Literary Masterpieces You've Often Attempted, But Never Finished

iirc Proust was meant to be just a couple of volumes and then as he got into the project he kept writing further and more. I want to re-read the first and last book (with maybe 'The Prisoner' in between).

Anyway, it is a big book, but it isn't that either.

Ulysses started life as a short story allegedly

The textual history is super complicated, and I'm a bit fuzzy on it right now, but yeah, iirc, it was originally meant to be a three-volume work. I think that the earliest material completed was the basics of Swann's Way, In the Shadows..., and the second half of Time Regained. Then, as time went on, and the publications were delayed by the war and Proust's own obsessive revisions, the middle sections sprawled, and the Albertine story grew like a blight. And I think that there's controversy too over how much of that should be in the final book, since the last draft before Proust's death seems to show him crossing out an enormous amount of La Fugitive.

I remember one critic (Shattuck, I think) characterizing it as if the novel had to keep growing until it had totally spent itself, in order to justify the transformative effect of the ending.

I found the first, third, and fourth books the funniest and sharpest.

My answer is Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

ooh that one's on my list too and I have a really lovely ancient hardback of it

I have a fear that I'm done with big books: I just don't have the, I don't know, gumption, wherewithal, desire to tackle them. Even something like *A Place of Greater Safety* glares at me from the shelf. Hoping it's a phase.

I need a separate thread for 'Literary masterpieces you have lying about the place that you're sure you're beyond attempting'.

I've just bought the mirror and the light, all 900 pages of it, and I want to re-read the first two first but idk man it's a lot.

Nowadays I try to read a literary classic every few months, and spend the rest of my time on fantasy/horror/sci-fi.

Basically my exact reading habits at age 15.

The Golden Age of ILB iirc

My answer is Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

― glumdalclitch, Sunday, 27 November 2022 bookmarkflaglink

ooh that one's on my list too and I have a really lovely ancient hardback of it

― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Sunday, 27 November 2022 bookmarkflaglink

I read it all the way two years ago after thinking I would just dip in and out of it as its not a narrative. It's probably best as a dipping in book.

Penguin are reissuing it as a paperback next year.

Was wondering last night about difference between "sadness" and "melancholy" (also between sadness and melancholy, re words/actual experience). And thinking that Burton's book drew from connotations of his time, like with humours---what say yall about any of that, book incl. or aside===?

I'd meant to maybe look it up today, but this thread appeared first.