The Worst Classics You Have Ever Read

[book_jones]

I can't believe that people hate Portrait of an Artist so much. That book is the reason that I love literature. I picked it up in high school and instantly fell in love with the style. I used to think that it was more real than anything else I had ever read. It really felt like real life. Since then I've been an avid reader.

This was a little hard for me because my tastes are pretty broad, but I did manage to think of one.

Light in August - I absolutely adore Faulkner, but this book I found a little hard to stomach. I thought it was slow, preachy, and linear. These are all the things that Faulkner usually isn't! I also felt that all the interesting characters had much too short of a part. I would talk about it some more, but I don't want to give it away for people who are going to read it. A lot of people like it, but I'll never understand how it got on the Modern Library 100 while brilliant works like Absalom, Absalom and The Hamlet got left off.

[Etienne]

I thought Portrait was good, but that's as far a praise it gets from me, I was actually disappointed, if we were to nominate overrated books, I would nominate it.

I would personally like to nominate Hermann Broch's Death of Virgil, but my opinion is that translation had a lot to do with my disliking it so much. Some parts were good but half of it is just pointless repetitions of nice words assembled to create contradictions in order to seem profound... although I can understand how the original German could be better.

[Hank Stamper]

I found Mrs. Dalloway to be breathtakingly incredible. I think though, that a lot of criticism on it is based on a mis-reading. The book in itself is a study of human vanity, tinged with a nice little King Lear subplot to add a little flavor.

yes clearly i must have 'mis-read' it

i think the reason there is a lot of criticism on Mrs Dalloway is because it is the most pointless book ever written, and if it is indeed a study of human vanity and how people can be massively superficial, it is the most tedious study of such ever conducted

[Scheherazade]

I think though, that a lot of criticism on it is based on a mis-reading.

That is, no doubt, one misreading I can live with because I am not reading it again!

The book in itself is a study of human vanity, tinged with a nice little King Lear subplot to add a little flavor.

I agree; it is about human vanity, in particular about Woolf's and I am not so keen on spending hours contemplating that.

Orlando is more interesting than Mrs D but that doesn't mean much, does it?

I gave up on To The Lighthouse after couple of unsuccessful attempts.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

If 1984 and Brave New World were the two great dystopian novels of the 20th century (funny, I've just noticed that they were both educated at Eton!) then for me Orwell's was far the superior and far more accurate.

Bleh. Orwell and Huxley are pretty much the same in my eyes, yes in some ways 1984 can be construed as being more 'accurate', but that does not stop it being any less tendentious. Personally, I prefer Nabokov's dystopian efforts, esp. 'Invitation to a Beheading', but then again I am a Nabokov-maniac. (P.S, 1984 is artistically superior to Brave New World, which was worse than mediocre.)

On Virginia Woolf-I once tried to get through her books, most of them having the same affect as a heavy dose of soporofics, they were all pretty banal, but there is no accounting for taste, I guess.

I agree; it is about human vanity, in particular about Woolf's and I am not so keen on spending hours contemplating that.

Orlando is more interesting than Mrs D but that doesn't mean much, does it?

I gave up on To The Lighthouse after couple of unsuccessful attempt

I like you.

[aBIGsheep]

Pride and Prejudice.
Almost every gossipy woman I know adores that book. I can't get myself past the second volume.

[Equality72521]

Pride and Prejudice.
Almost every gossipy woman I know adores that book. I can't get myself past the second volume.

hahaha. Pride and Prejudice isn't too bad, I do love the Austen books I must say but some women are a lil wacked about it.

[Domer121]

I can't believe that people hate Portrait of an Artist so much. That book is the reason that I love literature. I picked it up in high school and instantly fell in love with the style. I used to think that it was more real than anything else I had ever read. It really felt like real life. Since then I've been an avid reader.

This was a little hard for me because my tastes are pretty broad, but I did manage to think of one.

Light in August - I absolutely adore Faulkner, but this book I found a little hard to stomach. I thought it was slow, preachy, and linear. These are all the things that Faulkner usually isn't! I also felt that all the interesting characters had much too short of a part. I would talk about it some more, but I don't want to give it away for people who are going to read it. A lot of people like it, but I'll never understand how it got on the Modern Library 100 while brilliant works like Absalom, Absalom and The Hamlet got left off.

I agree with you! I loved portrait.. granted it was a difficult read, it was well worth the time that I put into it...
And though Joyce is obscure.... I think he is rather timeless..
.
Now... I didn't like Lolita....That book drove me insane.. because after the first few chapters I just wanted to put it down,, I did eventually finish it... but I just felt as though it did nothing for me... just perhaps made me thankful that I had grown out of my "nymphet" stage....

[PabloQ]

I promise to go back and read this whole thread. Seems like fun.
I'll nominate The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. I didn't care about any of the characters or what happened to them and as an author, Mr James did little to influence me to care. He did bore the living crap out of me. Finished it just to spite Mr. James, but bloody awful.
In second place, I'll nominate The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. His abuse of his main character was way over the top. "What else can Sinclair do to this poor chap." Read on. "Oh, didn't think of that." Once you get past the socially relevant portrayal of life in the stockyards, it becomes this preachy sermon on socialism that goes beyond overbearing. I still hate it.
I've read other works by both authors that I have enjoyed, but these two works are supposed to be crown jewels in the body of work for each of them. I say Phooey.

[Kafka's Crow]

I promise to go back and read this whole thread. Seems like fun.
I'll nominate The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. I didn't care about any of the characters or what happened to them and as an author, Mr James did little to influence me to care. He did bore the living crap out of me. Finished it just to spite Mr. James, but bloody awful.
In second place, I'll nominate The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. His abuse of his main character was way over the top. "What else can Sinclair do to this poor chap." Read on. "Oh, didn't think of that." Once you get past the socially relevant portrayal of life in the stockyards, it becomes this preachy sermon on socialism that goes beyond overbearing. I still hate it.
I've read other works by both authors that I have enjoyed, but these two works are supposed to be crown jewels in the body of work for each of them. I say Phooey.

I can't even start reading a Henry James book! About the Portrait: it is a beautiful book and consistently very, very interesting. The passages about the priest and his sermons about hell-fire stand out conspicuously as boring and trite but this is a part of the design of the whole book. Stephen renounces the boring, monotonous religion and looses himself in the pursuit of the artistic excellence. Joyce books are all about language and the beauty of human expression, its possibilities and its varieties. Anybody who finds it difficult to see what all the fuss is about, get an audio reading of these books. Good readers like Cyril Cusack and Jim Norton can bring out the real art in these works, specially the former. Cusack brings young Daedalus to life:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...0/thelibyrinth

This is what you are looking for.

[book_jones]

And so many people hate Mrs. Dalloway too? I mean, it's not even 200 pages. There are many more pointless novels that are much longer than this one. At least it only takes a few hours to read. Do any of you feel this way because you had to read the book for school? I've found that this can really change someone's opinion on a book.

[Jozanny]

That is, no doubt, one misreading I can live with because I am not reading it again!I agree; it is about human vanity, in particular about Woolf's and I am not so keen on spending hours contemplating that.

Orlando is more interesting than Mrs D but that doesn't mean much, does it?

I gave up on To The Lighthouse after couple of unsuccessful attempts.

Poor Virginia! We *did* TTL in university, which is probably why I understand it and see it as a novel which transcends the short-comings of her style, not that I am prepared to discuss the Ramseys here--but I think Woolf leans toward an almost utopian overview which prevents the reader from really identifying with her characters.

Say what you want about Flaubert, but Emma Bovary could be my vain younger sister--whereas Orlando is almost cartoonish. Woolf got it just about right in TTL though--there is a poignancy to Mrs. Ramsey and her strength in sustaining the fable, whether or not that strength actually gets us *to* the lighthouse.

[kelby_lake]

I agree with you! I loved portrait.. granted it was a difficult read, it was well worth the time that I put into it...
And though Joyce is obscure.... I think he is rather timeless..
.
Now... I didn't like Lolita....That book drove me insane.. because after the first few chapters I just wanted to put it down,, I did eventually finish it... but I just felt as though it did nothing for me... just perhaps made me thankful that I had grown out of my "nymphet" stage....

I only really appreciated Lolita once I had read it twice because I didn't really get it the first time- but it's amazing.
I cannot bring myself to read Joyce, he annoys me. I read the first page of Portrait of The Artist as A Young Man and promptly returned it to the shelf.

[Hank Stamper]

And so many people hate Mrs. Dalloway too? I mean, it's not even 200 pages. There are many more pointless novels that are much longer than this one. At least it only takes a few hours to read. Do any of you feel this way because you had to read the book for school? I've found that this can really change someone's opinion on a book.

the relative brevity of the book does not make it any less pointless

as Graham Greene said of Virginia Woolf's understanding of human nature, it is 'paper thin'

[Inderjit Sanghe]

I cannot bring myself to read Joyce, he annoys me. I read the first page of Portrait of The Artist as A Young Man and promptly returned it to the shelf.

That is quite the prejudice! How can you dismiss an author, especially one as remarkable as Joyce, based on a page, of one of his more inferior stories?

Say what you want about Flaubert, but Emma Bovary could be my vain younger sister--

Which is kind of the point-Flaubert admitted to the fact that the story was in itself, completely banal, as were the two main characters; Flaubert prided himself on being the first novelist to mock the two main lovers in his novel.