What kind of literature "scares" you?

[lavendar1]

I was just wondering -- what kind of literature "scares," or intimidates you?
I've always been rather scared, so to speak, of poetry, or at least in trying to discuss it or analyze it: kind of in the way the villagers and king's advisors were in the children's tale called The Emperor's New Clothes, when they were too scared (or intimidated) to admit that they couldn't see his "clothes" and went along with the tailor's hoax...or I feel like a fraud like some of the people in art museums who travel in packs and ooohhh and aaaahhh at all the artwork and make profound statements of the art's ephemeral yet timeless appeal... I guess when reading poetry I often worry that I've missed the author's intended meaning -- particularly when I'm reading Wallace Stevens or T.S. Eliot, for example.

Some philosophical literature also scares me, for much the same reason. I recall feeling particularly like a moron when I took a 17th century French philosophy class (as a very-much undergraduate and non-philosophy major). I just couldn't get where everyone else was going. Or at least I felt that way.

And then there's James Joyce. Anyway, I've tried to overcome these 'fears' in recent years, with varying amounts of success and failure. Anyway, what do you think?

[PeterL]

Only kind of literature that scares me is the type like the left behind series. I have found that my opinions of literature are as good as, or better than, any opinions. If you are afraid of poetry, then sit down with some and analysize some: what is it saying and how is it being said. You probably will miss something, but anyone would. You might also try writing some poetry to see what you can put into it.1

[Sirius_Kai]

I think the type of literature that scares me is propaganda. While it can be a good thing used in this context, it is unfortunately used most often as a tool for wrongdoing.

[mono]

No real actual literature intimidates me to read, to tell all honesty. Literature, as art, readers seem supposed to accept it as they will. I have read a few things, however, that seemed far from my understanding - anything by Aleister Crowley, Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and certain works of poetry by Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, and Emily Dickinson.

[Bianca Fransen]

Poetry does have a tendency to initimidate me. I hardly read it because I constantly feel like I miss out on something. And the books of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce I did not dare to read, because everyone said they are very hard to understand.
The funny thing is - I also don't understand most art.. but then it does not frustrate me. I just watch it and either enjoy it or not. It does not stop me from going to musea. Lately I have been trying to adopt the same attitude towards poetry.. Just read it.. and enjoy it (or not).

[Monica]

I'm scared by literature talking about cities. Cities as almost living creatures, governing human lives, listening, thinking, feeling maybe. It's scary.

[Sally Brown]

I'm scared by typical love novels. They are full of fictitious suffering and exaggerated pain. Love is reduced to pathetic sentimentalism.
This is really scaring.

Bye,
Sally

[Mark F.]

Erotic novels scare me, I just have a problem with the concept LOL.

[Bianca Fransen]

LOL.. A problem with the concept 'erotic' or with the fact that there are novels? :goof:

[Mark F.]

I guess it's with "the fact that they're novels" part because an erotic movie never scared me away, heh.

[baddad]

No obvioius trend marks literary offerings that I shy away from, but many topics have partially confounded me (string theory, deeply existential philosophical literature, other complex sshhhhtufffff.....). I digest what can, sweat past the parts that are a mystery....and noticably sigh with relief when I finish these difficult reads.

[chispa]

some times I have read books that leave a bitterness in our spirit. I think that may be scary...It happened to me when I read The stranger , a great book, but the subject matter about human relationships and society unfair punishment against an individual or the difficult to understand human behaviour is overwhelming... :confused:

[EAP]

400 page dissertations of 'classics'.

Blech.

[Beaumains]

Political fiction (or "non-fiction"), that is, anything by a pundit, scares me because even though much of what they spout is false (that goes for both the Left and the Right), there are many who still believe it to be truth.

As for regular literature, anything by H.P. Lovecraft or Edgar Allen Poe makes me feel a bit nervous.

[Basil]

http://www.smcl.org/services/recommended/forkids/images/scarybooks/header.gif

Boo!

[appledips]

sometimes the mood/setting can be enough to make me keep my light on. :T sometimes i have to cover the book before i go to sleep..haha.

most times i find books like "shes come undone" disturbing more than scary.. or "lovely bones".. it's eerie to get a direct view of a psycho..

[mono]

Presently, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace sounds a little intimidating, until more simple-minded characters appear, like Sonya, Boris, and Natalya. I started days ago, and I already feel overwhelmed with the number of characters to remember!

[WhiteTiger]

Going on the assumtion that you mean literature as any written work I would ave to say that Soap Opera Digest is by far the sacriest.

[lavendar1]

I said I was a little intimidated or 'scared' sometimes by the poetry of Wallace Stevens - I stumbled onto the following poem, and I think he was a wee bit scared himself when he wrote it...

Domination of Black

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew down from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry - the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks,
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks.

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks.
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

This poem sounds great if you read it aloud - especially the 'turning' and 'turned' parts in the second stanza. Incidentally, Stevens considered this his best poem - I found it in a book I have called This is my Best. His quote: "Poetry is poetry, and one's objective as a poet is to achieve poetry...There are poets who would regard that as a scandal and who would say that a poem that had no importance except its importance as poetry had no importance at all, and that a poet who had no objective except to achieve poetry was a fribble and something less than a man of reason."

[underground]

poetry scares me, too. i think it's because i have a tendency of trying to finish a book as fast as possible, and with poetry, you just can't do that; you have to slow down, try to analyze the imagery and stuff, and relate and incorporate and whatnot. maybe i'll try poetry when i'm running out of prose to read.

i also, er, have a fear of shakespeare, even though he was supposed to be the greatest poet/writer of all times. i've read a couple of his books recently and found that they're not as not-understandable as i used to think, but from what i've read i only got the main plot. i have yet to appreciate the beauty of the language he used.

other literature writers i don't plan on reading anytime soon include faulkner, conrad, hawthorne, james, and people like that.

as for contemporary novels, i've obtained a fear of pulp fictions and chicklits, which can be fun every now and then but screw me up if i decided to read three of them in a row.

[lavendar1]

other literature writers i don't plan on reading anytime soon include faulkner, conrad, hawthorne, james, and people like that.

Funny, I used to be 'scared' of those writers, too, but lately I've developed a fondness for Faulkner and James. I got scared off by the long paragraphs James writes, but I got into reading his work after I read some of his brother William's work in philosophy/psychology, and especially when I read The Selected Letters of William James. He kept referring to his brother's books, making me want to read them - I loved The Bostonians and Portrait of a Lady. I love the way he describes what's going on inside his characters' heads. Same for Faulkner, although first time I read As I Lay Dying I thought I would do the same before I finished the book.

You can try some of James's short stories, too; I liked "The Aspern Papers." As for Hawthorne and Conrad, don't know much about their writing, except the stuff I read way back when.

[mono]

other literature writers i don't plan on reading anytime soon include faulkner, conrad, hawthorne, james, and people like that.
Some of William Faulkner's short stories can get a little difficult and heavy, from what I have read; Joseph Conrad, unfortunately, I have not read, but I intend to soon; Nathaniel Hawthorne, for some reason, intimidates a lot of people, though I remember reading The Scarlet Letter in high school, and found it a relatively easy read; but as for James, it depends on which James brother you speak of - William James (doctor, psychologist, philosopher) or Henry James (fiction writer). Most of Henry James' material does not seem too difficult (except The Turn Of The Screw), but William James can seem quite a challenge.
Good luck!

[EAP]

heh, Scarlet Letter was an easy read?

This is pretty new to me, really. I don't mind his prose that much but I'd be scared of meeting a person who found his writing 'relatively easy'. :p

His short-stories are a bit better since they don't (generally) contain the page long running descriptions of mundane mediocrity he seems so inordinately fond of.

The only book I found denser was Ulysses which is complete rubbish anyway. ;)


Faulkner wrote 'A Rose For Emily' so he can do no bad. :p

[simon]

What scares me most is the trash written by imbeciles beleived by other imbeciles, and what scares me even more is the extent of my own imbecility at not remembering how to spell imbecile correctly.

[mono]

Recently, I have found some poetry by Robert Burns a little difficult to read - not quite as difficult as Geoffrey Chaucer or Edmund Spenser in their original forms, but a slight challenge. For example, with no typing errors:

Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

Cho. - For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne!

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I'll be mind,
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne!

We twa hae run about the braes
And pou'd the gowans fine,
But we've wandered monie a weary fit
Sin' auld lang syne.

We two hae paidl'd in the burn
Frae morning sun till dine,
But seas between us braid hae roared
Sin' auld lang syne.

Robert Burns (1759-1796)