Charles Neider (1915–2001)

I had read some of this material previously. That is to be expected when you are talking about the short novels of extremely famous authors. I was looking forward to rereading the two I was already familiar with - Mann’s Death in Venice and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. The remainder of the collection swings from excellent to so-so. In spite of its fame, I cannot bring myself to enjoy Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground. Far too much dissertation about what is being seen. On the show more other hand, such entries as Melville’s Bonito Cereno (based on true events where a captain and crew are coerced on a mutinous ship), Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych (the study of a judge who has lived the life that is expected, but finds himself dying without a good explanation – either physically or morally), and James’ The Aspern Papers (in which a man tries to finagle access to a dead poet’s letters by wooing the owner’s daughter, in the process mixing his emotions up with his desire for the documents) are excellent.

On the one hand, it is hard to go wrong with a collection of such famous authors. But it would be easy, because these are shorter works, to not see the best. (Dostoyevsky strikes me as the perfect example.) All to say that this turns into a pleasurable experience, even with the slower aspects.

(One quick note – skip the introduction, unless you revel in academic gobbled-gook. I eventually gave up, finding both spoilers and boring, useless information. show less

Excellent collection of unusual letters and articles published by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and edited by Mr. Neider. The "rarities" are a hilarious addition to any Twain enthusiast's library. The format makes for quick reading, and an essay or interview can be read on its own, whenever the mood suits. The table of contents and index are thorough for the reader with a specific reference, but otherwise the book can be opened just about anywhere for a quick dose of Twain's wit.

I love Twain. All his works are half tedium, half description of the early 20th Century, and half knee-slapping laughter. These just seemed to miss that laughter half. A few are gems, but remember, there 82 speeches in here. oh, well.

A pretty inconsistent book for me. Although, it did get considerably better at around page 200. There are lots of classics in this anthology, a lot of well known stories and some lesser known ones, but it wasn't necessarily the most popular ones that took hold of me (Nabokov, Tolstoy, Sarte, etc.). Either way, I did find a good handful of new writers.

It just goes to show that out of 49 stories (I guess, set in stone classics) it was fairly easy to order a top ten:

01: A Dogs Tale - Twain
02: show more The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller - Flaubert
03: The Snows of Kilimanjaro - Hemingway
04: That Evening Sun Go Down - Faulkner
05: Birds of Passage - Nexo
06: Solitude - Unamuno
07: Idiots First - Malamud
08: Mr. Aristotle - Silone
09: A Passion in the Desert - Balzac
10: The Massacre of the Innocents - Maeterlinck show less