Up Front: The Classics Are Rubbish Too
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No one has yet mentioned my favourite unfinished read - Pamela. Has anyone actually managed to read it all the way through? Why and how?
Because it was a set text for a 200-level Novel course, and with sort of growing incredulity and horror that it really was going to end the way it looked like it was going to end, with all the stomach-churning horror attendant on that and it's STILL better than Clarissa.
But we did also have Shamela set, to cleanse the palette. I liked Tristram Shandy, though, I really did.
Re: the comments about Heinlein a bit back, Job is the only Heinlein still on my shelf. It's actually fun, and it's where I learned what a San Francisco Sandwich was.
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These days I prefer a book I can read from cover to cover while in the bath
Since you mention Candide, I'd rate that for shortness and sweetness among classics.
Someone upthread expressed dislike for plots driven by arbitrary coincidence; here I think that contributes nicely to the whole package.
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No one has yet mentioned my favourite unfinished read - Pamela. Has anyone actually managed to read it all the way through? Why and how?
Yes. I had nothing better to do and nothing else to read, then it just became a matter of sheer bloody-mindedness. Then I went on to Clarissa -- the longest date rape in English literature. Why and how? Because self-loathing washes us up on many a strange shore, especially when well-lubricated with black coffee.
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Don't they give some kind of prize for endurance for having read Clarissa?
Pamela = Allie McBeal. Pamela's grovelling obsequious psalm-muttering dotard of a dad makes Tom Bombadil look like a model of restraint. Thankfully he makes only minor appearances. -
here's a question... how many of the critics on this list have actually written a novel?
only wondering because, well, i'm not very good at it myself, despite numerous attempts.
(to be honest, the only thing i've ever written that interested anyone was a little blog, now slowly moldering into obscurity).
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It's got a whole heap of flaws in terms of characterisation, the massive change in tone from book 1 to book 3, and that kind of stuff just isn't everyone's cup of tea. But it's still a giant in terms of its lasting popularity and influence.
I found it really fascinating to go through the "History of Middle Earth" series - which is basically a compilation of Tolkein's drafts - and see how much the damn thing changed from start to finish. (For instance: everyone who thinks that Arwen is a cipher and Aragorn/Eowyn should have been the way to go? That's totally what he was writing up until the very last drafts.)
But, of course, you have to have a very special sort of personality to enjoy reading the drafts in the first place. *g* I have a lot of sympathy for Terry Pratchett, who once commented that he takes great pleasure, after finishing a book, in crying "Eat shit, literary researchers of the future!" and deleting everything except the finished copy.
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here's a question... how many of the critics on this list have actually written a novel?
Ah, time to make a clean breast of it. I'll just go get the soap.
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I have. All the way to the end and everything. It was about a group of uni students who belong to this Classics club who commit a murder and cover it up, and what happens after that.
About a fortnight after I finished it, someone (possibly Sayana) lent me The Secret History. I cried.
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Jo S,
I really enjoy Neal Stephenson - I thought Cryptonomicon was great, the Diamond Age was OK, but I am about half way through Quicksilver, but having to havbe a wee rest and read other stuff while my brain recovers.
The Night's Dawn trilogy makes great Sci-Fi reading, but I'm not as obsessed as my boyfriend who re-reads them on a semi-regular basis.
One of the books I've never managed to make it through is Gormenghast. I've tried several times and only get about 50 pages in. It's like wading through wet concrete. Very pretty wet concrete, but still ....
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the [jane austen] films are worse. a bunch of foofy tosh.
Emma: can we rename this the foofy tosh file?
Surely, the phrase "foofy tosh" defines the worst of the worst.
Toy Story. Paddington bloody Bear. Even if he is supposed to be a metaphorical refugee. In fact, especially if. Stephen here-it-is-no-it-isn't-BOO! King.
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Pamela is not too tough to get to end of. It's quite charming really. She's a plucky young thing.
Clarissa is probably more interesting, but it really is long; I paused indefinitely at about p. 300.
__I tried Tristram Shandy once, managed a page or three.__
You guys are killing me here, you really are.
If anybody needs me, I'll be in the bathroom, crying.
I'm with Giovanni here. Funniest novel ever. Well, close enough.
As to the question at hand: White Teeth is the worst "good" novel I've read in a while. What a shocker. Genuinely bad on just about every count. A disaster. A piece of shit. Unmitigated crap.
The Secret History is too, really, but I kind of admire the way Tartt does such a good job of disguising how bad it is.
As for Pynchon knockers: you don't know what you're talking about.
Mason & Dixon and Gravity's Rainbow are equally, but quite differently, two of the best novels ever.
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i'll freely admit to wanting to get back into gravity's rainbow. once i "got" the crying of lot 49 it all kind of fell into place. maybe over christmas when i can just sit and absorb.
and i'm feeling a guilty need to defend my foofy tosh assertion about austen.
there's only one thing that could rescue austen novels.
ninjas. or maybe a mafia shoot-out. or maybe the ghost of both.
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Emma: can we rename this the foofy tosh file?
I'm charmed that we're asking my permission to do things now.
So, no we bloody can't, not if you're going to stick Toy Story in there. That movie was every parent's dream: something you can watch with your kids without sending your brain out back with a bottle of gin first.
Anyway, the Foofy Tosh files start with Georgette bloody Heyer.
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Sometimes I wish that the business of writing novels had finished after Tristram Shandy was published. Sterne had shown that the novel was just a conceit and we could all have moved on from there. Instead we have had two centuries of novels full of Purpose and Meaning, which readers feel they 'get' or wail and gnash their teeth for the lack of 'getting.'
Our weakness for narrative made us take novels seriously. I suppose it is one of the minor human faults but it has made us into people who feel we have failed because we have not finished Gravity's Rainbow.
It is this simple: you cannot grow bananas in London, Jaguar did not make a car like that before the end of the war and Pynchon does not understand the English class system.
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there's only one thing that could rescue austen novels.
ninjas.
Oh, they were there. You just didn't see them.
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On the bad science fiction front, can I recommend everyone stick away from the Bio of a Space Tyrant six part series, by Piers Anthony. The series is neatly divided into 6 parts of his life - refugee, soldier, politican, etc.
Unless you're interested in bad pornography, and male "oh how great the main character is", along with distinctly average writing, in which case, dig in!
His Xanth series is a little better, and at least entertaining (at least the few I read), if you're looking for non-serious fantasy for tween/teens.
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there's only one thing that could rescue austen novels.
ninjas. or maybe a mafia shoot-out. or maybe the ghost of both
Emma wanted Austen crossed over with Die hard - Pride and Extreme Prejudice
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Anyway, the Foofy Tosh files start with Georgette bloody Heyer.
*cough* At least she left the fucking (and I mean fucking) Tudors alone. If I see one more novel about any sodding Boleyn girl or anyone else who got their ya-yas off in Tudor or Early Stuart England I'll be reviewing it with a can of lighter fluid and a match.
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Die hard - Pride and Extreme Prejudice
says blaxploitation to me.
mind you, pam in one of those empire line dresses would be... quite a sight.
they'd need to drop the hem a lot to hide the platform shoes but.
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well, I like Iain M. Banks. I started enjoying Iain Banks but then got bored. Walking on Glass was good but liked The Bridge even more. To quote Craig..."bite me".
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Is it Pamela or Clarissa that continues to write in her diary as she is raped?
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If you wanna quote Craig, I can recommend his comment from a few pages back...
...I like Dick more than Che does...
Well, it made me smile.
I have taken against 'classics' to some extent, probably put off by school set-texts (Dickens, Austen) but have browsed a number of more modern highly-regarded authors. However, reading for pleasure is my style and I have enjoyed the afore-mentioned Iain (M) Banks.
I'd also like to plug Len Deighton's writing - not yer usual spy-stories.But I have so little time I can spend reading these days that I want something I can enjoy with very little effort.
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Is it Pamela or Clarissa that continues to write in her diary as she is raped?
Pamela. Fielding's pisstake contains a fabulous section where she tries to fend off her attacker with one hand while frantically scribbling in her notebook with the other.
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White Teeth is the worst "good" novel I've read in a while. What a shocker. Genuinely bad on just about every count. A disaster. A piece of shit. Unmitigated crap.
You're probably right , but the awful Autograph Man makes it look like a work of genius.
Mason & Dixon and Gravity's Rainbow are equally, but quite differently, two of the best novels ever.
Again, I wouldn't dare to differ, but for me it's Gravity's Rainbow: 90% inspiration, 10% artifice, with Mason & Dixon in inverse proportion.
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I rilly enjoyed DeLillo's Underworld - it's a bit of an epic alright, I enjoyed following the undercurrents throughout. Reading this thread makes me want to read White Noise too.
I read the Da Vinci Code, too. I thought it 'crappy book, would make a great movie', but Ron Howard made a STINKER from it. I learned that anything with Tom Hanks in a mulllet that's not Bachelor Party is crap.
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*cough* At least she left the fucking (and I mean fucking) Tudors alone. If I see one more novel about any sodding Boleyn girl or anyone else who got their ya-yas off in Tudor or Early Stuart England I'll be reviewing it with a can of lighter fluid and a match.
Sorry to disappoint - she did Charles II (although, to be fair, that's more Late Stuart than Early.) Not that I've read it; I love Heyer in general, but her pre-Regency stuff (there's a William the Conqueror one, shudder) leaves me cold.
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