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When cyberpunk was invented, I devoured it and then went back and bought the first edition magazines it appeared in. ... There is a lot of Ayn Rand in William Gibson. -- MEM
None of the above. I finally admitted to myself that I have not much capacity for fiction, though I try. The last fiction work that I read all the way through was Swarm by Michael Crichton, about a year ago. Since then, I have failed to finish Moby Dick, Don Quixote, The Razor's Edge and now William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. This past winter, I worked with Don Asselin and he recommended Ring Lardner. I read a few of the short stories, but after a while, they lost their novelty. About 2002, I read The Sun Also Rises, but could not get far into For Whom the Bell Tolls.
First, I am surprised that Sinclair Lewis is on the list. I thought that Rand condemned him as a naturalist and having read Arrowsmith, I could see that plainly, even at 17. Also at that age, I read her edition of Ninety-Three when it came out and I ate up every word, ignoring all the obvious problems. When I tried it again about 10 years later, I could not read more than a few pages.
By that time, I had become morally opposed to literature in translation. Tradurre e tradirre. At best, you have the Cliff's Notes, but at worst, you entirely fail to receive the author's intent.
I read Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury as a young adult, but I found it one dimensional and not being in the cultural milieu, I missed much of the subtext. (It had to be pointed out that (a) the "cracked fashion plate" was a homosexual and (b) Hammer never kissed Minerva because that would have made him a homosexual.)
Ian Fleming is not on the list. Perhaps, she only liked the first movie. I read Casino Royale and On Her Majesty's Secret Service back in 1966 when I started with Ayn Rand. Since then, I read Goldfinger (which I remember) and two or three more (which I did not). They become formulaic. In fact, at that time, I actually enjoyed Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novelettes, which were packaged as trilogies, though they, too, are repetitive.
O. Henry is another one who is great for high schoolers. Clever, quick, and with a point they can get. As an adult, I found them shallow.
When I got into classics (Greek and Roman), I thought that Quo Vadis would be instructive and informative, but it was just boring. Plutarch tells a better story.
All in all, what it comes down to is that I just don't care about other people's personal problems.
Oddly, I do like a good problem. Isaac Asimov was always enjoyable: tightly written, clever elements, insightful conclusion. That goes for his mysteries (Black Widowers) and his science fiction and his sf mysteries (Wendell Urth, e.g.). When cyberpunk was invented, I devoured it and then went back and bought the first edition magazines it appeared in. I have Neuromancer and several others in hardcover first edition. However, like all of Robert Heinlein (or Steele's Orbital Decay), what you have is not so much a story about people, as an admittedly naturalistic cinema following people through the sociology of the "future," i.e., our present. The unfinished Pattern Recognition was the second or third Gibson that I failed to finish after Mona Lisa Overdrive. Neuromancer and Count Zero were both much better with the first being the best. There is a lot of Ayn Rand in William Gibson.
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