatest books list is pretty moronic.
I think Joyce is the writer everyone since wishes they were.
What you don't realize is that, in the original Russian, Tolstoy reads like Danielle Steele. ;-)
Wow.
Okay, first of all, I was just teasing. I liked "Anna Karenina," I don't read or speak Russian, and I certainly didn't intend to offend or upset you.
Secondly, . . . maybe I don't have a secondly. Maybe that's it.
Sorry.
I guess I would say that it's dumb to try to rank things that are experienced subjectively. Breakfast of Champions profoundly moved me when I read it, but it was due to the circumstances of my life as much as the power of Vonnegut's prose -- I wouldn't put it at the top of any "greatest novels" list, but at the same time, I can't really say that any novel has effected me more deeply.
However, subjective experiences cannot be compared. You are moved by Anna Karenina, as am I; I am moved by Dubliners and Ulysses, as (perhaps) you are -- how can we compare these experiences? Is it even worthwhile to argue about how one can enjoy one or the other to a greater or lesser degree?
But if you take the subjectivity -- the emotional resonance, the feeling of connection -- out of the equation, and try to rank works based on their technical virtuosity or whatever other scale you might use, what's the point? Works of art are supposed to move us.
I don't know what I'm trying to say.