Up Front by Emma Hart

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Up Front: The Classics Are Rubbish Too

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  • dyan campbell,

    I loved Secret History for much the same reason that Emma stated (and possibly the same conversation). What I never forgave Donna Tartt for was her second book: The Little Friend

    Agreed, The Little Friend was apalling, and I don't think it would have been published at all without all the massive success of Tartt's first book.

    auckland • Since Dec 2006 • 595 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    Also, seeing as J.R.R. Tolkien invented the genre of interminable fantasy novels about elves and dragons, I think he bears some responsibility for the truly bad stuff.

    I read LoTR when I had chicken pox at boarding school, and nothing else to do, and no desire to do so again but that's a bit on the nose. Tolkien was horrified when his book became a hippy cult item in the 60's (I'm not really sure he'd reconciled himself to the rest of the 20th century).

    But Jenny Turner published an interesting -- and be warned, very long -- essay in the London Review of Books called __Reasons to Like Tolkien__, that tried to dissect the appeal of his work, without being blind to his flaws.

    A taste:

    I don’t want to defend Tolkien or to attack him, but to describe how the strange power of his book casts a spell over readers, as children, as pubescents, as adolescents, as adults, a spell some of them grow out of and others don’t. Except that ‘spell’ is far too neat and unembarrassing a metaphor, really, for a process as alarming as the locking-on of the hungry imagination. It is possible for readers to live their whole lives through Tolkien’s universe, for weeks and months and even longer. This suggests that among the novel’s other attractions, it has cubby-holes for all sorts of urges to hide in, like Star Trek or Star Wars.

    I am not interested in slumming, in showing off about my naughty hobbit habit. The idea of slumming is an attempt to negotiate a deal between the secret shameful self who just wants to gobble, gobble, gobble and an acceptable adult dinner-party persona. All of us were children once, and that should be enough.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    I loved Secret History for much the same reason that Emma stated (and possibly the same conversation). What I never forgave Donna Tartt for was her second book: The Little Friend

    The advance warning on that one was one of the nicest things you've ever done for me.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • Sayana,

    The advance warning on that one was one of the nicest things you've ever done for me.

    Anything for you dahling...

    Since Sep 2008 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Don Christie,

    the example was the endless minutiae on whaling in Moby Dick.

    Someone needed to tell Ishmael that whale really is not a fish. If that had happened round about page 2 then the book might be a whole lot more readable.

    Jude the Obscure - now that really takes grinding depression to previously unexplored lengths and depths.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 1645 posts Report Reply

  • Andrew Stevenson,

    Sayana

    Anything for you dahling...

    Emma from earlier

    Sounds like a fun game. Not sure how productive it would be, but I am willing to give it a try. Now, I'll just need to get me a maid...

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 206 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    But what someone (Craig?) said earlier about Forester being... "pretentious and dull"

    And horribly snobbish -- I got forced to see Howard's End, and came away wanting to punch Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham-Carter in the face. Which was not, I presume, the intended effect.

    One of the sociocultural mysteries of the age is why Anglophile Americans go gaga for Merchant-Ivory slash Bloomsbury to a degree that makes you wonder whether they're aware that the British lost the Revolutionary War. Forster was gay -- and Virginia Woolf topped herself --, so with a little effort you can squint past how their exquisite sensibilities and professed socialisim never quite extended to being civil to the servants (or the rough trade picked up in foreign climes, if you were Lytton Strachey) or avoiding making crass and offensive anti-Semitic comments in front of Leonard.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Rowe,

    I loved Secret History for much the same reason that Emma stated (and possibly the same conversation). What I never forgave Donna Tartt for was her second book: The Little Friend

    Wow, really? I wouldn't go to war for The Little Friend, but I found it enjoyable enough. <ducks for cover>


    I've just this weekend finished this and found it really good until the end, where, not to spoil it, it sucks arse. I'd invested so much time into it that the ending was more than a bringdown. If it hadn't been a library book I'd have thrown into the Lake (Rotorua, seeing as you're asking)

    Lake Roxburgh, Central Ot… • Since Nov 2006 • 574 posts Report Reply

  • Isabel Hitchings,

    I wouldn't go to war for The Little Friend, but I found it enjoyable enough. <ducks for cover>

    I guess I need to join you in your shelter 'cause I liked The Little Friend too. I read it before I read The Secret History and enjoyed it enough to seek out the author's other work.

    Christchurch • Since Jul 2007 • 719 posts Report Reply

  • Sayana,

    I guess I need to join you in your shelter 'cause I liked The Little Friend too. I read it before I read The Secret History and enjoyed it enough to seek out the author's other work.

    I had been waiting for DT's second book for a long long time. There was much hype about the fact that it took her ten (or so) years to write. To me it felt that it had been "fine-tuned" to such a point that it had lost all 'flow'.

    Since Sep 2008 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Tom Beard,

    Continuing with Huysmans, I love this quote from Arthur Symonds (found on Wikipedia, natch):

    Barbaric in its profusion, violent in its emphasis, wearying in its splendor

    That could apply equally well to some of my other favourite writers: Pynchon comes to mind.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 1040 posts Report Reply

  • Matt Nippert,

    Richard Irvine:

    Has anyone tried Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace? I piked out at about 560 pages (of just over 1K). It's... kind of brilliant but yeah, really heavy on the seemingly irrelevant.

    I actually got through that medical-encyclopedia of a novel, but in highly experimental circumstances I wouldn't recommend to anyone else. A six month stint on the dole, a dead cheap flat with dead things somewhere beneath a hole in the kitchen floor, and the mad ravings of critics gave me the opportunity.

    Finishing the damn things was another matter altogether. Even with 8+ hours a day of dedicated reading, it took the better part of a month to get through. But it's still one of my favourite novels, mostly down to David Foster Wallace's explanation of conflict with Quebec: New Hampshire is turned into a toxic waste dump and the US and Canada go to war over who doesn't own that cursed territory.

    And the man knows his Tennis. Check out his essay on Roger Federer.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 21 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Rowe,

    That could apply equally well to some of my other favourite writers: Pynchon comes to mind.

    I love Pynchon, but really struggled with Mason & Dixon and to this day haven't finished it. Having lost my copy doesn't help.


    I also found The Naked Lunch to be so utterly depressing I had to stop reading it.

    Lake Roxburgh, Central Ot… • Since Nov 2006 • 574 posts Report Reply

  • Tom Beard,

    I also found The Naked Lunch to be so utterly depressing I had to stop reading it.

    Man, I can think of at least two things wrong with that title!</popcultureallusion>

    I only made it about halfway through, though I partly blame that on reading it while off work with a particularly nasty bout of gastroenteritis</tmi>

    Sometimes reading in "experimental circumstances" can be rewarding, though. I read Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers while suffering from two weeks of fever and borderline alcohol poisoning and living across the road from a famous brothel. The only way it could have been more appropriate would have been if I had been wearing women's clothes that I'd stolen from a friend.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 1040 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    Sayana

    Anything for you dahling...

    Emma from earlier

    Sounds like a fun game. Not sure how productive it would be, but I am willing to give it a try. Now, I'll just need to get me a maid...

    Aheheh. Aheheheheheheh.

    I also found The Naked Lunch to be so utterly depressing I had to stop reading it.

    Ditto.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • Sayana,

    Aheheh. Aheheheheheheh.

    I don't do windows

    Since Sep 2008 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Rowe,

    It's enough to make you rent a car and drive to a World trade fair in Knoxville, TN </I get it>

    You can be honest with us Tom. If you didn't steal those clothes from a friend, where did you get them?

    Lake Roxburgh, Central Ot… • Since Nov 2006 • 574 posts Report Reply

  • Joe Wylie,

    I love Pynchon, but really struggled with Mason & Dixon__and to this day haven't finished it. Having lost my copy doesn't help.

    You can have mine - I'm sure I won't re-read it. Agree that the first three - __V, The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow - are great reads. You can still enjoy GR in random chunks, but Vineland is a pale echo. Gave up on Against the Day earlier this year about 400 pages in. Once Pynchon did brilliant, now he seems only able to manage clever.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    I also found The Naked Lunch to be so utterly depressing I had to stop reading it.

    But it did give a damn fine band it's name:

    The problem with Burroughs is that shooting up, buggery, auto-erotic asphyxiation as the harbinger of the apocalypse and misogynistic talking anuses lose their novelty value faster than you might think. Where are the cheap thrills of yesteryear?

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Islander,

    I really really enjoyed LOTR -when I was 13 (I have the original hardback editions.) I drew the characters, pondered things left out - and eventually wrote Tolkien - "Who did Meriadoc Brandybuck marry?" (It's not in the whakapapa...) I got a letter back from his secretary BUT with a handwritten comment, signed, in red ballpoint, by JRRTolkien:
    "I believe it was a cousin of Fredegar Bolgers"etc. (I gave that away a couple of years ago to an American friend - and yep, I knew it's worth.)

    It was soooo disappointing to start to reread LOTR in 2004 and quickly realise that I could stomach rereading the while thing. And I've never been able to finish "The Sillmarillion"...

    "Wall-E" - you lucky people who've seen it! I'm panting for the dvd...

    Big O, Mahitahi, Te Wahi … • Since Feb 2007 • 5643 posts Report Reply

  • Islander,

    "Argh! "couldNT stomach" etc.

    Big O, Mahitahi, Te Wahi … • Since Feb 2007 • 5643 posts Report Reply

  • B Jones,

    Conversely A Secret History by Mary Gentle saw me piking less than a third of the way in. Pages and pages of tedium interspersed with very graphic, and often sexual, violence. Probably not unlike 15th Century warfare really.

    Yeah? I loved it from the get-go. Not the violence part, but the incredible detail and plot. Arquebuses! Brigantines! Milanese full-plate armour! Carthaginian Visigoths! It's to standard big fat fantasy what Foucault's Pendulum is to The DaVinci Code. The price of writing like that is that it's slow to get going.

    Eddings, well. To his credit, he perfected the commercial form of Tolkienesque fantasy and managed to get umpteen books published while doing so. I remember desperately waiting for the concluding volume of one series to be released when I was 15. I can't read the things now. It's as cheap, efficient and nourishing as your average cheeseburger.

    Back to the classics, well, Victor Hugo gets way too much respect. What do you mean, the love of your life is the former neglected fosterling of the man who saved your father on the battle of Waterloo and her foster sister is her hopeless rival for your affections? Unlikely coincidence? Never. And about those hundred page diversions on the sewers, or slang, or Waterloo. It's like a soap-opera, but educational.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 976 posts Report Reply

  • Karen White,

    Pynchon's "Against the Day". Tedious beyond belief. I also couldn't finish "Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 79 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    And I've never been able to finish "The Sillmarillion"...

    You and he both.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Joe Wylie,

    anything by philip k dick.

    I'll bet then that you haven't read Confessions of a Crap Artist.
    Maybe it's because it's - as far as I know - the only non-SF thing he ever wrote.
    Also The Man in the High Castle isn't half bad.

    And just to get it off my chest, Don DeLillo sucks. His ponderous opinion pieces are all about sneaking through a few copies of Wired in order to appear (cough splutter) "relevant" to the fawning literary clique who dote on his pontifications. The sort of critical acclaim he has heaped on him is mostly about the blind leading the blind.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report Reply

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