Should I put Don Quixote on my list? I was just lamenting that as much as I love The Three Musketeers I feel like I haven't really read them because I can't read them in French.

but I need to tell Melville, OK we get it, Ahab is a monomaniac, sheesh. It was like he had a quota of 25 "monomaniac"s that had to be inserted throughout the book. I did however enjoy the few appearances of effulgent.

Hey whoa "Moby Dick" (2010)

omfg- not only is the above miniseries supposed to air in the fall, but Timur Bekmambetov is working on a feature film. omfg!

I was just lamenting that as much as I love The Three Musketeers I feel like I haven't really read them because I can't read them in French.

I get that, but do you feel that way about Russian authors? or Italian? or Greek?

I think you have to get it how you can get it.

Which applies to so many things really.

As for Don Quixote, I would put it on the list. It is really incredibly modern, especially as regards authorship. Way ahead of its time. It's just really, really long and the First Part is really repetitive with endless tangents that don't relate to DQ's character at all. In the Second Part, the tangents exist, but he is usually more involved in them.

FYI: The two parts were published 10 years apart, and in the interim there was a rip-off second part floating around. So a lot of the Second Part involves commentary on this fact. Plus, many of the people that Don Quixote meets in the Second Part have read about his adventures in the First Part. And the whole book purports to be a translation of an Arabic manuscript that Cervantes "found" and he breaks into the story to comment on that, so that adds a whole other layer to it.

Yes, I feel that way about everyone who writes in a language I can't read. And then I'm glad that Nabokov and Sartre chose to write in English because I know I'm getting the story the way they intended it. I do go on reading translations, but I always feel a little... is guilty the right word? Like I should take the time to learn the language. Maybe I'm just being silly.

the First Part is really repetitive with endless tangents

I could say the same thing about Moby Dick. The tangents don't end in the first part, either. He stops in the middle of some serious shit going down to insert a footnote about how whales breach.

You are being silly. About the guilt. I mean it's wonderful to learn languages, but you shouldn't feel guilty that you can't read them all.

BTW, as far as I know, the only languages Sartre knew were French and German (he grew up in Alsace).

BTW, as far as I know, the only languages Sartre knew were French and German (he grew up in Alsace).

oops. hmm... Who's the french guy who wrote in English because (heh) he though it was prettier than French?

Offhand, no idea. Beckett chose to write in French instead of English, but I can't think of someone who did the reverse.

Could I be remembering Beckett's choice exactly wrong? That seems like something my brain might do.

I think Joseph Conrad never really wrote until he learned English.