An author’s best work

Hi all,

In the spirit of end-of-year lists and reckonings and summarising, I was thinking about how in many cases, one work tends to stand out as an author’s best. Or at least, a couple of works stand out.

This is also true of composers and visual artists in particular…literary examples:

- Joseph Heller, Catch 22
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
- Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
- Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
- Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera + One Hundred Years of Solitude

This is a little subjective, I realise, and very debatable, but in many cases I do think it stands up…

…so, in these cases, do you gravitate to nicer editions? The more I look at my library, the more I realise I’ve curated it to include these stand out works and in Folio or equally good editions.

E.g. I’m going to jettison Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy, but keep Brideshead; I’ve got rid of all my Fitzgeralds but am keeping Gatsby.

Of course, there are many exceptions…who can choose just one or two Dickens? (For the record I’d choose Great Expectations)

These are also the titles I’d re-read. (I don’t re-read many books) I only have about 500 books and this is part of my approach to keep it under control!

I'm not a real collector: if I read two or three of an author's books and find each in its way worthwhile, perhaps worth returning to later, then I'm immediately disposed to see whether there's a well-printed complete edition of the author that can be located and isn't prohibitively expensive. If there is, I'll buy it, make the acquaintance of the whole work, or as much of it as I get to, at my leisure, and have almost no interest in acquiring other editions of their individual books. There are, no doubt, minor exceptions. I think of it as an approach that saves time, costs space, but increases opportunity through the multitude of books that stand there awaiting discovery.

>1 Jeremy53: Seems like a healthy and practical way of collecting. Keep what you like and get rid of books you've read and don't want to re-read.

I have many great paperback books that I am always going to hang on to. Some favourite books I've upgraded to the FS version:

Catch-22
Brothers Karamazov
Treasure Island
Montaigne's Essays
Graham Greene's Works
Wind in the Willows
Martian Chronicles
Day of the Jackal
On the Road
Lord of the Rings

>1 Jeremy53: Yes it often appears like that, but the appraisal of books is very personal.

Is Madame Bovary really better than Salammbô ?
Is The brothers Karamazov better than the Idiot or Crime and Punishment ?
Is In Patagonia better than the Songlines ?

Oftentimes, the best writers can not be reduced to one single best book

one work tends to stand out as an author’s best
I tend to find authors become known for one or two works but if you ask a fan of the author it's seldom the famous book that's their preferred one. It's further complicated by certain books being adapted for film or tv. As an example No Country For Old Men is probably McCarthy's most known property due to the success of the film, followed by The Road. His best book is usually said to be Blood Meridian. However a fan might well say Suttree is his best book.

John Williams' Stoner makes more lists than Butcher's Crossing, which I prefer, but Augustus is the book that got recognized with awards during his lifetime.

It depends a bit on the author's output too. Certain books are more commercial than others, others more introspective or niche - difficult books don't tend to be the best performers. Some books become so iconic, say Frankenstein, it's hard to convince people the author wrote more than one book (FS also published The Last Man a while back). When books get iconic it's also hard to make the case it's not the author's best work. I don't have any straight answers for what's right, it's just a fun topic to think about.

>5 A.Godhelm:

All interesting and valid points. I enjoyed your post.

I believe it heavily depends on the corpus of the author. Harder to pick a favorite Pratchett book than point to Bulgakov’s best work. What stands out also depends on the reader - some might prefer Rama to Space Odyssey or Screwtape Letters to Narnia. In any case I do lean to nicer editions in general, whether I’m reading the book for the first time or keeping it for reread/reference.

Some interesting points above…definitely depends on the author’s oeuvre…and whether the work hits the mainstream…

Good one…

I’m a big Peter Carey fan and loved Parrot and Olivier in America, but it’s not particularly well regarded among his other novels. But I’d definitely get a nice edition of it if it ever came up.

Also, my feelings about books can change over time…look, you’re all making it tricky to come up with a strategy that keeps my library from getting bigger and bigger…
;-)

>8 Jeremy53: Don't worry, you can make space by moving furniture and family members to the garage

>1 Jeremy53:

I'm holding onto to all of my old paperbacks, in the absolute certainty that we are pitchforking our way towards another bookburning era.

>1 Jeremy53:
Have to agree with >5 A.Godhelm: and >7 bacchus.:
For instance, I'd absolutely challenge your assessment on Jane Austen! P&P might be the best known, especially here in the UK after the well known TV dramatisation, but it certainly does not stand out as her 'best'. Perhaps one of them, but Emma and Persusasion are both regarded as her best by others. My own favourite is S&S (closely followed by Emma), even though I can see why it's not regarded by many as a 'best'. However, I was content to buy single volumes of Cold Comfort Farm, L'Etranger, The Mandarins, Animal Farm etc,

So - for some writers one book stands out; for others two stand out; for others more than two stand out. I think that covers all the bases fairly comprehensively!

And that applies to my buying too. Some authors (Austen, Dickens, Forster, Hardy etc), I want a full set. Others, I'm happy to have just one or two. However, if I want the full set of an author, and FS has only cherry-picked 'the best', then I often won't buy that cherry-picked volume. Thus for example, I went to Library of America for my Steinbecks (and others), and I passed on Germinal - just one taster of the Rougon-Macquart sequence didn't interest me (there were a couple of earlier ones too). I've also gone elsewhere for my Walter Scotts! I remain disappointed at the hodge-podge approach to Virginia Woolf.
Having said all that, there are exceptions to rules as ever. I sold my full set of George Eliot mainly because I found it ugly, and bought an alternative set. I did, then, however, also buy an earlier FS one-off volume of Middlemarch, which is a favourite (and I really liked that particular production!). Equally, I whittled down my Kiplings to the 4 volumes I really wanted, and disposed of the rest. Horses for courses is all I can think!