I’ll have to give Maldoror another read. I recently read a book about Lautreamont that made me want to reread the Poesies.

My reading in the 18th century is probably limited to Diderot and Sterne… Defoe, not much else.

I’m glad you didn’t find my tone confrontational–it certainly wasn’t meant to be, but I worried that it might sound like that as soon as I submitted my comment. It’s just fun to debate these things, you know?

As to your points/questions:

a. “fous litteraires.”

b. I remember having a really hard time getting into “Gravity’s Rainbow,” and this after I’d enjoyed “The Crying of Lot 49″ tremendously. The first 150-200 pages were kind of a slog, but then something clicked, and I read the remaining 600 pages or so in a couple of days (this was during a period of post-collegiate unemployment), laughing like mad on almost every page. As to “Life,” it is a much much easier read–I remember Perec wrote once that he wanted to write the kind of book that, as a kid, one reads lying in bed on one’s belly, totally absorbed in its adventures–and he absolutely succeeded.

c. Maldoror–for a long time (before I actually read it from beginning to end) I found its macabre late Romanticism (the reason that many people seem to like it) overripe and uninteresting. It was only after reading the “Poesies,” and about them, that I realized it’s not so much a book of late Romanticism–but totally a meta-text, in a relationship of strange, hard-to-place irony to that tradition and its language. It’s actually the kind of thing that becomes much clearer the deeper you get into the text, especially in books 5 and 6.

d. Stendhal–like Diderot–is one of what I called my totem-writers, like you have totem-animals. I think I’ve read much of what both of them have written (probably a larger proportion of Diderot’s)–including art and literary criticism, autobiography, letters, etc. They become the kind of writers for whom–for me, at least–it is no longer a single text that counts (really, I listed “The Red and the Black” faute de mieux, though it is a tremendous book), but really their voice, the understanding of how their mind works–an understanding that transcends any kind of genre distinctions, including fiction/non-fiction.

e. Holderlin is one of my favorite poets ever (I know you’ve expressed your lack of interest in poetry before… It’s never too late!), along with Mallarme, Andrew Marvell, etc. “Hyperion” is his only novel, written ca. 1801-1802, IIRC, and reads like a dream of that Greece that Holderlin had dreamt of all his life, though never managing to get there. It is probably the most heartbreakingly beautiful novel I’ve read.

d. Yes, the Laclos really is that good. It is an epistolary novel, and I remember Paul de Man characterizing its letters once as being “as effective as bullets.” That is, if most epistolary novels are essentially constative, using the letters to tell stories, Laclos’ letters are often performative, each of them also an act of seduction or aggression.

Remember that I am, “officially,” an eighteenth-century scholar (plug: my book on Fragonard is coming out in September), and, even though I study the art of the period, I think it was Diderot and Laclos, as well as, outside of France, Sterne and Dr. Johnson who led me to it. Well, those along with these stunning Frago paintings I saw during my senior year in college… I’ve long had on the backburner a couple of articles, or maybe a book, on Diderot, and sooner or later I’ll get to them.

1) I really love almost all of Markson’s novels (except the early “entertainments”), and my picking over the others is simply the most recent one to be my favorite.

2) As for Queneau, he too is one where I’m a huge fan. Chiendent is the one I’ve read the most (that or maybe The Sunday of Life). Loin de Rueil was translated, I’ve got a very old paperback from the 40’s of it, which because of its fragile state, I’ve only read once. I’ve found Les Enfants du Limon a little too bloated with all those umm… I forgot what Queneau calls them, the weird scientists.

3) Yes, I’ve read Shandy. For some reason I just love Jacques.

4) You’re list is interesting. I’m still ashamed that I’ve not read Life a User’s Manual (someday). Ditto for Gravity’s Rainbow. Borges is a favorite, though it’s been awhile since I reread. I’ve never gotten into Beckett, and I’ve had only incomplete readings of Maldoror.

I’m starting to think I really need to read Stendhal. Considering all the French lit I read, it’s strange I’ve not read him yet.

I’m not at all familiar with Holderlin (German?), and have only seen the movie version of the Laclos. Is the novel really that good?

That being said, here’s my list, off the top of my head, in no order whatsoever:

Flaubert, Sentimental Education (though either Madame Bovary or Bouvard and Pecuchet could replace it on any given day).
Perec, Life A User’s Manual.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy.
Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
Holderlin, Hyperion.
Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Borges, Collected Fictions
Lautreamont, Maldoror
Beckett, Molloy (the whole trilogy, really, but Molloy is closest to my heart)
Stendhal, The Red and the Black (though probably my favorite piece of his is non-fiction, The Life of Henry Brulard).

When I first read The Last Samurai I read it and then immediately started back at the beginning and read it again.

Also, I agree with you about The Last Samurai. That is an excellent novel, and probably one of my own favorites.