Standing Tall on the Shelf

At Palookaville's fine second-hand bookshop this morning, I picked up a copy of Konstantin Paustovsky's The Story of My Life, which I read with great delight about 30 years ago, and have been wanting to reread. It's a "Pantheon Modern Classic," dated 1982 (I must have read an earlier version. The inside back flap says it is one of four in the set. Here's the entire list, as presented:

• Giuseppe di Lampedusa's The Leopard, " the remarkable story of a Sicilian prince perched on the brink of historic change" [$5.95];

• Yashar Kemal's Mehmed, My Hawk, " a modern-day Robin Hood's struggles against the beauty and brutality of Turkish peasant life" [$6.95];

• Konstantin Paustovsky's The Story of a Life, " a brilliant portrayal of a coming of age amidst war and revolution" in early 20th-century Russia [$8.95]; and
  

• Robert Musil's Young Törless, a novel set in a military boarding school in the Austria of the Hapburgs [$5.95]

Now I ask you: are going to find any other list of "modern classics," composed 27 years ago, that stands quite so solidly on the shelf? A list like this is bound to look dated or parochial after such a time, but every one of these entries, to my mind, still stands tall on the shelf. But it does look like they couldn't find something good to say about Törless, though.

[And BTW, I got my copy for $2.95.]