I intend to start compiling, if only for my own use, a bibliography of books and works that Arthur Machen approved of. That's an excuse for rereading
Hieroglyphics,
Far-Off Things, et al.
Ones that come to mind without checking:
Three books he said (or the Recluse in
Hieroglyphics said) he read frequently, every one to three years, include Rabelais's
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Cervantes'
Don Quixote, and Dickens's
Pickwick Papers -- the last being the only one of the three that I have read. I wish I knew whether Machen meant Rabelais in the original French, or the 17th-century Urquhart translation, which has been called "the finest translation ever made from one language into another."*
Machen referred to
Life on the Mississippi as being Mark Twain's best book. I'm afraid I didn't record the source, but my guess is it was
Hieroglyphics. Yes, I'm reading the Twain now, slowly, just before lights out from time to time. The early chapter with the rivermen and the haunted barrel is first-rate gruesome humor.
He speaks fondly of the fiction of Sir Walter Scott as something he explored when he was a lad, and he sticks up for it as an adult. I'm not sure he zeroes in on particular titles. Speaking for myself, I've found Scott's best work to be the novels set a few generations before Scott's own time, not the medieval ones. For first-timers, I'd suggest
The Bride of Lammermoor or
The Heart of Midlothian, with the suggestion that one start with Chapter 2.
Scott's "Proud Maisie" is one of my favorite poems. Just now reading it again I got goosebumps on my arms and the backs of my legs.
[
www.poetryfoundation.org]
I haven't read any of his long poems yet.
Most of this posting maybe should be deleted, since only
Life on the Mississippi qualifies as nonfiction. I'll leave that stuff there in case anyone's interested, with that acknowledgment.
*[
scholarcommons.sc.edu]
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 9 Aug 21 | 04:39PM by Dale Nelson.