Train-reading today was George Gissing's letters. Totally fun. I now ought to read the unexpurgated version, because I kind of suspect that some elements of his life have been deleted. His love life, for instance, is sadly absent.
My favourite moment on that long, long train-trip was Gissing related. I was reading his thoughts on Charlotte Bronte (almost worshipful), when a group of students at the back of the train started listening to one of their number read Jane Eyre. I kept thinking "This is a joke: they can't be reading from Jane Eyre." But they were. It gave a rather nice counterpoint to Gissing's thoughts.
Reading a series of private writings by one of the greats of English literature is really reassuring. He didn't start brilliant. He started very talented (especially in the language and literature side of the 19th century curriculum) but rather normal, and developed all that amazing strength bit by bit. He paid for the publication of his first book.
You can see him grow and change and discover genius in his letters: it is exciting reading. Seeing his style grow and grow until every sentence is worth its weight in gold and every person he describes leaps off the page makes me think that we are not tolerant enough of early work these days. We are missing on the superlative writers who need nurturing and who make the shape of literature change as they grow into maturity. How do we allow our Gissings to get as far as The Whirlpool (which is one of the best descriptions of being a woman trapped in a conservative society that I have ever read) or lead them into writing their New Grub Street?
Gissing has always had a huge appeal for me as a writer and finally I discover that in some ways we are a bit alike. It is rather amusing to trace similarities. I didn't know when I discovered him that I was going to develop into a sad shadow. I think a lot of these similarities apply to anyone who is not of robust health, who has a strong addiction to education and an even stronger one to books, and who cannot conceive of a life with no writing in it. The main difference is in degree of talent: I am no George Gissing. On the other hand, he could not be rude to people in Old French.
In 1885 he listed his favourite writers for his sister Ellen. He called them the "really great men" (he did know Sand was female, and thought she was immensely wise, so he intends 'men' to mean 'humans') and divided them by language.
Greek: Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides
Latins: Virgil, Catullus, Horace
Italian: Dante, Boccaccio
Spanish: Don Quixote (he admits later in the letter to not reading Spanish, and mentions Cervantes by name at that point, but I like the thought of a business card that reads "Don Quixote: author and tilter at windmills" so I am leaving the name he put in his list proper)
German: Goethe, Jean Paul (I am not sure who Jean Paul was - can anyone mend my ignorance?), Heine
French: Moliere, George Sand, Balzac, De Musset
English: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Browning and Scott
I don't agree with all his top authors, but I have read most of them (except that he read Classical Greek in the original, which I can't claim to). It made me think, though, that I don't classify by language, I classify by genre.
Anyone have any thoughts on what authors *have* to be in a list of speculative fiction greats? I am not after authors that are great within the genre and influential within the genre but scarcely loved by anyone else. I am curious to see if we can establish a list of the top .001% of speculative fiction writers. William Shakespeare, Mme d'Aulnoye, Kurt Vonnegut, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Ursula le Guin come to mind first.
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