Slaying the sacred cow - literary "classics" you think are rubbish

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Talk about them here.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 00:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I've never understood the appeal of Thomas Hardy's poetry.
A few intruiging thoughts cloaked in lugubrious thickets of olde-worlde phrasing.

― pete s, Wednesday, 24 December 2003 01:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Mrs. Dalloway. Good God. I read some of Woolfe's commentary on Milton (she said Paradise Lost ignored the human heart) and thought, hmm, no wonder she strikes me as so cold despite her attempts to be utterly otherwise...

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 01:28 (twenty-two years ago)

ann, have you read any other woolfe? i found 'the waves' a bit of a trod (an extension of the kind of tiresome games i imagine upper middle-class children [the kind that populate 'the railway children', 'the lion, witch & the warddrobe' &c.] would play to entertain themselves for an afternoon, 'oh, goody let's write a novel, ok you do one line and i the next and so on and so and so on and so on') (in fact that's what i thought was happening for the first thirty pages and kept thinking 'ok, when are they going to break from their game' flick flick flick oh), yes a bit of a trudge after a while but people swear by 'to the lighthouse'.

― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 01:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Ulysses.

All Woolf except "Night and DaY".

War and Peace. (Maybe it was the translation.)

The Wasteland.

Malone Dies.

The Room by Pinter.

The Tempest.

Oliver Twist.

Nostromo.

Nausea.

Paradise Lost.

The Faery Queen.

Jude the Obscure.

Howl.

Glengarry Glenross.

Jumpers by Stoppard.

The Duchess of Malfi.

Metamorphosis and other Stories.

As I lay Dying.

The Red and the Black.

The Prince by Machiavelli.

Emma, and Mansfield Park.

Brideshead Revisited.

Tristram Shandy.

Robinson Crusoe.

The Third Man.

Voss.

Gravity's Rainbow.

Sons and Lovers.

Daniel Deronda.

I could go on. But I do like lots of stuff.

― Roderick the Visigoth. (Jake Proudlock), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 03:08 (twenty-two years ago)

has anyone who made the effort to finish ulysses ever disliked it? (ditto finnegans wake)

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 10:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Dickens' "A Tale Of Two Cities": hideously boring, nasty convoluted sentences, horribly didactic - which is par for the course with Dickens, but normally he's at least funny - and just really, really dull. God, I hate that book.

― cis (cis), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 11:06 (twenty-two years ago)

i can see 'finnegans wake' peering at me from my bookcase. every time i think of trying to read it i break out in a sweat....

― zappi (joni), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 11:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Godd question JD, i cant imagine you could finish Ulysses and dislike it. (Finnegans Wake also (but who finishes that apart from Anthony burgess?)). I cant believe anyone could seriously put it on this list, its heartbreaking.

It also astounds me to see that someone could think The Wasteland was rubbish - how is that possible?

― jed (jed_e_3), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 13:03 (twenty-two years ago)

It is possibl ebecause to my eyes it is a rag bag of found items that is often obscure and plain silly. Do you honestly like stuff like this:

But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug

So rudely forc'd.
Tereu

― Roderick the Visigoth. (Jake Proudlock), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 15:09 (twenty-two years ago)

i fucking hate Dickens. He's fucking awful. DOn't trust anything written by someone who is paid by the word.

Ginsberg's Howl is wonderful but it is a bit long. His stuff is best when it's read... I love his reading of "America."

And here's the ultimate sacred cow slaughter:

I THINK SHAKESPEARE IS TOTALLY FUCKING OVERRATED.

there. I said it. I await the tar/feathers.

― Catty (Catty), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 15:21 (twenty-two years ago)

tolkien. I FUCKING HATE TOLKIEN. and now all this lotr nonsense... bah, humbug.

― lauren (laurenp), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 15:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I refuse to believe that anyone thinks of Tolkein's writing as a "literary classic".

― cis (cis), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 16:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Well that's just a red Ragget to a bull, surely.

― pete s, Wednesday, 24 December 2003 16:27 (twenty-two years ago)

The Great Gatsby. I mean, sure, I liked it fine and all, but a "perfect novel?" C'mon now...

― Prude (Prude), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 16:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh, and Hemingway to thread.

― Prude (Prude), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 16:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Willa Cather. Ugh. Although now that I think about it, "My Antonia" is probably the only Cather I have read. So boo Antonia.

― quincie, Wednesday, 24 December 2003 18:34 (twenty-two years ago)

roderick- I liked that.

Like colin, I can see what J.D. is saying. if you dislike ulysses, it would be difficult to believe you'd make the effort to finish it (I am talking about reading for pleasure). but roderick didn't say whether he finished it.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 19:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Samual Richardson. But no-one outside of a few masochistic nutters really likes him anyway.

I don't like much Allen Ginsberg, don't care for Ezra Pound (if you think The Wasteland is a bunch of "found rubbish" then try to read the Cantos, hoo god; I love the Wasteland, btw, and find it astoundingly vivid and despairing), I didn't like Moby Dick, I hate James Fennimore Cooper, I don't care for much Hemingway.

Is Iain Bank's "The Wasp Factory" considered a classic? Because it's shit.

― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 19:32 (twenty-two years ago)

ack. richardson... the thought of pamela makes my head hurt!

― lauren (laurenp), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 19:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Maybe i have just fallen in to the trap of making Ulysses my own "sacred cow" but after three aborted attempts, i finished it and have read all of it again at least once in fragments and will go back to reading certain sections over, over, over.... So its Beautiful, amazing, infuriating (Circe section - please END) pointless and at times dull (Cyclops), up its own arse (Ithica and Cyclops again), Far beyond my capacity to understand it (maybe the bulk of it, if i'm honest*), Fascinating, utter perfection at times.

No one ever seems to mention this though - its really moving, heartbreaking in the last few sections. I have an aganda perhaps but its not just a fatherless son/sonless father story but a love story too.

Overall not Rubbish then.

*"as soon as i understand something i no longer have any interest in it" John Cage

― jed (jed_e_3), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 19:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Those (like that moron John Carey, Sunday Times Book Critic) who classify Ulysses as cold, clinical, all order no feeling have got it so wrong. There's few other books which understand and empathise with human emotion better, and with warmth and sympathy. It places
these things in context, that's it's whole trick. It says awareness, of things larger than yourself and the solipsistic universe in your head, will make you laugh, will make you cry. And that's the point of being alive, isn't it?
It's one of the funniest books ever written. That's what stoopid critics like Carey miss. It's more Tristram Shandy than The Odyssey.
It's more Tale of a Tub/Gargantua than War and Peace/Divine Comedy.

Apologies, this is not a defend classics thread. If it was i'd tackle Roderick's first post....

― pete s, Wednesday, 24 December 2003 20:28 (twenty-two years ago)

list some of the stuff you like, rod

― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 21:41 (twenty-two years ago)

pete s - YES!

― jed (jed_e_3), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 22:05 (twenty-two years ago)

i fucking hate catcher in the rye
holden caulfield is such an irritating little shit
and if i ever have to read the word phoney again i will kill someone

― robin (robin), Thursday, 25 December 2003 01:42 (twenty-two years ago)

"Those (like that moron John Carey, Sunday Times Book Critic) who classify Ulysses as cold, clinical, all order no feeling have got it so wrong. There's few other books which understand and empathise with human emotion better, and with warmth and sympathy. It places
these things in context, that's it's whole trick. It says awareness, of things larger than yourself and the solipsistic universe in your head, will make you laugh, will make you cry."

See, that's why Woolfe's commentary on Paradise Lost left me going "aha, this is why I don't like you, you tiny little rabbit turd of a writer!" It's the old epic/scifi/vaudeville vs. naturalist argument; I guess neither side will ever change their mind but dammit I feel more when it's ABOUT more than that little spotlight on one little heart.

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Thursday, 25 December 2003 01:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Carey is an arsehole but did anyone see that series on the novel? One part was abt modernism (proust, kafka and borges weren't even mentioned, which i wasn't surprised since carey had a big input on it) but he didn't really come across as an Ulysses hata.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Thursday, 25 December 2003 13:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Beg to disagree, Julio, i saw the series, and towards the end of the modernism show he made disparaging comments about Ulysses very similar to what i indicated in my post upthread, can't recall exactly, but it fitted with the thrust of the episode which was setting up this opposition between 'realist' issues-driven novels and modernist imaginative experiments symbolised by Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. Ridiculous, of coure, i will not take sides like that, for me there's no need to. Franzen, i think, came out against Joyce too. Carey said something along the lines of don't waste your time with Joyce, life's not like that, that's a cold heartless text.

― pete s, Friday, 26 December 2003 14:39 (twenty-two years ago)

yes, Franzen was really bad, and I thought he was aggresively anti-joyce. maybe that's why carey didn't seem that bad to me when i watched it.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 26 December 2003 16:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I think Carey hates Joyce because people often call him Joyce, thinking that he must be Joyce Carey. He's come to resent this over the years.

― Roderick the Visigoth. (Jake Proudlock), Friday, 26 December 2003 17:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I am now ashamed of my list of classics that I said were rubbish. I made it in what I thought was the spirit of the thread, but now I look like a wiseguy. Of course, they are merely books that I didn't enjoy myself; I haven't given up the idea of revising my opinions, and several of these posts give me the idea of trying Ulysses again. I love Dubliners and Portrait very much.

― Roderick the Visigoth. (Jake Proudlock), Friday, 26 December 2003 17:35 (twenty-two years ago)

I really really didn't enjoy The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 01:01 (twenty-two years ago)

What about that hymn to passive aggressive behaviour, 'Jane Eyre'?
God, Charlotte Bronte must have been unbearable to live with...

And, of course, I challenge anybody to read 'The Picture of Dorian Grey' without wanting to punch Wilde, very hard, in the face. A nifty idea which is dispensed with in - what? - five pages, surrounded by an interminable dissertation on the author's own cleverness. Yuk.

Oh, and 'The Bell Jar'. Pull yourself together, Sylvia: all you're doing is giving generations of teenage girls an excuse to witter on about how terrible life is when you're young, rich, and talented.

Ahem. I feel better for that.

― Paul G. Jennings, Tuesday, 6 January 2004 01:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I can never make it through "Lolita", the prose style is beautiful and exhilarating at first but then it just becomes exhausting.

― LondonLee (LondonLee), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 14:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I dislike anything I've read from Hemingway or Mailer. A lot of Dickens is v. dull ("Hard times" or "Hard Slog" as i like to call it and "Bleak House") and a lot of Faulkner is overrated.

― Michael B, Tuesday, 6 January 2004 15:40 (twenty-two years ago)

I second The Bell Jar - the second half is completely unconvincing, i just didnt understand how we got from Part one to Part two, it was too much of a leap.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 17:19 (twenty-two years ago)

I dislike anything I've read from Hemingway or Mailer.

I've only read A Farewell To Arms and thought it was bloody awful, some of the worst dialogue I've ever encountered in a supposedly "good" novel, some of it sounded like it was ripped out of some frilly romance novel. I quite like quite a few Mailer novels I've read (Harlot's Ghost, Ancient Evenings) but, Gawd, his "experimental" 60s stuff is embarrassing. Have a peek at Why Are We In Vietnam? next time you want a good laff.

― LondonLee (LondonLee), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 17:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Man, I wish you could edit posts here, "I quite like quite a few" is terrible writing. Sorry.

― LondonLee (LondonLee), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 17:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Read one Henry James novel ("The American"). That was plenty. Don't like Hemingway, except for a few short stories. Love Dickens, but hated "Hard Times." Never made it past the first book of "Dance to the Music of Time." I thought "Tom Jones" was boring until the last 100 pages.

― Not That Chuck, Friday, 9 January 2004 21:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Never made it past the first book of "Dance to the Music of Time."

Why? I'd like to know because that's on my "must get around to it one day" list.

― LondonLee (LondonLee), Friday, 9 January 2004 21:05 (twenty-two years ago)

_HEART OF DARKNESS_. Fucking racist piece of shit.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 9 January 2004 23:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Henry James is a space alien in human suit!

I tried 'Dance to the Music of Time", Proust. Both no go.
Same with 'Magic Mountain' by Mann. Hemingway except for
"The Sun Also Rises' and The Short Stories. Don't
get me started on Dickens......David Copperfield is fine but
really.... If you want to know what the Victorian era was
like read Anthony Trollope.

― Steve Walker (Quietman), Monday, 12 January 2004 03:44 (twenty-two years ago)

I am just stunned that I haven't yet seen anyone go after Moby Dick! Don't tell me that whale is some sort of sacred cow?

― Michael Jacobs (Michael Jacobs), Monday, 12 January 2004 06:26 (twenty-two years ago)

"Moby Dick" is great - it deserves every ounce of its rep.

― o. nate (onate), Monday, 12 January 2004 16:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Winesburg, Ohio.

― Janet Gurn-Soosy, Monday, 12 January 2004 23:29 (twenty-two years ago)

All of Pynchon, all of Joyce, all of Shakespeare, all poetry, Dickens, most of the 18th century writers in fact. Etc. I hate too much to make a list. I also hate 'Moby Dick'.

― writingstatic (writingstatic), Monday, 12 January 2004 23:31 (twenty-two years ago)

has pynchon made 'literary classics', which I thought were penguin paperbacks you could buy at yr nearest bookstore for a fiver.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 00:01 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm not going by my definition of "literary classics", and secondly, I don't believe Pynchon has ever been in Penguin, certainly not the cheap editions from the 40s, 50s and 60s, and thirdly, what did you just say?

― writingstatic (writingstatic), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 00:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Pynchon is in penguin stateside. In Penguin Modern Classics editions no less.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 00:06 (twenty-two years ago)

All of Pynchon, all of Joyce, all of Shakespeare, all poetry

this is a thread for ones you think are rubbish not ones you don't get or can't understand.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 00:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, we're not all from the States, lucky us, and I think they're rubbish because I don't understand them. I'm not afraid to admit that. I understand the words and the sentences and the punctuation, chapters, paragraphs, stanzas, but the content is just nonsense. Thank you for playing.

― writingstatic (writingstatic), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 00:11 (twenty-two years ago)

static- you know what i just said, bcz you answered my question.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 00:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Jed: You see? If I can understand Julio, Joyce is a piece of cake to my enormous intellect.

― writingstatic (writingstatic), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 00:13 (twenty-two years ago)

my question didn't even have a question mark => I'm avant garde I am.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 00:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Julio: Are you Scottish then?

― writingstatic (writingstatic), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 00:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Ulysses gets a bad rap because some people think it's cool to be ignorance-snobby, the inverse of academicsnobbery. This Steven Carter asshole exhibits his hipness by dissing Ulysses here http://lit.konundrum.com/features/carters_howto1.htm . It's too bad since it really is an amazing novel. I don't understand how people could _not_ understand it (or Gravity's Rainbow). It's a pastiche.amalgam.satire.subversion.revision.&c. of literature. If you're even relatively well-read you can understand what Joyce is getting at.

Nonono that's not really true, none of that. But if you do put effort in, you get more back. It really violates Newton's third law. GR is a totally lucid book too, really. You just have to fuck the shit and throw down, put in the effort, reread, &c. People shouldn't hate on Ulysses and GR w/out putting the effort. Ignorance is annoying, endemic, and will kill everyone and everything you love.

― B. Michael Payne (This Isnt That), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 00:25 (twenty-two years ago)

i dont understand any of Pynchon or get it either. I don't understand Julio either (and ps Julio those cd's have been sitting waiting to get posted to you since the end of january - i will sort it out tomorrow).

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 00:28 (twenty-two years ago)

oh colin I am sorting out yr feldman Cds this week. you'll get the package soon i promise. hope you understood that.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 00:30 (twenty-two years ago)

end of december of course.

what did you say? ;)

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 00:31 (twenty-two years ago)

I dont read Solzhenitsyn
Cos his books dont have enough tits in.

― omg, Thursday, 22 January 2004 01:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Faulkner-haters, you're breaking my heart.

People shouldn't be made to read this stuff on deadline. You need time, patience and the desire to read it.

Forcing people to read certain books is the surest way to make so many people hate them.

― Robomonkey (patronus), Thursday, 22 January 2004 18:30 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

Ulysses.

All Woolf except "Night and DaY".

War and Peace. (Maybe it was the translation.)

The Wasteland.

Malone Dies.

The Room by Pinter.

The Tempest.

Oliver Twist.

Nostromo.

Nausea.

Paradise Lost.

The Faery Queen.

Jude the Obscure.

Howl.

Glengarry Glenross.

Jumpers by Stoppard.

The Duchess of Malfi.

Metamorphosis and other Stories.

As I lay Dying.

The Red and the Black.

The Prince by Machiavelli.

Emma, and Mansfield Park.

Brideshead Revisited.

Tristram Shandy.

Robinson Crusoe.

The Third Man.

Voss.

Gravity's Rainbow.

Sons and Lovers.

Daniel Deronda.

I could go on. But I do like lots of stuff.

-- Roderick the Visigoth. (qp10q...), December 24th, 2003. (Jake Proudlock)

what ever happened to roderick? he hated lots of stuff.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 01:53 (twenty years ago)

Now I hate alone.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 01:57 (twenty years ago)

_HEART OF DARKNESS_. Fucking racist piece of shit.

-- Dan Perry (djperr...), January 9th, 2004.

It's been a while since I read it, but I really don't find this charge fair. 1) You have to consider the time it came out of, for which it was actually somewhat forward thinking, and 2) I wouldn't assume the narrator's viewpoint is the author's

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 02:10 (twenty years ago)

Conrad's views obviously aren't Marlow's, but Conrad's ideology seems to be every bit as racist and patronising. However you read it, there's a lot of African = Darkness = Savage going on. I'd say it's a brilliant piece of racist shit, but that's easy for me to say as a whitey.

― Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 09:09 (twenty years ago)

roderick's list is certainly strange, i didn't know anyone thought "the third man" was a classic - who's even READ it?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 09:35 (twenty years ago)

I could compile a long list but my personal pet hate is Midnight's Children a third-rate version of The Tin Drum transposed from Germany to India. Winner of "The Booker Of Bookers" no less, and written by a man who manages to outdo even Martin Amis in his pompous sense of his own importance.

― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 6 July 2005 15:01 (twenty years ago)

This thread is queer. I thought I agreed with Jed about U till he started slagging off chapters that I think are among the best things I can think of in the whole world of art. His disapproval of The Bell Jar jars also, for I love the book - but I feel that there may be an important point in what he's saying, about a transition that I have not noticed or found problematic.

Gravity's Rainbow is a perennial answer to the question. A writer who was possibly overrated is Angela Carter. Another is Rushdie.

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 6 July 2005 18:47 (twenty years ago)

i didn't mean to slag off U, p. i love it over every book and the fact that it bores me at times (simply because i can't get a handle on it), infuriates me (for the same reason), confounds me (as often as not) is what keeps me going back to it because it moves me and knocks me sideways and baffles me and overwhelms me with its beauty and its ideas and keeps drawing me back to it. I don't think i've ever heard anyone claim that it's a flawless book.

― jed_ (jed), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 19:26 (twenty years ago)

...and i'm far from a flawless reader!

― jed_ (jed), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 19:27 (twenty years ago)

In reference to this thread, folks might enjoy the following:
http://www.inwriting.org/weblog/archives/000112.html

Mr. Jaggers

― Mr. Jaggers, Wednesday, 6 July 2005 20:27 (twenty years ago)

_HEART OF DARKNESS_. Fucking racist piece of shit.
-- Dan Perry (djperr...), January 9th, 2004.

-- Hurting (Hurtingchie...), July 6th, 2005.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Don't you wish you could climb out of time? Conrad's generation was racist. Amis and Updike's generation was criminally self-absorbed -- is that their problem or are they just tiny little men? It's much easier to believe Conrad \= his narrator than it is to believe that Updike isn't Rabbit. If that Rabbit crap gets canonized I'll chew my eyes out. (Our generation is potty-mouthed...)

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 20:37 (twenty years ago)

But I always imagined the darkness=Africa=savage thing was just a trope of the time, and that Conrad is doing something more sophisticated with that trope. After all, isn't the central irony supposed to be that the "darkness" and "savagery" is really in the hearts of the Europeans? And the book makes a fairly radical point near the beginning -- that the supposedly "civilized" Europeans were living little differently than the supposedly "savage" Africans not long ago.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 20:47 (twenty years ago)

It's a very complex book. I'm sure he's satirizing the Europeans, I think he does it by making the Africans Noble Savages. But that's a very backhanded compliment.

― Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 22:05 (twenty years ago)

i read the third man in the same class i had to read heart of darkness for - to tie things together a bit more in the book the presentation the western author has to give is something to do with the sort of inverse snobbery as applied to modernism that's talked about upthread. also there is some criminal self-absorbtion and poss. some racism tho i think this may have been in the changes for the movie.

― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 22:13 (twenty years ago)

the problem is that the africans are barely even there, really

― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 22:13 (twenty years ago)

the 'heart of darkness' is london, everyone any time is spent on is a furriner, even tho it seems the book is in their favor and defence they more appear as "interesting local fauna" /: i think the movie is worse tho.

― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 22:15 (twenty years ago)

That's true, the Africans aren't much of a factor at all -- I don't really remember any "noble savage" imagery but it's been a while. Anyway, I think the book ultimately had more good to offer, by critiquing imperialism and British sense of moral superiority and manifest destiny, then harm by failing to have lifelike African characters.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 22:36 (twenty years ago)

Did it have lifelike European characters, though?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 7 July 2005 00:19 (twenty years ago)

Actually, Jed, I don't think I easily see flaws in Ulysses.

Perhaps I am forgetting something. Like you: 'Circe' is not my favourite chapter. A weak point if one exists.

― the finefox, Thursday, 7 July 2005 15:20 (twenty years ago)

Once you get through Ulysses, then you're in on the joke. I don't know if I'll ever by in on whatever Gravity's Rainbow is supposed to be about.

Dicken's flaws too well documented (for one thing, Joyce hated him, but then he preferred Ibsen to Shakespeare!) for him to pwn this thread.

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 7 July 2005 17:15 (twenty years ago)

Uh, so does that make U or GR better?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 7 July 2005 20:36 (twenty years ago)

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 7 July 2005 20:54 (twenty years ago)

UP:up

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 7 July 2005 20:56 (twenty years ago)

I think you just undercut your argument there.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 7 July 2005 22:52 (twenty years ago)

So you are saying that I'm not in on the joke? And that I presented an argument?

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 8 July 2005 00:00 (twenty years ago)

Or perhaps your intent was to instill in me a paranoia similar to that of the recipient of the postcard referenced above?

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 8 July 2005 00:20 (twenty years ago)

What I originally meant to say was that, despite all the stylistic folderol, Ulysses is basically the heartwarming story of a day in the life of an ordinary decent fellow, which never fails to bring good cheer to at least one reader, this one. No doubt it was the Chicken Soup book of its time.

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 8 July 2005 11:46 (twenty years ago)

Does it say "U.P.:up" or does it just say "U.P." or does it just say "up"?

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 8 July 2005 11:50 (twenty years ago)

My point is that, as far as I know, no one really gets the "U.P.: up" joke. I mean it seems to be "you pee up" but... that's not technically funny. Or enough to make anyone paranoid. Unless there's something else going on. So, literally, you are not in on the joke with Ulysses.

Perhaps the finepox can say otherwise.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 8 July 2005 15:28 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, I finally got your point by the time I posted that message. But I would argue that that is one of the few things that has not been gotten, ever other detail has been unearthed somewhere or other. So if I know that the "U.P.:up" gag is not fully understood than I am in on the joke. But I appreciate your initial funny.

Also I wouldn't put the "you pee up" interpretation past JJ- after all, he called his book of poetry Chamber Music!

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 8 July 2005 15:47 (twenty years ago)

I don't like Heart of Darkness because of the lack of precision in the writing. Leavis is very good on this.

― frankiemachine, Friday, 8 July 2005 16:29 (twenty years ago)

Didn't Conrad enjoy a reputation in the 20s as being the best stylist in the English language? And you are meant to be surprised that English wasn't his first language, but it never surprised me. While I like some of his shorter stuff, like "Youth," "The Secret Sharer" and, yes, Heart Of Darkness, in general I find his stuff heavy-going, like I'm hacking my way through the jungle.

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 8 July 2005 16:48 (twenty years ago)

Oh God I hated The Bell Jar too, esp. that transition. Sylvia Plath was a spoiled neurotic bitch whose fans besmirched Ted Hughes' name for ages.
I also despised The Waves because it was laborious and Woolf's personal madness was too evident on the page, it was like reading a journal of a nervous breakdown and made me sad after great works like To The Lighthouse.
Maybe not the "canon" but I never found Hitchhiker's Guide, et all, to be very clever.
The Scarlet Letter was also very dull and preachy, Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance is a much more scathing critique of closed societies.
FTR, I loved Ulysses, Midnight's Children, Moby Dick and I can appreciate what Faulker does but I would never choose to read him for fun.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Friday, 8 July 2005 17:54 (twenty years ago)

(Ann, I think Woolfe is right abt Milton! Tell me why you don't)

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Friday, 8 July 2005 18:14 (twenty years ago)

i like heart of darkness because it's NOT precise writing, i.e. conrad is good about writing about vague, almost indescribable intimations of dread, evil, etc. i don't see how that particular story could have been told any differently.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 8 July 2005 22:28 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, I would say his form fits his content in that book.

What did Chinua Achebe say the message of Heart of Darkness was? "Africa bad, don't go" or something like that?

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 8 July 2005 23:40 (twenty years ago)

i.e. conrad is good about writing about vague, almost indescribable intimations of dread, evil, etc.

Of course this is just what Leavis argues C is extremely bad at in HOD, that you can't convey horror just by using words like "indescribably" and "impalpable" or "unspeakable" a lot. I agree with Leavis.

I was just thinking how much better James is in "The Turn of The Screw" at indescribable intimations of dread, evil, etc.

― frankiemachine, Saturday, 9 July 2005 15:45 (twenty years ago)

HOD is prob'ly Conrad's most precise writing. Leavis was, and remains, a dick.

― Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Saturday, 9 July 2005 21:02 (twenty years ago)

i think that i love HoD - maybe i need to read it again.

― jed_ (jed), Saturday, 9 July 2005 21:38 (twenty years ago)

HOD probably his sloppiest writing apart from some sections of Lord Jim. Leavis was OTM.

― frankiemachine, Sunday, 10 July 2005 16:50 (twenty years ago)

Chinua Achebe equally OTM when he takes Leavis's main argument and runs with it:

The eagle-eyed English critic F. R. Leavis drew attention long ago to Conrad's "adjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery." That insistence must not be dismissed lightly, as many Conrad critics have tended to do, as a mere stylistic flaw; for it raises serious questions of artistic good faith. When a writer while pretending to record scenes, incidents and their impact is in reality engaged in inducing hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words and other forms of trickery much more has to be at stake than stylistic felicity.

― frankiemachine, Sunday, 10 July 2005 17:12 (twenty years ago)

Well now that makes it sounds as though the problem isn't that it's prose but rather poetry!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 10 July 2005 17:42 (twenty years ago)

i don't see how heart of darkness could have been improved by being done in a 'stark' hemingway style; "inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery" is what he's writing about, so why shouldn't the prose reflect that? i also find achebe's famous contention that conrad was a "bloody racist" ludicrous since he refuses to make any distinction between conrad the writer and marlow the narrator.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 11 July 2005 05:04 (twenty years ago)

No-one is suggesting a Hemingway style (in fact the only writer I mentioned by way of contrast is James, who could hardly be less like Hemingway). I don't agree with Achebe's "racist" argument either. But I do agree that there is a problem with style in HOD, particularly towards the end, and that it has to do with "adjectival insistence".

― frankiemachine, Monday, 11 July 2005 07:25 (twenty years ago)

Hemingway grates on me. Also I don't think The Great Gatsby is as brilliant as it's made out to be.

― Orbit (Orbit), Monday, 11 July 2005 07:34 (twenty years ago)

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