The Catcher in the Rye (1 of 3) & Dream Story
Vienna, Paris and Wayne, Pennsylvania
Dear classics reader,
In this week’s waking dream you will find:
The announcement of our monthly read-along for April;
Birthday wishes to Janet Flanner;
A preview of coming attractions;
And for paid subscribers:
The week’s new classics – including new translations of an Argentine national epic and an Iranian modern classic;
And our first discussion of The Catcher in the Rye – with a note on Pencey Prep.
This newsletter may be too long for your email inbox. If so, please click ‘View entire message’ at the bottom to see the full newsletter – or visit Substack.
April’s read-along – Dream Story
I am delighted to announce our next monthly read-along. Please join me in April to read Arthur Schnitzler’s Dream Story, which is 100 years old this month.
Dream Story was first serialised in Die Dame (The Lady) between December 1925 and March 1926 – and published in book form later in 1926.
What is it?
When Dr Fridolin’s loving wife describes a sexual fantasy involving another man, he is drawn into a dreamlike, nocturnal adventure on the streets of Vienna that takes him to seedy cafés, decadent villas, hospitals, orgies and the morgue.
Dream Story has been adapted several times for the screen, most famously by Stanley Kubrick as Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
Why are we reading it?
Dream Story is a haunting, late example of fin-de-siècle decadence and it’s one hundred years old this month. Schnitzler studied psychiatry at Vienna General Hospital at the same time as Sigmund Freud; his novels unearth our subconscious drives and desires. In the German title, Traumnovelle, Traum suggests both ‘dream’ and ‘trauma’.
Which translation should I read?
Schnitzler’s works are now out of copyright, so there are various English translations available.
I will be reading the excellent 1999 translation by J. M. Q. Davies, published in the UK by Penguin Modern Classics, with an introduction by Frederic Raphael, who co-wrote the screenplay for Eyes Wide Shut with Stanley Kubrick.
In the USA, the standard edition is published by Green Integer, which reprints an older 1927 translation by Otto P. Schinnerer.
There is also a Schnitzler anthology that includes Dream Story, available in both the UK and the US, called Night Games and Other Stories and Novellas, translated by Margret Schaefer in 2002 and published by Ivan R. Dee with a foreword by John Simon.
How will we read it?
Dream Story is just 97 pages long (in my edition) and has seven chapters.
I suggest we read it over two weeks:
We’ll start reading on Friday 3rd April.
On Friday 10th April we’ll discuss Chapters 1-4;
And on Friday 17th April we’ll discuss Chapters 5-7.
Then, if you’re near London, you’d be very welcome to book a ticket for our discussion of Dream Story at the Hatchards Classics Book Club on Thursday 7 May.
We meet downstairs at Hatchards (187 Piccadilly) on the first Thursday of every month at 6.30pm – tickets cost £5 with a free Hatchards Reward Card and include a glass (or two) of wine. These book club events are not live-streamed, but afterwards I post a report of our discussion here on Substack.
Our weekly read-along discussions of Dream Story will be for paid subscribers only. More details here.
If you – or anyone you know – would like to join this or future read-alongs, but can’t afford a paid subscription, just let me know and I’ll send a gift subscription.
If you buy a copy of Dream Story through Bookshop.org (UK) or Bookshop.org (US), Read the Classics will earn a commission from your purchase. Thank you in advance for your support!
Happy Birthday Janet Flanner
In other news, today was Janet Flanner’s birthday. She was born on this day in 1892.
Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of the New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975. She travelled to Europe in 1921, where she spent the rest of her life, living with her long-term partner Solita Solano. Her Paris Journal 1944-1965 won the National Book Award. She wrote under the pen name ‘Genêt’ and published one novel, The Cubical City (1974), set in New York.
Paris was Yesterday by Janet Flanner (1925-39)
When Janet Flanner began writing a fortnightly ‘Letter from Paris’ for the nascent New Yorker, her brief was to tell New Yorkers what the French thought was going on in France. Paris Was Yesterday is a collection of those letters written in the 1920s and 1930s, surely one of the most fascinating periods in the city’s history and it reads like an Arts Who’s Who. Flanner saw it all and knew everyone (or at least all about them), and there are tidbits galore about the likes of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Isadora Duncan, Diaghilev, Gertrude Stein, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Picasso and Marlena Dietrich. Witty, catty, literary and unashamedly gossipy, it’s a lively portrait of the thriving cultural life in Paris between the wars. In the brilliantly entertaining style she made her own, Flanner mixed high and low culture to devastating effect.
[UK] Virago Modern Classics | 320 pages | foreword by James Campbell
[US] Harper Perennial | 264 pagen
Coming Attractions
Future monthly read-alongs
For a sneak preview of our upcoming monthly read-alongs, take a peak here.
The Brothers Karamazov
We are reading The Brothers Karamazov over the whole of 2026: twelve volumes over twelve months, January to December.
Join us! There’s still time to catch up. Here is the full reading schedule – and all our Brothers Karamazov posts are gathered here.
We have already discussed Book One and Book Two – and our discussion of Book Three will be in two weeks’ time on Friday 27 March.
All the Brothers Karamazov posts are accessible to all subscribers for free, but if you would like to view or contribute to the conversation in the comment sections, you will need a paid subscription.
As ever, if you – or anyone you know – can’t afford a paid subscription, just let me know and I’ll send a gift subscription.
“Wuthering Heights”
In case you missed it, do listen to the “Wuthering Heights” episode of the Penguin Podcast. The brilliant Rhianna Dhillon interviews the director Emerald Fennell and then talks to Harriet Evans and me about the novel and the film adaptation.
On a related note, you might also be interested to listen to my former podcast, On the Road with Penguin Classics.
Catalogue
To mark the 80th anniversary of the Penguin Classics series this year, Penguin are publishing a complete catalogue of every Penguin Classic title currently available in the UK. It’s beautifully produced — and I’m proud to say that I helped to assemble the text inside.
This 400-page Catalogue will be available to purchase next month, from April 16th. Here is Penguin’s description:
From Achebe and Austen to Zola and Zweig, and from the Epic of Gilgamesh to twenty-first century dystopias and autofiction, here is the complete list of every Penguin Classic in print. Published in a beautiful clothbound format, the list is arranged alphabetically by author and also includes key bibliographic information such as sub-series, genre and ISBN. Comprising 3,500 entries, this is the essential reference guide to the world’s largest and best-loved classics list.
Annual book subscription
And if you’re enjoying our read-alongs, why not treat yourself to the Hatchards Classic Book Club annual book subscription?
You (or a friend) can receive all the books we read each month here on Read the Classics, beautifully gift-wrapped and delivered to your door, anywhere in the world, as well as a year’s complimentary subscription to Read the Classics, so you can choose to read along with us, if you wish.
To find out more, follow this link or email Hatchards directly: subscriptions@hatchards.co.uk
