tiganeasca
Moderator
I love charting, tabulating, counting, examining, etc. And so, over the years, I have occasionally subjected my library to a little analysis to see what I could learn about my collection of fiction. I have, it should be said, made a very conscious effort for many years, to add books and authors from underrepresented (or unrepresented) countries, often specifically seeking out authors from, say, Mauritania or Laos or Guyana. Probably not surprisingly, although precise percentages have varied over the years and the smaller parts have gotten larger, the general contours have remained pretty stable.
I decided to check things out again this morning and thought the results were, as always, interesting. And depressing. The numbers obviously reflect my tastes in part. But they also reflect the availability of works in English. (Although I can manage to read several other languages, I do not feel confident enough to read literature in those languages.) Some of what I buy is obviously limited by what is available for purchase. Some of what I buy is also limited by how extensive certain national literatures are. There simply isn’t as much literature from, say, southeast Asia as there is from Western Europe. Likewise, as substantial as Brazilian or Argentine or Mexican literature may be, there’s aren’t many Paraguayan or Panamanian works out there. Not that there isn’t perhaps an even longer history of the written word in all these places, but because “our” definition of “literature” necessarily enters into the problem.
As an old friend in graduate school used to say, mutatis mutandis…. The relative proportions still strike me as interesting so I thought I would share them. (Those of you from “Latin America” are welcome to shake your fists at me.) Of course, I would be fascinated (seriously) to hear how others’ proportions work out.
A few notes:
1. AFRICA does NOT include North Africa but does extend to places to like Mauritius
2. NAMER includes only Canada and the US
3. LATIN AMER is Mexico and everything south of it
4. WEUROPE includes the UK
5. EEUROPE/RUSSIA includes some of the Balkans as well as all of the former USSR
6. ASIA includes everything from Pakistan to Australia
7. NAFR/MIDDLEEAST covers countries from Tunisia to Iraq, Israel to Yemen
Clearly, some of my decisions could have gone another way. But I include the information so you know what choices I made. And the distribution is:
39.7% WEUROPE
21.5% NAMER
10.8% EEUROPE/RUSSIA
13.3% ASIA
9.7% NAFR/MIDDLEEAST
7.2% AFRICA
4.2% LATIN AMER
(Yes, the numbers add up to over 100% because some authors—like Coetzee or Ondaatje—span my artificial divisions and so their works ended up effectively being counted twice)
On a related note, here is a list of the ten best-represented countries:
France 220
Germany 212
India 175
Russia 164
Italy 134
Austria 108
Egypt 101
Japan 100
South Africa 88
Hungary 70
And finally, the 20 best-represented authors. (In fairness, a couple reflect my completist tendencies; thus, I’m not a huge fan of Updike or Appelfeld, though I like their work. It’s just that it is very easy to buy their books cheaply.) (I should also say that the numbers don't represent specific "works," but rather the number of volumes--some of which may have more than one work contained...or not.)
Rabindranath Tagore (20)
Joseph Conrad (19)
Charles Dickens (19)
Ismail Kadare (19)
Rudyard Kipling (19)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (18)
Aharon Appelfeld (17)
Jean Giono (16)
Thomas Mann (16)
Joseph Roth (16)
Heinrich Boll (15)
Lawrence Durrell (15)
William Faulkner (15)
John Updike (15)
Evan S. Connell (13)
Anatole France (13)
Arnost Lustig (13)
Leo Perutz (13)
Jose Saramago (13)
Leo Tolstoy (13)
I decided to check things out again this morning and thought the results were, as always, interesting. And depressing. The numbers obviously reflect my tastes in part. But they also reflect the availability of works in English. (Although I can manage to read several other languages, I do not feel confident enough to read literature in those languages.) Some of what I buy is obviously limited by what is available for purchase. Some of what I buy is also limited by how extensive certain national literatures are. There simply isn’t as much literature from, say, southeast Asia as there is from Western Europe. Likewise, as substantial as Brazilian or Argentine or Mexican literature may be, there’s aren’t many Paraguayan or Panamanian works out there. Not that there isn’t perhaps an even longer history of the written word in all these places, but because “our” definition of “literature” necessarily enters into the problem.
As an old friend in graduate school used to say, mutatis mutandis…. The relative proportions still strike me as interesting so I thought I would share them. (Those of you from “Latin America” are welcome to shake your fists at me.) Of course, I would be fascinated (seriously) to hear how others’ proportions work out.
A few notes:
1. AFRICA does NOT include North Africa but does extend to places to like Mauritius
2. NAMER includes only Canada and the US
3. LATIN AMER is Mexico and everything south of it
4. WEUROPE includes the UK
5. EEUROPE/RUSSIA includes some of the Balkans as well as all of the former USSR
6. ASIA includes everything from Pakistan to Australia
7. NAFR/MIDDLEEAST covers countries from Tunisia to Iraq, Israel to Yemen
Clearly, some of my decisions could have gone another way. But I include the information so you know what choices I made. And the distribution is:
39.7% WEUROPE
21.5% NAMER
10.8% EEUROPE/RUSSIA
13.3% ASIA
9.7% NAFR/MIDDLEEAST
7.2% AFRICA
4.2% LATIN AMER
(Yes, the numbers add up to over 100% because some authors—like Coetzee or Ondaatje—span my artificial divisions and so their works ended up effectively being counted twice)
On a related note, here is a list of the ten best-represented countries:
France 220
Germany 212
India 175
Russia 164
Italy 134
Austria 108
Egypt 101
Japan 100
South Africa 88
Hungary 70
And finally, the 20 best-represented authors. (In fairness, a couple reflect my completist tendencies; thus, I’m not a huge fan of Updike or Appelfeld, though I like their work. It’s just that it is very easy to buy their books cheaply.) (I should also say that the numbers don't represent specific "works," but rather the number of volumes--some of which may have more than one work contained...or not.)
Rabindranath Tagore (20)
Joseph Conrad (19)
Charles Dickens (19)
Ismail Kadare (19)
Rudyard Kipling (19)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (18)
Aharon Appelfeld (17)
Jean Giono (16)
Thomas Mann (16)
Joseph Roth (16)
Heinrich Boll (15)
Lawrence Durrell (15)
William Faulkner (15)
John Updike (15)
Evan S. Connell (13)
Anatole France (13)
Arnost Lustig (13)
Leo Perutz (13)
Jose Saramago (13)
Leo Tolstoy (13)
