Forum / What are some literary classics...

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    christopher malo
    Sep 02, 07:28pm

    That you just can't get into?

    Which books you have tried to pick up and read, but can't make it past the first few pages?

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    Roberta
    Sep 02, 07:40pm

    Oh, loads. I'm horrible with most of the Victorian canon in general.

    Modern classics, I couldn't click with 'One Hundred Years Of Solitude.' (Actually I suspect I was reading a particularly flat translation.) I think I maybe made it about a hundred pages in.
    Natch, 'Midnight's Children.' It wasn't that I wasn't quite enjoying it. I just wasn't gripped enough to ever make it the whole way through.

    Joyce and Woolf I struggled with. Pretty much, if it's much pre C20 and if it's not either as far back as ancient mythology, or something I can also watch on a stage, I often struggle.

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    David Ackley
    Sep 02, 09:19pm

    Funny question. All of George Eliot, especially MIDDLEMARCH, which I once discussed learnedly on a mid-term,without having read more than the opening and closing five pages and Cliff notes, after an all night poker session, a bluebook of utter bullshit. It earned a B- though I think the instructor knew and was simply impressed with my ability to fabricate.

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    C. D. Peck
    Sep 02, 10:18pm

    There have been quite a few that I've tried to read but just couldn't get into. I really wanted to read "Little Women", for example, but just couldn't. I also never managed to finish "Treasure Island". I'm sure I've looked at plenty of others ("Moby Dick", anything by Charles Dickens, etc.) before putting them back on the shelf. In all honesty, "The Catcher in the Rye" is probably the only classic that I did like.

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    Linda Simoni-Wastila
    Sep 03, 05:16am

    MIDDLEMARCH. I ploughed through that last year with a reading group and finally got through, but at what pain.

    Ones I started and never got through: MOBY DICK, ULYSSUS, and The COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO.

    My self-directed 'mfa' has me reading lots of modern lit I hadn't read when younger, so I feel I'm catching up. Peace...

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    Bill Yarrow
    Sep 03, 08:44am

    Middlemarch is an awesome book. Well worth reading! Likewise Moby Dick. Likewise The Iliad. Likewise The Aeneid. Likewise The Pickwick Papers and the rest of Dickens. Likewise Ulysses. Likewise To the Lighthouse and The Waves. Likewise Mann's Doctor Faustus. Likewise Berlin, Alexanderplatz by Doblin. Likewise St. Petersburg by Bely. Likewise Madame Bovary and A Sentimental Education. Likewise And Quiet Flows the Don. Likewise The Sot-Weed Factor. Likewise Look Homeward Angel and the rest of Thomas Wolfe. Likewise 100 Years of Solitude. Likewise The Tin Drum. Likewise The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Don Quixote, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Life of Johnson...

    Ah, but I was young when I read all of these. So much harder to tackle 500, 1000, or 1500 pages now!

    P.S. The Count of Monte Cristo is an incredibly compelling book. Try again!

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    Linda Simoni-Wastila
    Sep 03, 08:49am

    Okay, Bill (eyes cast down, sheepish-like). My lit education is woefully deficient (did the science thing; still do the science thing).

    Your enthusiasm inspires me to tackle my classic albatrosses. Call me Ishmael here I come ;^)

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    Bill Yarrow
    Sep 03, 08:55am

    Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, Hardy's novels, Peacock's novels, stuff by the Brontes, Emma by Austen is really good--man, there are so may great classics.

    "can't make it past the first few pages?"
    I'd say, give it 50 pages. Worth the effort.

    P.S. There are a lot of "classics" that are trash, or rather, empty reads. [Usually famous for being kids' books like Treasure Island, Pollyanna, Black Beauty....] If you're looking for serious art (as I am), those are worth avoiding.

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    Bill Yarrow
    Sep 03, 09:03am

    Linda,

    I did the English thing! I was a maniac for reading in my twenties.

    Melville's book is so bizarre. His prose is so wacky. His psychology so startling. Look at it from a writer's point of view and you'll be stunned.

    Start, perhaps, if you've never read it, with his story "Bartleby the Scrivener"?

    Ah, the teacher in me is uncontrolled today!

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    Linda Simoni-Wastila
    Sep 03, 09:34am

    Thank God for the teacher in you, Bill! I'll give Melville another whack.

    Hey, I did finally get through Gravity's Rainbow this year, and loved, loved, loved it. Ditto with Faulkner. Sometimes I think we may be exposed too early to the classics.

    I'll keep you posted on my progress, teach! Peace...

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    christopher malo
    Sep 03, 09:42am

    I have to say I am both surprised and relieved to hear the responses.
    It is always been a deep and dark secret that there are some classics that no matter how or when I try and read them... I just can not get into them. It always made me feel a little embarrassed and feel less than. It is not me suggesting that I can not understand why they are classics, just that I couldn't get into them enough to read.

    And Roberta, it was funny you mentioned One Hundred Years of Solitude. My sister has been trying for years to get me to read it. I won a copy and have tried countless times. And she swears by it...

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Sep 03, 10:51am

    Christopher, don't feel bad. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is not for everyone. It has passionate adherents, as do many peculiar novels, but it must be approached with a certain attitude, a mindset, maybe. I loved the book. Some do, some do not. Some may acquire that predilection for such novels eventually, but there is no proof to my mind that the acquisition of particular tastes makes anyone wiser for having them. The same phenomenon holds for books by James Joyce or, say, Richard Brautigan.

    No one should be compelled to read fiction, ever, but there is the academic discipline that would have it otherwise, along with the supposition that if literature transcends time, it must be good. But I suppose you have to learn literature in order to be able to teach it, and if it is the essence of your career to do so, it helps if you have affection for the canons.

    All canons are rigid that way.

    This is a good topic and I love the responses here. And for those who confess, I offer absolution.

    Absolvo te. In nomine Joyce, Melville, et Garcia Marquez.

    Fra Diego

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    Roberta
    Sep 03, 11:08am

    Haha, absolution.

    I find people are very love or hate about 'One Hundred Years...' Either they seem to think it's the best thing ever written (or something along those lines,) or like me, they just don't quite get it.
    I actually really liked 'Memoirs Of My Melancholy Whores' so I clearly don't have a problem with Marquez per se. Maybe I'll try a hundred years again sometime. I don't have a problem with disliking some books, but I really -want- to like A Hundred Years because I do just love some Magic Realism so much. I had the same thing with Calvino's Invisible Cities. I so wanted to like it, and just didn't click with it at all.

    It def doesn't make you 'less than,' Christopher. Horses for courses.

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    christopher malo
    Sep 03, 06:06pm

    I just figure I would be shunned, or judged, or assumed to be less read or have less of an appreciation for literature if I had not read and enjoyed the classics. But as I start to get older, what others think becomes less and less important to me. But I am still curious as to others thoughts and experiences.

    And I want to make it abundantly clear that I pass no judgement on the books or authors I can't or haven't read. Other than I just can't seem to get into it. I do recognize there are plenty of things I like and am into that isn't for others.

    Sometimes I will look at titles, the classics I haven't read, and wonder if there's something wrong with me.

    The real genesis of this post was a conversation a few weeks ago with some well read friends. We threw our top fives out there and all of theirs were classics, and none of mine were. In fact, they weren't familiar with any of the books on my top five... That started me thinking.

    I appreciate everyone weighing in.

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    Martin Dodd
    Sep 04, 12:26pm

    Christopher, you are not alone. I made it through required reading in HS with Classic Comics (ante Cliffs Notes). I think my problem was the absence of inspiring instructors. I asked my 10th grade teacher why we were studying Macbeth. She replied, "Because you are a sophomore." Through the years, as a closet illiterate, I hid my deficit behind affirmations of other's comments and coughing fits if pressed for an opinion on Moby Dick, Great Expectations, et al. Then ten years ago, I set out to correct my bookish fault. A la Colonel Sanders, I used my first sccial security check to buy a set of classics. But alas, my frontal lobes had petrified. However, I have not surrendered. Because of GERD, I have to sleep with my head elevated. "Remembrance of Things Past" does the trick under my pillow. As irony is a tried and true literary device and osmosis a scientific fact, who knows...? I hope it works, because by the time I'm at page fifty of any book, I forget how it began. So don't despair or apologize, there are enough of us to have our own flag and anthem.

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    christopher malo
    Sep 05, 05:26am

    I will have to remember the coughing fit trick...

    I certainly have not tried to read all the classics, but I do try and work them in. Maybe I can take that classics set, minus Remembrance of Things Past/your pillow.

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