Crushes

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My current literary crushes:

• Vladimir Nabokov. If you’ve read Lolita, you know who he is. If you’ve read Pnin, too, you really know what I mean. The man is a genius. And he wasn’t even writing in his native language.
• P.G. Wodehouse. This has been more of a lifelong favorite of mine; like Nabokov, Wodehouse can do the superlong-yet-not-dull description thing, but he does it with humor. He’s not an author to read if you’re having a deep existential crisis, but if you’re feeling sad he is the best kind of humorist there is.
• Ntozake Shange. If you don’t know who she is,  you probably should. While her work is a little dated and kind of difficult to do in certain situations (i.e. an all-white drama class), she uses dialect in such a profoundly natural way that can be fun or dramatic (or both!) depending on the moment.
• Anton Chekhov. Another old flame . The Seagull is my absolute favorite of his plays: it’s the perfect kind of tragedy.

My current “burn list”:

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• Mark Twain. I HATE HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Maybe it’s my english-snob side, but I honestly was so bored reading that book. I didn’t get it–the characters didn’t ever really talk to one another.
• Charles Dickens. I’ve never read Bleak House (which I’m told is actually quite good), but I can’t stomach most of Dickens. It seems too plodding and the characters are all kind of flat…plus their names reveal who they are as people, which always annoys me.

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