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Ed Park
I americium eternally dipping into the satellite of Charles Portis (especially The Dog of the South and True Grit), Nicholson Baker’s U and I, Renata Adler’s Speedboat, The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyöng. Sebald, too—mainly The Rings of Saturn. Lately I americium losing myself again successful the Samguk Yusa, a thirteenth-century postulation of past Korean lore.
I precocious reread The Catcher successful the Rye and Breakfast of Champions. I didn’t afloat grasp the depths of sadness successful some erstwhile I encountered them arsenic a young reader.
Amit Chadhuri
In the past 15 years, I person been rereading 2 books that I archetypal work arsenic a teen successful English translation and past forgot about: the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. I work them not arsenic spiritual texts but arsenic the earliest examples of creative-critical penning successful which thought and poesy travel together, and arsenic cardinal works for modernism. I besides spell backmost sometimes to the Irish poet-critic Tom Paulin’s postulation of captious essays, Minotaur: Poetry and the Nation State, for its extraordinarily shrewd and enlivening readings of poets similar John Clare and Elizabeth Bishop.
And I find myself returning to Paulin’s translations—more akin to Lowell’s “imitations” than to accepted translations—of chiefly European poets in The Road to Inver, particularly the poem “Bournemouth” by Paul Verlaine, which, successful Paulin’s version, speaks to maine connected galore levels. Tagore’s songs—so exquisite successful the archetypal Bengali—I reread each clip I sing them from the Gitabitan or Collected Songs. Some of Woolf’s essays successful their entirety; paragraphs from Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas and The Enigma of Arrival—these reward repeated reading.
Jamel Brinkley
Currently, I’m successful the wont of rereading The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard and Angels by Denis Johnson. Transit has this tremendous standard and a startling capableness to displacement betwixt the intimate and the grand, arsenic good arsenic an intricate architecture. Angels doesn’t consciousness architectural successful astir the aforesaid way, but the unusual impulses and movements of the publication are truly appealing. Both books connection unthinkable prose. Generally, the fabrication I find myself rereading includes Morrison’s Sula, Edward P. Jones’s 2 abbreviated communicative collections, and Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping.
Kevin Kwan
Evelyn Waugh’s novels are a perennial favourite of mine, especially Brideshead Revisited and Decline and Fall. To maine they conscionable get deeper and funnier with each reading, and you truly get to admit not lone what a genius satirist helium was, but besides however beauteous his penning was and however helium evoked a consciousness of place. I besides emotion re-reading Dominick Dunne’s books. I read People Like Us when it was archetypal released successful the precocious 1980s, and his glamorous depictions of New York nine was 1 of the things that lured maine to determination determination myself.
After a fewer years of Manhattan surviving and encountering the benignant of radical helium wrote about, I came to admit what an astute perceiver of quality quality helium was, and rereading the publication helped maine spot that full assemblage successful a full caller light. I consciousness the aforesaid mode about An Inconvenient Woman, which is Dunne’s ode to Los Angeles. After surviving successful LA for a while, I reread it and began to spot the metropolis connected a full different level. It revealed truthful overmuch astir the overlapping circles of power and wherefore this municipality operates successful the unsocial mode that it does. I precocious work it again and learned yet different fascinating facet of Hollywood history—this clip astir a notorious murder.
I work Alice Munro’s stories again and again. When you get to the operation “too overmuch joy” in All Fours, cognize that this was my acknowledgment of her acquisition to maine arsenic a writer and to this publication specifically. She died astatine a wonderfully aged property on the day All Fours came out, which of people means nothing, but that I cried successful a cab successful NY successful a infinitesimal erstwhile I had expected to lone consciousness wonderful. Which is precise Munro.
Kathryn Davis
Mostly these days each I privation to bash is reread. I privation to get a representation of who I americium present arsenic opposed to who I was erstwhile I archetypal read—for example—Wuthering Heights. It seems similar romance was the lone happening connected my caput (would Cathy and Heathcliff ever “get together?”) backmost then, arsenic opposed to being fascinated, much recently, with what Emily Bronte had to accidental astir the deadly toll Romance takes connected the quality psyche.
Anne Carson
Homer’s Iliad.
English (US) ·