About the project
Ten years ago, my brother gave me a book to celebrate my graduation from the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. The book was War and Peace. Since then, I’ve started it at least four times, and it didn’t stick.
This summer, however, was different. I pushed through the first 60 pages, and all of a sudden, I was into it. I made it to base camp.
Mountain climbers set their sights on Seven Summits — the tallest mountain on each continent. The big ones. For a city-dweller like me, it’s books that loom large: War & Peace, Don Quixote, The Tale of Genji — these are my Everest, Denali, Kilimanjaro.
I’ve selected seven literary summits:
- Tolstoy’s War & Peace
- Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji
- Dante’s Divine Comedy
- George Eliot’s Middlemarch
- Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
- Cao’s Story of the Stone (or Dream of the Red Chamber) and
- Cervantes’ Don Quixote
Though not all the books are novels, they each have a reputation for standing out as monumental works in their respective languages. I’ve already completed two of them and read parts of several others for classes along the way, but I hope this blog will offer a fresh chance to enjoy them individually and in contrast with one another.
How long will it take? Who knows? They are big books, so it’ll be a while. I hope this blog will be a motivation to keep things moving and keep it fun.
One other note: I’ll be reading the books in English (big surprise!). When it comes to literary expeditions, I’m a generalist. Unlike Ed Viesturs (climbing legend who scaled the seven summits without oxygen tanks), I’ll use any assistance (i.e., translation, commentary, maps, family trees) needed to get the job done and to see over the peak to the other side.
Just as any mountain has many routes to the top, so each of these works has multiple translators. Part of the fun is in choosing the particular route, and comparing it with other people’s experiences.
I hope to hear from you along the way.
Join me!
Here are the translations/editions I plan to use:
[mouseover for title & translator name, click for full info]
on July 11th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Tale of Genji has been on our shelf for a few years now–for some reason I have never been able to convince our book group to tackle it, even though I bring it often and suggest it…
I also am thankful that you admitted defeat on at least one book. I have been defeated multiple times by Proust, and only ever read the first half Don Quixote.
You might be interested to know that my wife read the first 3/4ths of War & Peace while we were living in Slovakia, but then gave up on the project because she had to return the novel to the school library when we moved back to the states. Seven years later, she finally picked it up and finished it when it came out in a new translation.
And speaking of new translations, this is one of the reasons over time I have been enticed to read these works- translations by respected and talented translators. It’s how I read the Iliad after being forced to read the Odyssey in college…
Of all the books you are reading, the one that has been the most formative on my literary and personal imagination is actually Middlemarch. Casaubon and all that. I’m glad you’re tackling it!
on September 28th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Clint,
Thanks for your comment.
As you can tell, I fell off the bloghorse for a while and am just now climbing back in the saddle. In the meantime, I had put Proust down and have been reading some George Eliot. I just finished Silas Marner last week and got Adam Bede as a gift recently. The shorter pieces are getting me fired up for Middlemarch. But Proust comes first — at least I need to complete Swann’s Way before moving on.
I confess, when it comes to reading, I am a philanderer. That’s not a mortal sin, is it? Part of the reason for the blog is to keep me on track, even when my inclination is to move on to other (shorter) books.
Ben