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Classic literature
- Thread starter Wabbit
- Start date
True@1stLight
New Member
novella said:
I just think that's the common misconception......though you are in very good company if you believe so.
novella
Active Member
True@1stLight said:
It's not a criticism I throw around liberally. In fact, I love The Nick Adams Stories, but I also see a progression (degeneration) in his attitude toward women as his career progressed and he worked his way through four marriages. They rarely appear as intelligent or kind in his work, if they appear at all. To me, his exaggerated machismo ultimately required a certain subjugation of women as characters, foils on which men worked out their strenuous ego-wrestling. I believe he respected Gertrude Stein, as well as his own mother, but they were the exceptions.
Strange person. When his father committed suicide, he wrote it off, saying he belonged to the generation whose fathers commit suicide.
This, of course, reaches into the whole problem of how an author's life is relevant to the work, if at all. I mean, if you interpret Catcher in the Rye through the prism of Saliger's life, it becomes a completely different read. Not sure if that's fair or if it brings anything worthwhile to the work.
What do you think?
True@1stLight
New Member
novella said:
Yes, in this case, I think we definatley need to look at what the authors life was like. Hemingway's stories are too heavily influenced by his life to ignore it. My thoughts about Hemingway are quite complicated and unique though, I'm not sure that I really want to draw them out here.....perhaps sometime.
True@1stLight
New Member
novella said:
Apologies, I know it's a book forum and I got into the discussion about him, it would usually follow that I share my thoughts. It's just these hold a bit more personal meaning to me.....
True@1stLight said:Apologies, I know it's a book forum and I got into the discussion about him, it would usually follow that I share my thoughts. It's just these hold a bit more personal meaning to me.....
as I just went to review some of the past notes, I thought it was not necessary anymore to ask for your furthur explanations.
Thank you, anyway.
Skyler1534
kickbox
Getting back to the original topic:
To point out a few books mentioned, Crime and Punishment was very good, but very dark. Dostoyevsky is definitely an acquired taste. I am currently reading The Idiot, though, and I can't put it down for the life of me. I find him to be an amazing writer, especially when it comes to bringing you into the psyche of his characters.
To the person who said they could not get through Dickens, I recommend A Tale of Two Cities. It is my favorite book and I haven't found it very boring to read. The Count of Monte Cristo; however, is often slow. It was my favorite before Two Cities. You have to really want it, though, or you won't make it through it. Especially if it is the unabridged version.
I've never liked Hemingway. I find his writing style to be extremely simple and boring. I found myself reading one of his books and about half-way through I couldn't figure out why I was still reading it because it seemed to go absolutely nowhere.
As for me, Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" is next on my list, though it may be preceded by Atlas Shrugged if I get it for Christmas. I adore Ayn Rand's writings and The Fountainhead was absolutely amazing. As for Proust, I began reading part of Swann's Way from volume 59 of my Great Books of the Western World collection and found his way of telling the story and giving meaningful insights on life at the same time to be exceedingly interesting.
Anyway, that's enough for me. Just thought I would try to start the thread back up. I absolutely love Classics. They are the only fiction I read.
To point out a few books mentioned, Crime and Punishment was very good, but very dark. Dostoyevsky is definitely an acquired taste. I am currently reading The Idiot, though, and I can't put it down for the life of me. I find him to be an amazing writer, especially when it comes to bringing you into the psyche of his characters.
To the person who said they could not get through Dickens, I recommend A Tale of Two Cities. It is my favorite book and I haven't found it very boring to read. The Count of Monte Cristo; however, is often slow. It was my favorite before Two Cities. You have to really want it, though, or you won't make it through it. Especially if it is the unabridged version.
I've never liked Hemingway. I find his writing style to be extremely simple and boring. I found myself reading one of his books and about half-way through I couldn't figure out why I was still reading it because it seemed to go absolutely nowhere.
As for me, Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" is next on my list, though it may be preceded by Atlas Shrugged if I get it for Christmas. I adore Ayn Rand's writings and The Fountainhead was absolutely amazing. As for Proust, I began reading part of Swann's Way from volume 59 of my Great Books of the Western World collection and found his way of telling the story and giving meaningful insights on life at the same time to be exceedingly interesting.
Anyway, that's enough for me. Just thought I would try to start the thread back up. I absolutely love Classics. They are the only fiction I read.
True@1stLight
New Member
Easy on Hemingway
The problem with Dickens is he got paid by the word. There's pretty much a guarantee of long winded rants that mean nothing in such literature. Although Dickens as a whole I like, as long as I skim through some parts.
The problem with Dickens is he got paid by the word. There's pretty much a guarantee of long winded rants that mean nothing in such literature. Although Dickens as a whole I like, as long as I skim through some parts.
Skyler1534 said:
Whaddayaknow, I actually agree with something. Well, it's not the first time really, and come to think of it I can only agree here with provisos.
Hemmingway, to me, is no more than a thinking man's (not women's, I hope) Cussler. Some of his short stories were effective -- he broke new ground, made a small contribution to literature's progress from the classical to the modern. (I certainly don't count his works as classics.) His longer works contributed nothing -- they offend against literature, in my opinion.
To appreciate Dickens it has to be remembered that he was breaking new ground too. I'm sure he wasn't the only one, but his are the works of that era we still remember. I find him a bit boring; his writing style looks old-fashioned now, but when his books were new on the scene they were very new indeed. His best were a sort of satire. He attacked the status quo with a savagery rarely seen before or since, and he did it enertainingly enough to be too popular to be suppressed. Dickens is one author who may be said to have actually changed the world. Will that ever be said of anyone writing now?
Now books seem mostly to be about something that may or may not have happened a hundred years ago, (look how awful things were back then, so aren't we lucky to be living in this best of all possible worlds) or some fantastic nonsense based on ancient mythology. All (well, not all, but most) of the truly great books were written about what was happening when they were written, and had something to say about that.
Back to the topic: I haven't read much Austen, so I might go to that. I love her way with words. Boring, did someone say? Brother, in her day, she was radical! (Did women really think for themselves? Did they really talk about men, and PASS JUDGEMENT ON THEM? Holy cow!) No publisher would touch her with a barge pole.
True@1stLight
New Member
It has to be so boring spitting out the status quo.
G'night all
G'night all
No, true at first, THIS is boring:
that she was lifted off the ground, tight against him, and he felt her trembling and then her lips were on his throat, and then he put her down and said, "Maria, oh, my Maria."
Then he said, "Where should we go?"
She did not say anything but slipped her hand inside of his shirt and he felt her undoing the shirt buttons and she said, "You, too. I want to kiss, too."
"No, little rabbit."
"Yes. Yes. Everything as you."
"Nay. That is an impossibility."
"Well, then. Oh, then. Oh, then. Oh."
Then there was the smell of heather crushed and the roughness of the bent stalks under her head and the sun bright on her closed eyes and all his life he would remember the curve of her throat with her head pushed back into the heather roots and her lips that moved smally and by themselves and the fluttering of the lashs on the eyes tight closed against the sun and against everything, and for her everything was red, orange, gold-red from the sun on the closed eyes, and it all was that color, all of it, the filling, the possessing, the having, all of that color, all in a blindness of that color.
that she was lifted off the ground, tight against him, and he felt her trembling and then her lips were on his throat, and then he put her down and said, "Maria, oh, my Maria."
Then he said, "Where should we go?"
She did not say anything but slipped her hand inside of his shirt and he felt her undoing the shirt buttons and she said, "You, too. I want to kiss, too."
"No, little rabbit."
"Yes. Yes. Everything as you."
"Nay. That is an impossibility."
"Well, then. Oh, then. Oh, then. Oh."
Then there was the smell of heather crushed and the roughness of the bent stalks under her head and the sun bright on her closed eyes and all his life he would remember the curve of her throat with her head pushed back into the heather roots and her lips that moved smally and by themselves and the fluttering of the lashs on the eyes tight closed against the sun and against everything, and for her everything was red, orange, gold-red from the sun on the closed eyes, and it all was that color, all of it, the filling, the possessing, the having, all of that color, all in a blindness of that color.
SillyWabbit said:NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!! *camera pans away*
That passage is so rich with passion, beauty! How can you say such a thing! Right, that's it! Go to your room!
Well... each to their own I guess
Now that I'm in my room I can add to boring: self-indulgent, half-baked, embarassingly juvenile, almost infantile. It reads like one of those true romance novels mixed uneasily with a bit of machismo. Hemmingway at his worst. The Old Man and the Sea was better, but still with too much macho navel-gazing for my liking.
And now I'm climbing out the window to go throw stones at the school library.
True@1stLight
New Member
Ok my first post was a little too smartass. Instead I'm just going to purpose a principle.
From now on, if Sun says something, let's just assume there's a 90% chance I disagree with him.
Ok, g'day all! Holiday break has started!!
From now on, if Sun says something, let's just assume there's a 90% chance I disagree with him.
Ok, g'day all! Holiday break has started!!
True@1stLight said:Ok my first post was a little too smartass. Instead I'm just going to purpose a principle.
From now on, if Sun says something, let's just assume there's a 90% chance I disagree with him.
Ok, g'day all! Holiday break has started!!
Purpose a principal? Now who could disagree with that?
novella
Active Member
Sun-SSS said:
Whew. I don't know what you're talking about here, particularly about new books. Any ideas?
What do you find unboring? I can't agree or disagree with the opinion that things are boring to you, but in my experience people who are bored should do something different. Criticizing Dickens as "a bit boring" is pretty shallow. Maybe you aren't understanding it?
novella said:
…bored should do something different -- yes, like read a different book. So we're agreed on that. I am not bagging (or in your language canning) Dickens, as can be seen in my earlier post. I do find his writing style, his way of presenting a story, rather dull, but concede that it was fresh and new when he did it. It never did have the sophistication of, for instance, a G.B.Shaw, but it had mass appeal in its time, often told a story that needed to be told. (And how many authors are doing that today?)
On new books--I'm not quite sure what you're asking, so must guess. As I said before, books set in the past can have no relevance to what is happening today. Dickens wrote about his own time, and made his readers see that all was not right with their world. That was what the best writers did back then, but few do now. Look at Tess of the D'Urbervilles --a much better book than any Dickens ever wrote-- it let its readers back then see the baggage they carried, the attitudes that prevailed in their time. Now, of course, all it can be is a slice of history and an elegently written good read, because we have different baggage, differently fucked-up attitudes.
If we are getting great books today, I haven't seen too many. Have you noticed that all the books nominated in the current poll are all old? Well, most of them are. What is there now on "Best seller lists" to compete with One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest? Not long ago, writers dared experiment, and some great stuff came out. Now they seem to have shrunk into their shells, too nervous to rock the boat, either in style or content. Result: a 21st Century awash with brand new 19th Century style novels, out of date before they went to the printer. And as likely as not set in the 19th Century, or in the early to mid 20th. Did any great novelist of the past ever write about a time fifty years before he or she was born? I don't think so. Not as a general thing, anyway, as prevails today.
"Unboring" = Heller, when he wrote Catch 22 (not subsequently); Kerouak; Kesey I already mentioned; more recently Robbins (Tom, not Harold) and Rushdie at his best, and maybe Naipaul, certainly Donleavy. I could go on, but I'm tired, just got back from stoning the library and getting chased by the cops. Found a pinch on the cheek from True@1st light, and now even that's been retracted, replaced by 90% disagreement…
True@1stLight
New Member
No offense, it'll just save me the time of actually having to state it. 