By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, allegedly, nonetheless, it is only 2456th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, not to mention that I did not even think I should bother after the first few pages – you have thousands of reviews of magnum opera and lesser works from the aforementioned and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube page, where my macaws steal the show

 

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, allegedly, nonetheless, it is only 2456th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, not to mention that I did not even think I should bother after the first few pages – you have thousands of reviews of magnum opera and lesser works from the aforementioned and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube page, where my macaws steal the show

 

6 out of 10

 

I love poetry https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-sonnets-by-shakespeare-is-supposed.html I even know three or five sonnets, including: ‘My reason, the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, Hath left me, and I desperate now approve Desire is death, which physic did except…’

 

The introduction to By Grand Station I sat Down and Wept says: ‘I doubt if there are more than half a dozen masterpieces of poetic prose in the world’ which sounds mesmerizing, I expect I rather have my ‘prose and poetry’ separated, which is not to say anything about the value of this ‘chef d’oeuvre’, it is my incomprehension

We find that this was ‘first published in 1945, it made small stir, but established an underground reputation, and then 25 years later it was published again…It is largely about the astonishing dualism whereby a person can be middle class and Isolde at the same time’ the background is indeed impressive, I must admit

 

To The Hermitage https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/to-hermitage-by-malcolm-bradbury-author.html by Malcolm Bradbury has this astounding passage: ‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

Now, the question is would Grand Station, and other books, pass this test? And the answer is it does not, alas, not for this reader, it might be a question of timing, I am ecstatic because I read Out of The Shelter by David Lodge https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/about-magnum-opus-changing-places-by.html

 

When a novel is so glorious, it is hard to accept something so much less satisfying, I would rather read again Changing Places, The Sisters Brothers, and almost any novel by Kingsley Amis, than waste my time with oeuvres that are not in my curriculum after all, I read for pleasure, not because I have this task, although I have taken some lists…

Such as The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read and managed to read maybe six hundred entries, some of them proved to be fabulous, others are not devoid of quality, merits, evidently, but they just do not appeal to me https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/despre-viata-fericita-aka-on-happy-life.html I must take Seneca’s advice

 

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