Reply to "Public privates!"

You're right, generally people don't read classic books unless someone makes them do it. I'm still trying to figure out the logic of this. If a book is truly good and of lasting value it gets labeled a classic. Once it's labeled as a classic people will avoid reading it because it is one.

Do you think that Russian novels would be more popular if they changed the names when they translate them? It seems like they'd lose something if they changed Dmitri to Dan and Alexey to Alan, etc.

On some of his books, including The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky's name is spelled with a y in the middle and on others it's omitted, even on the same title. This makes it just a little harder to search on eBay.

My guess is that ol' Mark and Oscar would be flattered that they're still being talked about long after their deaths. Oscar Wilde wrote, "There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." And I'm sure that if I looked I could find some ornery comment that Mark Twain had to say on the matter.