The Worst Classics You Have Ever Read

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Originally Posted by bazarov

Sorry...Who knows, you might even like [A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]!

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***SPOILERS AHEAD***

You know, I didn't think it was so bad. I could have done with one or two fewer sermons in Chapter III, but oh well... I wasn't sure I would be too impressed, since he's kind of leading the reader to sympathize with his lapse into 'sin', his repentance and spiritual reawakening, and his eventual rejection of everything. It seems like a pretty unreasonable ambition for a writer, but I think his use of fear to guide Stephen into repentance - rather than, say, contriving some kind of divine inspiration - actually works rather well. I was pretty terrified myself after those endless descriptions of Hell...
I can understand people not liking it, though.

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Originally Posted by kilted exile

I may have to change "shiftless layabout" to reflect that.

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Ah, very good. :lol: I really can't stand John Irving, even though he is supposed to be a modern "classic" writer. Maybe I should change my user description to reflect that...:p

david copperfield
david copperfield
david copperfield

I want so badly to say Waiting for Godot, but...I'm really afraid there might indeed be something to it. Who knows.
I seem to be developing an interesting relationship with Mr. Beckett's works - I should like to call it "love/hate", but it really seems more often than not to lean towards the latter....

I read Waiting for Godot and I loved it because I found it hilarious. All seemed so nonsensical to me. Later, in college, we had to analyse it thoroughly, and now I see quotes, references, symbolisms and frail aspects of the human condition everywhere. Even though one usually must be wary of over-analysing literary works (check Nossa's thread), I'm now quite sure that everything in that play has a purpose, and nothing is written at random, contrary to what I had originally thought. Like when I first read T. S. Eliot. Modernist writers, pfui :p

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Originally Posted by Jamesian

I want so badly to say Waiting for Godot, but...I'm really afraid there might indeed be something to it. Who knows.
I seem to be developing an interesting relationship with Mr. Beckett's works - I should like to call it "love/hate", but it really seems more often than not to lean towards the latter....

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I have a love/hate relationship with 'godot'. And have had for six years now.

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Originally Posted by Niamh

I have a love/hate relationship with 'godot'. And have had for six years now.

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This seems all-too understandable. Unfortunately, I'm feeling that way about all of the novels we looked at in class as well, except perhaps Murphy. They're all pretty funny, but at some point they all turn into something like this: "Well, actually no, what I just said is wrong. Why would I have said that? Why do I say anything? So that I don't have to afterwards. To speak in order to eliminate the need for speech. To reach silence." Plus another hundred pages or so...
Or, even better: "Forgive me if I omit some of the important stuff. It's bound to happen. It's isn't that I want to necessarily, but I do get a bit hung up on the trivialities. But then how can I call them trivialities? What do I know and as a matter of fact what the hell do you know about trivialities. Most presumptuous. Forgive me or don't forgive me, as if I could really give a damn." ... and on and on and on.....
I would probably enjoy it all a lot more, I suppose, if we weren't covering several works each day. Beckett and Joyce have got to be the two writers least compatible with the rigor of a condensed three-week seminar...:(

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Originally Posted by Jamesian

Beckett and Joyce have got to be the two writers least compatible with the rigor of a condensed three-week seminar...:(

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I have just had a very similar experience myself; 1 hour on Beckett alone was nowhere near enough, but combined with Conrad and Orwell this was just too much :eek: So much for 'revision' seminars...

Definetely Jean Paul Sartre's trilogy. Also Gogol's Dead Souls (mainly because it was unfinished).

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Originally Posted by Jamesian

I want so badly to say Waiting for Godot, but...I'm really afraid there might indeed be something to it.

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I feel the same about the Stranger; I enjoyed only two scenes from the book.

I do love Waiting for Godit. I haven't analyzed it much, but I still enjoy the story. Great humor and I would love to see this performed by actors with chemistry and great comedic timing.

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Originally Posted by NickAdams

I feel the same about the Stranger; I enjoyed only two scenes from the book.

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Ah, yes. *reminisces...not fondly*

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Originally Posted by motherhubbard

The Sound and the Furry - Faulkner is so gifted, I know, but he makes me feel like I need a shower. :sick:

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It's thoroughly rancid and so one of my favorites.

I usually don't leave a book unfinished but I gave up reading Henry James' Turn of the Screw halfway through.


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Bill
Ford Ka Brochure 2007 by Ford Motor Company Limited UK

I couldn't finish Fahrenheit 451 and sparknoted Dracula in high school. Kate Chopin's The Awakening wasn't good either, the same idea as Madame Bovary but much worse.

Catcher in the Rye was a phenomenal book, it isn't taught very well in school. Gatsby and Madame Bovary were excellent as well.

Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde': unreadable, even in modern English translation. Pity, because I love much of his other stuff.

Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair': thoroughly nasty book, in which all the supposedly likable people, including Becky Sharp, are vile.

Proust's 'Remembrance of Things Past', in the early translation published under that title. Nothing ever happens, and it's described not-happening in unbelievably tedious detail, and ridiculously long and complex sentences, some as long as a very respectable paragraph, with clauses, sub-clauses, sub-sub-clauses, parentheses, parentheses within parentheses, and hell knows what else. Somehow, I made it to half-way through the second volume (of 12), before I gave up.

MDR, above, has just reminded me of 'Madame Bovary' (nasty) and 'The Awakening' (Bovary rip-off - nasty as well, and boring into the bargain).

'Jude the (deservedly) Obscure' by Hardy. Bored the arse off me. So did 'Return of the Native' and 'Far from the Madding Crowd'. I have not read, and will not read in the future on the strength of those three, any other Hardy novels. I quite like some of his poetry, though.