Books/Authors you expected to like, but didn't

[ChicagoReader]

I'm currently reading Light in August by William Faulkner, and just finished Sanctuary (same author), and am quite frustrated to realize that I don't enjoy his work (I realize that other works like As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury are considered better by many). His history as a scriptwriter in Hollywood really shows through in his prose, I think, in a negative way. Many of the descriptions come off like stage directions and are often irrelevant and insignificant. And it seems he has some strange fetish with oxymoron. Anyways, going in to each of these books I expected to enjoy them, I know that Faulkner is a major figure in American literature, and that his work couldn't be praised any more, but so far I have to say I don't see it, I'm still trying to keep an open mind, though.

So have any of you had similar experiences?

[cafolini]

Faulkner is not for everyone. It's okay not to enjoyed it. He would have expected not being for everyone. He was not a fascist.

[ennison]

Soldier's Pay was my first Faulkner and I thought it great. Delighted to hear he was not a fascist?? He was a binge drinker though. Does that help?

[Jassy Melson]

I had read quite a bit of James Joyce but I put off reading Finnegan's Wake because people kept telling me it's a "difficult" novel. I finally read it, and I discovered that not only is it a difficult work, it's incomprehensible. It almost makes one think Joyce was insane when he wrote it. I was greatly disappointed in Finnegan's Wake because of its incomprehensibility.

[Emil Miller]

I had read quite a bit of James Joyce but I put off reading Finnegan's Wake because people kept telling me it's a "difficult" novel. I finally read it, and I discovered that not only is it a difficult work, it's incomprehensible. It almost makes one think Joyce was insane when he wrote it. I was greatly disappointed in Finnegan's Wake because of its incomprehensibility.

What most people don't seem to realise is that he was probably taking the piss.

[cacian]

A fetish with oxymoron? interesting. Idiosyncrasy is probably the word you are looking for.
What is it you did not particularly like about story?

[aaron stark]

I had read quite a bit of James Joyce but I put off reading Finnegan's Wake because people kept telling me it's a "difficult" novel. I finally read it, and I discovered that not only is it a difficult work, it's incomprehensible. It almost makes one think Joyce was insane when he wrote it. I was greatly disappointed in Finnegan's Wake because of its incomprehensibility.

There are hardly any people who deliberately read Finnegan's Wake, unless they are paid to do so. I'm not kidding :D

[aaron stark]

I'm currently reading Light in August by William Faulkner, and just finished Sanctuary (same author), and am quite frustrated to realize that I don't enjoy his work (I realize that other works like As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury are considered better by many). His history as a scriptwriter in Hollywood really shows through in his prose, I think, in a negative way. Many of the descriptions come off like stage directions and are often irrelevant and insignificant. And it seems he has some strange fetish with oxymoron. Anyways, going in to each of these books I expected to enjoy them, I know that Faulkner is a major figure in American literature, and that his work couldn't be praised any more, but so far I have to say I don't see it, I'm still trying to keep an open mind, though.

So have any of you had similar experiences?

I had the same experience or feeling as you with Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. I absolutely enjoyed For Whom The Bell Tolls and of course The Old Man and The Sea, but was bitterly disappointed when I was reading TSAR. I think it mainly has to do with his Iceberg principle/theory which doesn't appeal to me, since TSAR is one of his novels where the act of describing stuff according to this principle is most clear. Or at least, that was how I saw it. I like it much more when the reader gives a detailled description in stead of giving only one tenth of it and leaving all the rest up to the reader, as Hemingway often does. Others say that that's the beauty and perhaps the purpose of literature, that you can add nine tenth of the story yourself and let your imagination run wild. Don't know if that makes me a 'lazy' reader :p

[Sreenan]

Great Expectations...bit of an ironic name too considering the question!

[Literature5]

I did not at all enjoy The Metamorphosis by Kafka, but I'm sure I was not the first to dislike it.

More surprisingly, I didn't enjoy Animal Farm by Orwell. The plot and underlying meaning are so widely known that when I sat down to read it, the entire thing read very predictably, bordering on irksome.

[hillwalker]

I read 'Sidhartha' by Hermann Hesse in my youth and jumped on the late 60's band-wagon of believing it was a life-changing work.
Having re-read it recently I can't believe how naive I was.
Flat and lifeless and about as enlightening as the telephone directory.

H3K

[B. Laumness]

And which books or authors didn’t you like first, but eventually you learned to like them? You expected not to like them or didn’t like them for some reason: because your first impressions were not positive; because of your conceptions or misconceptions about literature, your prejudices, your beliefs; because it was beyond your understanding, too complicated, apparently old-fashioned, far from your common experience; because you lacked knowledge, maturity, open-mindedness… For my part, many of my favorite writers didn’t procure me a great enthusiasm at first, but rather a kind of perplexity and disappointment. Later, I learned to recognize their qualities. I can cite Flaubert and Madame Bovary, Shakespeare and Hamlet, Kafka and The Metamorphosis; I read all of these when I was a teenager, and I then was disappointed, until I (re-)read them later.

[Anton Hermes]

What most people don't seem to realise is that he was probably taking the piss.

I can't imagine why anyone would truly think that, considering Joyce spent nearly twenty years writing it. The staggering intricacy and ingenuity of Finnegans Wake make it seem highly unlikely he wrote it as a lark.

[hillwalker]

Kafka was definitely a writer I came back to later with fresh relish - and I'm happy I did. Searching for the point of 'The Trial' in my teens seemed over-ambitious. It took another 25 years before I tried again.

H

[ChicagoReader]

A fetish with oxymoron? interesting. Idiosyncrasy is probably the word you are looking for.
What is it you did not particularly like about story?

As far as Sanctuary is considered I think it's pretty much worthless in terms of literary quality, Faulkner himself admits it's his worst novel and was written purely for money. Popeye was the only semi-interesting character from the novel and even still he was pretty stock. And I really didn't like that convenient final chapter that tried to humanize Popeye, or at least draw some degree of pity for him, kind of a cheap tactic in my opinion. As for Light in August, I'm only about a third of the way through and while it's better than Sanctuary, I'm still not much of a fan. I've never understood why writers are obsessed with sexual undertones (I'm thinking of the toothpaste scene).

[Emil Miller]

I can't imagine why anyone would truly think that, considering Joyce spent nearly twenty years writing it. The staggering intricacy and ingenuity of Finnegans Wake make it seem highly unlikely he wrote it as a lark.

It took Brahms 20 years to compose his first symphony but he didn't write it so that it was unplayable.

[JuniperWoolf]

I thought I'd like The Great Gatsby. I did not.

[Alexander III]

I thought I'd like The Great Gatsby. I did not.

I think our friendship has just ended...

[Jassy Melson]

I can't imagine why anyone would truly think that, considering Joyce spent nearly twenty years writing it. The staggering intricacy and ingenuity of Finnegans Wake make it seem highly unlikely he wrote it as a lark.
Anyone who spends twenty years writing a book is not working on it very much at a time.