Well, it is if it's a blur. You can remember how it made you feelLike dreams- you can't really remember all of them but you can remember how they make you feel.
Well, it is if it's a blur. You can remember how it made you feel
If I had to nominate just one book it would be 'To Kill A Mocking Bird'. Dreadful novel.
Yes! The world sees sense! What a smug load of rubbish!
To Kill a Mockingbird isn't a classic yet - the original audience is still alive.
Well, people lazily refer to it as one so I guess it's a 'modern classic'
Henry James' "Turn of the Screw."
aude sapere
As would I if I thought it worth it against the naysayers, but I participate in LN for love of literature, not for smirking at it, so I am not sure what the detractors hope to gain. Disruption? Attention? (shrugs)Originally Posted by PabloQ
Just so I keep enjoying it, Frog, I believe you wanted to say something about Henry James? Go for it. Jamesian will bite.
I think it is all but redundant to talk about a "worst classic." People change and with it attitudes to the books they have read. Largely, any faults with a classic is likely to lie with the reader, not the book.
I would take this one step further Neely, although I agree with the sense of your post. The phrase worst classic is nearly an oxymoron--which is not to say that tastes do not change, or that an author may become overrated while lower stars rise--but a classic is a classic for various reasons. It may represent the epitome of its era, like Dickens "A Christmas Carol" can arguably be said to do--even though the tale makes me wince I can appreciate it for what it is, what Dickens hoped it would illuminate, even change, about Victorian society. Or it may be the pinnacle of a literary movement, such as Madame Bovary is to fictional realism, even a stepping stone to modernism, and so on.
Members should simply start five threads called "Books I want to trash!!!!" and we can keep Sche and Logos busy while they merge this and the *overrated* thread with it.
Yes you are quite right "worst classic" is an oxymoron indeed. Like you, I don't particularly go for the unrealistic "change of heart" in A Christmas Carol, neither am I much fond of Dickens at all, but for me to start putting negative labels on his work would make me a fool, or more of a fool than I already am.
It is worth noting that classics as a general rule can also be labelled as such because they are the first of a type to do something, such as with Richardson, amongst the first novels, as well as the best of something. The label doesn't automatically denote the best, First/popular/best - maybe.
I remember trying to read The Turn of the Screw several years ago, several times and just gave it up in the end, thought it was "overly wordy." Then I learnt Freudian analysis and the novel totally opened up to me and I judged it in a different light. This is one of the ways that readers change over time, a novel may not work for you, which is fine, but it doesn't mean it is trash. Also some classics represent a body of work that I may not fully be at home with. For instance the Romantic poets appeal more to me than say, the Realists, but it does not make their work any less good just because of my own personal tastes.
The Turn of the Screw took me more than one reading, for sure, but it is a masterwork because the unreliability of the narration presents itself as reliable.
Yes that is one of the many reasons it is a masterwork though there are many large and small, you have read it through Freud I suppose, it is a classic Freudian text is it not?
I generally don't like Dickens that much. It's not really to do with his writing, because I think that his characterisation is amazing for certain characters. It just really irritates me that many of his books are a bit prescriptive: his heroes go through terrible ordeals, nobly rising above them all. Their true gentility shines through and it turns out that they are from wealthy 'good' families all along... it sometimes appears that he is trying to recreate himself in these heroes, which is all very well, but in a figure that is portrayed so much as an advocate of social justice, it seems a bit hypocritical that his heroes' good qualities are due to some sort of innate good breeding.
"The magic gave me insight, and you gave me a heart, but for all the heart and insight in the world, I am still a cat."
Yes exactly, I don’t take Dickens seriously as a writer at all. Of course his construction of language is first rate, but the psychological reality of his characters is not, though was probably never meant to be. His novels appear to be the soaps of their day, just better written and without the awful acting.
He is very good at characterisation. There's tons of characters in Dickens novels, each with their own quirks.
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