The New Guide to Modern World Literature

MacMan "Lyle"'s review just about sums the matter up, although my copy of The New Guide to Modern World Literature says that Smith read 20 languages, not 200. Still, the man's learning is simply incredible. Smith worked on the book for 8 years; it would have taken an ordinary mortal 80. Smith seems not only to have read everything in 20 languages, but also to have read the criticism, and seen the film adaptations. When he doesn't like something he says so, with utmost directness, but at heart what drives this work is a genuine and deeply personal love of literature and of human creativity. The New Guide is apparently out of print, proving beyond doubt that there is no justice in the publishing marketplace. 1400 page books of literary criticism from 3 and a half decades ago (first printing) may, I understand, not be most people's first choice for light reading, but Smith's book is indeed a work apart, prodigious, idiosyncratic, fearless, unimpeachable.

Martin Seymour-Smith was a polymath who was fluent in dozens of languages and had reading capability in nearly 200. He is opinionated, insightful, contrarian, and absolutely individual in his comments about authors and books ranging from the more familiar bodies of western literature to the literatures of languages and cultures nearly unknown to most western readers. He is always stimulating and informative, and covers a broad sweep of poetry as well as prose with considered and challenging opinions which are guaranteed to make you eager to read and judge for yourself. This book is a sort of summation of the lifetime reading of a critic and outright lover of great literature who is unlikely to be equalled in our age. No mincing of words, no prefacing of his judgments with the uncertainties of "in my opinion" or other hedging phrases. Refreshing in its total honesty, daunting in its intellectual depth and breadth, no other book of modern literary criticism comes close to it. Buy it now while you can, and aspire to be as firm in your judgments as Seymour-Smith always is in his.