And the winner is... (Classics Club Spin #43)

 ...number 2!

 

That's George Gissing's New Grub Street for me. I've read Charles Dickens: A Critical Study and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft by him before and liked them both, especially Henry Ryecroft. (Wonderful and underread.) This is supposed to be his masterpiece. 'Trials and tribulations in the lives of literary hacks' says the back of the book.

Have you read it? Did you spin and did you get something good? 

A Dream Deferred (#poetry)

Advice

Folks, I'm telling you,

birthing is hard

and dying is mean--

so get yourself

a little loving

in between.

 

-Langston Hughes

 

Testimonial

 

If I just had a piano,

if I just had a organ,

if I just had a drum,

how I could praise my Lord!

 

But I don't need no piano

  neither organ

  nor drum

for to praise my Lord!

 

-Langston Hughes

 

Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

 

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

 

Or does it explode?

-Langston Hughes

 

I feel like Langston Hughes has been in the air lately. A couple of my regular poetry sources have featured him.

 

Hughes (1901-1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri, and moved to New York City in 1921 for college. (Columbia.) He became an important writer in the Harlem Renaissance. These three poems all come from his volume Montage of a Dream Deferred of 1951, which represents voices heard around Harlem in one 24-hour period. The last one quoted is probably the best known poem of the book. It supplied Lorraine Hansbury the title for her hit play, as well as the title for a poem I've previously quoted on the blog. 

Classics Club Spin #43

 

Once again it's time for a new Classics Club spin. The rules are here but that's old news & the fun is showing off a list of books, so...straight to that!

1.) Willa Cather/Sapphira and the Slave Girl

2.) George Gissing/New Grub Street

3.) Nella Larsen/Passing

4.) Sinclair Lewis/Elmer Gantry

5.) Jack London/The Iron Heel

6.) Jack London/Martin Eden

7.) Harry Mark Petrakis/A Dream of Kings

8.) Edgar Wallace/The Four Just Men

9.) Eudora Welty/Delta Wedding

10.) Mikhail Bulgakov/Heart of a Dog

11.) Simone de Beauvoir/The Mandarins

12.) Joachim Machado de Assis/Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

13.) Benito Perez Galdos/That Bringas Woman

14.) Robert Walser/Jakob von Gunten

15.) John Ruskin/Unto This Last

16.) R. L. Stevenson/An Inland Voyage

17.) Apollonius Rhodius/The Argonautica

18.) Luis Vaz de Camões/The Lusiads

19.) Nezami Ganjavi/Layli and Majnun

20.) Gotthold Lessing/Nathan The Wise

 

These are all from my current Classics Club list. Which look good to you?