I Love You Guys!

I just found this group and it brings me warm and fuzzy feelings to see that other people can hate Joseph Conrad and Margaret Atwood as much as me.

Some posts are a bit too long to read tho' - I think the literary "giants" are psychicly trying to inject their longevity into it. Resist . . . must resist! By book title, maybe?

Cheer!

Scary

How's about we add Joyce Carol Oates and William Faulkner and (revolted shudder) James Joyce to the single-names list?

Ooo...Charles Dickens! Ernest Hemingway!! SYLVIA PLATH!!!

edited/typo

Faulkner? Am I the only person on LT who likes Faulkner?

You are not the only person who likes Faulkner. The question is any of us sophisticated Faulkner types can stand Jane Austen. I just had to get that little touchstone up there.

But, really, do some of us cluster? Are there like and dislikes that go together?

Good question, A_musing. I do like Jane Austen, but I wish her books would move faster. It's very easy to get bogged down. There are places where you can literally skip pages and not miss much.

I think there are likes and dislikes that go together. It would be an interesting study.

GeorgiaDawn, I'm an Austen reader, though I too wish she'd picked up the pace a little more often than she did. I remind myself her world moed more slowly than my own, and try to school myself to see things in a more 19th-century manner.

I skip a lot, in other words.

;-)

I wonder if there are people studying affectional clusters in literary tastes. Or whatever academe would call such a study. If not, there's someone's doctoral thesis right there! Betcha publishers'd queue up for the data, too.

I missed someone ragging on Margaret Atwood? I just read Oryx and Crake and it was utter garbage. Ok, she can write well, but the premise was ludicrous, characters stock and it was seriously under-researched. Yeah, that's what geneticsts do, they cross skunks with racoons. It was as cheesy as a '50's scifi movie, complete with unrepentantly evil villian that single-handedly brings about the end of the human species. Stay far, far away.

I actually think George Eliot is infinitely more readable than Jane Austen, and yet the former doesn't seem to have the modern-day cult that Austen has managed to acquire. If you're willing to dive in, Middlemarch is a very good read.

I love Margaret Atwood's short stories, but I've never found a novel of hers that I've loved.

Middlemarch is a work of genius. But if you want an Eliot to hate, just try her Romola -- set in Renaissance Florence and so buried in details that she herself provides hundreds of footnotes. I've never been able to get ten pages into it without glazing over.

I've found that just browsing the books that I have in common with other LTers is a great way to gauge clusters of like and dislike.
I loved Handmaid's Tale by Atwood but have heard that her other novels aren't worth the time.

Charles Dickens? How can you not like Dickens? A Tale of Two Cities is one of my favorite works.

Faulkner on the other hand? blech!

A Tale of Two Cities is a great work -- in stretches. But Lucy Manette is one of the greatest bores ever committed to paper. She has only two attributes : she is blonde and she is Good. Sydney Carton, on the other hand, is interesting, when he isn't falling all over himself about the Goodness of the Manette family.

Some of the sections set in France are wonderful, if a bit gothic. Madame Du Farge knitting while watching the guillotine do its work is a justly famous bit. And the back story, of why she hates the aristos so much, is quite good. The Marquis who oppressed her family is really an excellent villain. (He seems to have been guilty of rape, murder, and quite possibily incest, among other crimes against his peasant tenants.) The first Paris scene -- in which a barrel of wine falls off a freight wagon, breaks, and draws several of the poorest of the poor to scoop up and drink handfuls of the spilled wine from puddles between the cobblestones -- is sharply etched.

The basic theme of twinning -- London and Paris, England and France, conservative and revolutionary, and many more -- is a great concept, and is well worked out.

Of course, there are a lot of words to wade through to get the good stuff. What do you want, it's English and 19th century.

Whoops, sorry, I wandered in here thinking it was a thread about Hoosiers.

A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch - good book. The Philosopher's Pupil by Iris Murdoch - bad book. The longer the work, the more work it is to read it.

Memoirs Of A Geisha. HATE it. Am I the only one?

Ellevee, after some months, I'd say it is time to come to the conclusion that yes, you are the only one.

I can cope with most things, but please not Plath!! What has Sylvia ever done to you?? ;)

I used to work in a bookstore (now it's a library) and we found (through informal polling, to be sure) that people who liked Faulkner didn't like Hemingway. I'm in the Faulkner camp myself. I also like Dickens, though I loathe Oliver Twist, and don't much care for Austen.

Well that makes perfect sense. Hemingway is the antithesis of Faulkner. Hemingway is know for his sparse prose, and Faulkner is verbose. I've also heard that there is a Henry James vs. Hemingway conflict. Again, Henry James writes some very long sentences.

Personally I prefer Oscar Wilde.

ellevee
No you are not. I was given Memoirs of a Geisha twice. I thought it a very disempowering story for a women. I did like the descriptions of the kimonos though.

richardderus
I read a story by Joyce Carol Oates years and years ago. It was so dark and dank and dismal I vowed never to go near her work again. I read for edification, enlightenment and entertainment not for seeking dismal hopelessness.

I don't expect to like everything that I read, and/or all books by 'great authors'. These days I'm more willing to concede that any dislike might be down to my lack of engagement with the subject or the author than a failing in the book itself.

#21 -- "read for edification, enlightenment and entertainment..."

I agree, which is why a lot of the "great novelists" of our time, the creaky old white guys like Mailer, Updike, Roth, or even the last few John Irvings, don't interest me; I don't want to read about their pathetic sex lives, I have one of my own, thank you... and the older they/I get, the creepier it gets...

>23 TeacherDad: - you are missing out then; Roth has been the best novelist in America for the last 15 years or so.
Mailer has never really written about his sex life - it's not a big enough subject for him. Judging by Terrorist, Updike should stick to his sex life.
Irving is not a great novelist, he produced one great novel, The World According to Garp, and everything else was either building up to that work, or an attempt to recapture the 'magic' of it.

No, you are not alone. I found "Memoirs of a Geisha" tedious in the extreme.

Memoirs Of A Geisha. HATE it. Am I the only one?

NO! I despised this book. The only reason I finished it was that I was stuck at a hostel on an island in Thailand and had already read everything else that was palatable. And I include a Dan Brown book in that mix, which says a lot since he's on my list of Top 5 Most Hated People in the World Today. Seriously.

But enough with the hatorade. Just to screw up the groupings, I love Faulkner AND Austen AND Atwood, am reasonably fond of Hemingway and James, and, wait, more hatorade on the way- HATE Dickens. I've been trying him out again and- nope. Still boring, pointless, and nauseating.

That said, I do think that the Hemingway v. Faulkner split makes sense (or v. James, or v. Hawthorne, who is the one I usually use for this purpose). Although I like all of these chaps, I like them for different reasons and in different ways. Knowing which side someone leans toward could be very useful knowledge indeed.

#26- wait, more hatorade on the way- HATE Dickens.

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I don't really get HATING Dickens. Disliking him, okay . . . but hating? What's to hate? I haven't read a lot of Dickens (says the woman who just finished a 1000 page Dickens book), and admittedly there are some pretty strange sappy bits, but I thought the evocative language in other parts made up for it. Sure, he goes on a bit, but I don't see what's to HATE. Is it the length? Is it the syrupy parts? Or am I missing a great hate-fest? Can you give me more info? :-)

Gladly! As a teacher, I always tell my students that they can hate as many classic authors as they want, so long as they can explain their reasons. I've only read/seriously attempted about 4 Dickens books, so I'll break it down accordingly:

A Christmas Carol: sappy but part of life since birth. No strong feelings.

A Tale of Two Cities: We were supposed to read this in high school. Shortly in, however, I realized that if I continued reading, I would be forced to set myself on fire. I just found the characters incredibly inane and the prose insipid. Blah blah blah, and then blah blah blah, with no apparent end or point in sight. I never did finish it, but neither did anyone else in my class and our teacher was conveniently forgetful. This book, however, inspired my hatred for Dickens.

I then tried various other Dickens' books over the next ten years without finding any reason to read past the first 10 pages or so. (Since I used to proctor practice SATs at high schools, I spent a lot of time thumbing through whichever books were handy.)

Recently, I read Hard Times and actually found it readable. The characters were still really two-dimensional, but at least the writing moved at a pace faster than changes in the RC church. Also, the plot was less pointless than that of his other works, as far as I could tell.

My final attempt at the Dickens was The Pickwick Papers and my god, the horror. I'm a good 50 pages in and NOTHING has happened. Not really. A group of annoying older men have rambled semi-coherently, and a bum they picked up has rambled less coherently. There was a scuffle involving an older lady and a case of mistaken identity. This could have been interesting but the long-winded prose sucked all life out of the incident. At this point, I want to put all of these asinine characters out of their misery by drowning them. In a sack.

I've heard many other people comment on the whole 'Dickens as a serial author who was paid by the word' thing, and I am inclined to agree. His prose just drags on interminably, and I don't see anything clever in any of his characterizations or dialog. This makes me hate him because I feel like his stories ought to be interesting, but he manages to make them so boring that I would rather beat my head against the book than read another page.

And for the record, I'm not some namby-pamby reader who just can't handle the older language, or lengthy prose, or anything- some of my favorite authors are Thomas Hardy and Nathanial Hawthorne. Syrupy can be problematic, but not always- it all depends on how the syrup is disseminated- and I wouldn't say that was my issue with Dickens. A choir I was in performed a bunch of stuff from "Oliver!" back in the day too, so that may also explain some psychological trauma.

I am curious- which book did you read? I know there are many others, and someday I may try another, but it'll be a while- PP put me off my Dickens-feed for some time to come.

i always enjoy a good misery tale. 'good' fiction shouldnt always have to be upbeat, flowery entertainment should it, surely thats what we have chick-lit for, to entertain the dullard masses.

I have read three books by Timothy Findley - The Wars, Pilgrim and Spadework. Didn't like any of them! He is supposed to be one of Canada's great writers and The Wars a great novel - personally I find his writing clumsy and high school-ish.
Spadework was just crap,the plot was awful and the writing, again, clumsy and high-schoolish; Pilgrim was weird.
One day I will tackle Not Wanted on the Voyage but I won't give it much time...off with its head if I don't like it after 10 pages!

29 sean

surely thats what we have chick-lit for, to entertain the dullard masses.

Wow, condescending much??

yeah it is a bit condescending, but only to people who move there lips when they read then come on this site and bitch that Joyce gave their brain a boo-boo.

also i didnt mean to pick on chick-lit, crime fiction is also far too conventional. its only the early chick lit that annoys me really its actually starting to gain some depth in recent years.

what i was tring to say was that there are some books that are just entertainment and others that are Art. if you dont like the art ones you should stick to entertainment because to be honest i've not read a single adroit argument in this group against a book just people venting frustration with books that were probably out of their league in the first place

now thats condescending

32 sean

Yes, it certainly is condescending. And hard to take seriously, too. But we're all entitled to our opinions.

what i was tring to say was that there are some books that are just entertainment and others that are Art

So, just checking Sean- are you the final arbiter on this? We've had some discussion in the past on various groups about this, and people have disagreed as to which book belong in which camps, so it would be really helpful to have a deciding vote. Since you dismiss everyone's venting with one (well, two really) fell swoops, I'm assuming you have some justification.

There's venting and then there are term papers. I'm certain that many, if not most, of us have written terms papers about literature and could articulate our reasons for liking or disliking a book more clearly given the need. This, however, is an online forum called "Awful Lit" and, as such, is more of a place for venting. Hence my use of the term "hatorade" as opposed to "well-reasoned and carefully explained dislike." If you disagree with someone, feel free to write a rebuttal- I've taken a number of suggestions from people doing exactly that, as they've convinced me to give a hated author another shot. If all you want to do is feel superior, feel free to do so, but please keep it in your head. We may all be entitled to our opinions, but that doesn't always make it appropriate to broadcast them.

If I was you sean, I'd quit while I was behind...

well there is Aesthetic theory for a broad perspective of what art is. but that will only give you the various scholarly opinions of what art is, and as you seem to think everyone’s opinions are equal we'll avoid that.
I’ll tell you what you pick a book you really hate but is considered a classic by the literary establishment and I’ll tell you why i think your wrong from a Structuralist, deconstructionist, post modernist, psychoanalytic, feminist, Marxist & stylistic perspectives.
sorry i cant do liberal humanism like most of the reviews on LT but since that’s been widely viewed as obsolete for a century by everyone past secondary school these will have to do

Sure, Sean, let's do that. But first, a little spelling and punctuation refresher? I know, those criticisms are the last refuge of the weak-minded, but no one's ever accused me of being a genius.

Get out much, sean?

relax, dude, it's all about the books, not proving to people they're wrong...

#28 I am curious- which book did you read? I know there are many others, and someday I may try another, but it'll be a while- PP put me off my Dickens-feed for some time to come.

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Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, KPlatypus. I was deep into writing about Bleak House, which I really enjoyed. It's not perfect--I suppose you could call most of the characters two-dimensional, and there are some pretty disturbing assumptions about the role of women. But overall, I thought it was great, and it makes me want to read more Dickens. Thanks for your articulate and detailed explanation. (And I'll avoid the Pickwick Papers).

Well I've read The Dubliners and A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. But I'm not touching Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake before some extensive further conditioning. I don't want to pull a muscle between my ears...

My all-time worst and most unreadable book is probably Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. There is a reason a big-deal author has his weighty novel sitting on a remainder table tagged at $3. I thought, "How bad can it be?"

And I found out.

I'm not counting books that are known to be crap and are sold as such, or airport books and so forth. To really fail you have to have some pretention to quality, which I foolishly supposed Umberto Eco had. Serves me right for buying fiction.

I like Faulkner. And to compound the sin, I like Hemingway and Sherwood Anderson and Scott Fitzgerald and Conrad and Hardy and Somerset Maugham. I'm mystified how anyone can really dislike Joseph Conrad. Faulkner-- okay, a very flawed human being, as was Hemingway, as am I as far as that goes-- but as annoying as Faulkner sometimes is (which I at once acknowledge) I still value his work. Of course now the entire canon of my youth is not PC and not in fashion and far from ideologically correct. But thems the breaks.

well said, Skip, from a fellow Faulkner/Fitzgerald/Conrad sinner...
and I also had a bad experience w/ Umberto Eco, his Mysterious Flaming of Queen Loana -- or whatever it was -- was awful, and awfully boring...

On the Umberto- I have this theory, you see. Umberto Eco's books are wildly popular, yet very difficult for a normal person to read. By normal person, by the way, I include anyone not absolutely fascinated by things like make-believe conspiracy theories, medieval Franciscan debates, and stone fish. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that many of those who claim to love his books have not actually read his books. I just don't understand how it works otherwise. If there is someone on this list who is not fascinated by these things and yet loves Eco, I would love to know why.

That said, I studied heretical movements and religious conspiracy theories in college so I, of course, love Eco. I really don't see how other people do, though. The Franciscan debate about poverty isn't exactly common knowledge, I don't think, and without knowing the story behind the Franciscans/Fraticelli/Spirituals, how interesting can the book be?

The one Eco book I had trouble with was The Island of the Day Before and once I switched to audiobook, I really enjoyed it, and it stuck with me in unexpected ways. Haven't read The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana yet, so I can't speak to that one. Just wanted to chime on in the 'Eco as terrible/wonderful' issue. I love him, but I can totally understand why others wouldn't.

ETA: Oh, and I too love Faulkner, Conrad, and Hardy and am at least friendly with the others chaps you mentioned, in case that gives my appeal some street cred.

I just recently found this group, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. So I am replying to a post from October. Forgive me. You probably will completely shun me though for my confession here. I read The Bell Jar in high school and afterward found out that she had commit suicide. It seemed like the one thing she really wanted and I was glad she was successful in that goal. And I hated all the bellyaching. I know that probably makes me a really awful person. If it redeems me at all, I did like her poetry.

I can understand the hatorade (love that term) for Dickens, even though I like a lot of his work. He can be maudlin, and sentimental, and loooong-winded. Try Our Mutual Friend, or Bleak House, or Old Curiosity Shop.
Never made it through Eco, though I might not've been in the right frame of mind. Don't you find that sometimes you just have to be in the mood for "that kind of book?" For example, I don't just grab a Faulkner and dive in-I have to gear up for it.

44 -- I wouldn't mind trying Eco again, if you steer me I will trust you, but Loana was essentially an old guy unpacking his childhood home and reviewing every single book and comic and newspaper he had ever read and saved... I think it would have been an awesome 1st third of a book, but he never got to the rest of the story...
45 -- you are forgiven, and you are not awful. The Bell Jar is not, and is.
46 -- books are like women: some are more high maintenance than others, and require more time and effort to appreciate (I almost said "...to get what you want out of them")

books are like women: some are more high maintenance than others, and require more time and effort to appreciate (I almost said "...to get what you want out of them")

Excellent analogy-even the end. Face it, some books, you go to for comfort, others for excitement, others for consistency. From what I've noticed from the males of the species, those are some of the reasons they go to some women, too. :)

As for Eco, I like (not LOVE) the two of his books I have made it through. Name of the Rose I read in college-my roommate was assigned to read it for a lit class, rented the movie, I was interested in it, so I grabbed her copy of the book and finished it before she even had a chance to hunt down the Cliffs Notes. Watching the movie first helped. I had to revisit Focault's Pendulum a few times before I could make it past the first three chapters. I just had to let my mind swim. I haven't been brave enough to try his other works, but a few are on my TBR list. I do like the challenge once in a while. To go back to TeacherDad's analogy, sometimes a book that plays hard-to-get is the most satisfying when you finally do get it.

All things midieval was already a fascination when I read Name of the Rose. But when I finished it all I could think was how the mystry compared to Sherlock Holms. I was warned away from the rest of Eco's work. No Conrad for me. *shudder*.

I kinda liked Nostromo, after the first 150 pages or so, of course.

>48 kaelirenee:: Kaelirenee: your "broad" mindedness is appreciated.
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>50 Sandydog1:: Nostromo -- precisely the Conrad I could never get through. Maybe because I've never made it past 50 pages.
.
Love Conrad mostly though. One of the greatest endings to any work of literature is the penultimate -- but climactic -- scene of his short novel Youth.

It's Roth I hate - I don't get it, can't get it, won't get it. Too, too, too macho for me. I do feel guilty about it though.

I read alot of Dickens on my honeymoon in Jamaica - there wasn't much else to do there besides read, get massages from "Lovey" the house masseuse and, well, you know. It was heavenly.

But then, that marriage didn't last.

...but do you still read Dickens?

don't feel guilty about Roth, he's too, too, too for me as well, and that's from someone very self-centered and macho...

Despite it all, I do still have a warm spot for Dickens. Let's see, whom else do I think is over-rated - Don deLillo perhaps? Or maybe he's just over my head - either way, he and his fans make me mad.

M 53: and that's from someone very self-centered and macho...

Yeah, I saw the name TeacherDad and said to myself, "That's a testosterone-crazed maniac, I bet."

I also just realised that I never finished my plea for Eco. I agree with a lot of Kaelirenee's comments on The Name of the Rose and Foucalt's Pendulum. They're Eco's best books, in my opinion, but can be tricky if you don't have a lot of background in the fields being discussed. One thing I used from time to time when reading The Name of the Rose (and I do have a lot of background in the field) was The Key to the Name of the Rose. It's sort of a Cliff's Notes specifically written for that book, and it can be really helpful. It provides translations for the portions written in other languages, defines terms like "beatific vision" for those not in the know when it comes to Medieval Franciscan schisms, and just provides a lot of info that helps make sense of the story. Watching the movie first might also help, since the core storyline is the same. I don't know of any similar tool for Foucalt's Pendulum but I do agree that it's kind of hard to get into. Again, it's very much my field of knowledge and I still had to power through the first 50 or so pages. Once it picks up, though, it's a great read.

And you know, the timing has to be right. It took me a couple of tries before I really got into some of Eco's books, and many of my friends had the same experience. He's one of those author's that you can always come back to when you're in the right mood, and you probably won't enjoy him until you are. Once you are, though, he's fabulous. IMO, of course.

there definitely were parts of Eco's Queen Loana that I liked, and I could appreciate him as an author/artist, but the book seemed to be all great idea/start and never jumped off from there... the beginning simply continued... all... the way... through... the book!
"TestosteroneDad"

Hi all - great thread!

Regarding Umberto Eco. Nobody's mentioned that these books are translated from the Italian.

I work for a company whose parent is Italian and let me tell you, every time I read a document that originates in Italy and has been translated into the English, I twitch or contemplate suicide. Admittedly these are business documents, but I find that the sentences are a combination of vague or slightly-incorrectly-used words. These sentences form paragraphs that are soft and fuzzy, blurry and not incisive. Whole documents are ephemeral, misleading, and unsatisfactory. It makes one yearn for Faulker, Austen, Dickens, because at least the verbosity is understandable.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the books are better in Italian. I don't speak the language, and don't plan to learn it at this late date in my life, but there. Just a thought.

I'm in the minority here, because I like Dickens and Austen. I also love the short stories by Faulkner and Joyce, though I'm not a fan of their stream-of-conciousness novels.

Add me to the hatoraders (assuming that's the word for participants in a hatorade) of Roth and Mailer. They should stick to guest-writing articles for Esquire.

Speaking of mysoginists, I really hated D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. If there were a Mount Rushmore equivalent for Awful Lit, D.H. Lawrence's profile would be there.

Eco discusses the problem of translation is this essay - Rose by Any Other Name.

I can't understand why Roth is getting so much flak; his early novels can be annoying but since the mid-80's he has probably been the best American novelist in terms of quality and quantity.

Jumping in here to add my name to the list of Faulkner supporters. I've long felt (and I have put this out on LT in a couple other places) that the approach taken by educators to his work is all wrong. They throw The Sound and the Fury at high school freshmen and expect them to see the genius in it. In order to appreciate him (even love him, as I do) it's best to start with some of his less well known, and less difficult, works. When anyone asks me what they should read first, I recommend The Unvanquished, or The Hamlet, because the stories are fairly easy to follow, the characters are marvelous, and there is a good deal of humor in them. They aren't his masterpieces, but they can lead you to the works that are--The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!--and prepare you to revel in them. I also think readers often miss the humor in Faulkner, and that's another common failing of teachers and professors, that they seldom point out how wickedly funny he can be.

laytonwoman, I had a really cool English teacher who had no trouble pointing out the humor in The Sound and the Fury even to the extent that my friends and I ran with it in typical teenage boy fashion and took it a bit too far. The main thing I remember is that "Did you ever have a sister?" became our preferred non-sequitur for a good six months, one that we took a certain hammy delight in playing up for its prurient and/or loony overtones.

I've since meant to tackle Faulkner but feel a bit intimidated in doing so without the support of a good teacher or at least some comrades. So, thanks for the suggestions. I think I'll try to reintroduce myself to Faulkner.

Carlos, you made my day! I hope you do give Faulkner another try, and I hope you find he was worth your time. Don't let him intimidate you. If you find you're not "getting" a certain section of his prose, just let it wash over you and keep swimming. Sometimes the "meaning" is not the point, just as with some poetry.

I confess/admit I read The Sound and the Fury for the fun of it, and I referred to study guides (Cliff and/or Sparknotes). They helped me with the sequence of the various narrators. I can't imagine just diving in and not knowing that all the characters' narrations are all blended together.

I read The Sound and the Fury decades ago, and can't remember any of it. Maybe I'll re-read it, now that I am (maybe) mature for it.

I'm going all the way back towards the beginning of this thread. Am I the only one that likes William Faulkner AND Ernest Hemingway?

Nope, I do too! Got to mix it up, can't eat the same thing for dinner every night...

It's OK-apparently, I'm the only one who likes Margaret Atwood and Umberto Eco. :)

What?! Surely that combo can't be so uncommon. Rest assured that you have at least one compatriot in here.

I once read The Viking Portable Conrad on a Mexican beach one Winter, and it all made sense.
Now, I loves me the Dickens, but I can't stand Oliver Twist. And that, unfortunately, is the one Dickens that's shoved down high schooler's throats.
And save The Sound and the Fury for later. Start with As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, or The Reivers.