JBI said, "Why not get more to the grain? "America is nothing but a bunch a Bible-preaching, Burger-bulged-belly belching, redneck gun freaks who can't seem to pay their debt." Or, something like that."
What a stupid, gratuitous thing to say.
JBI said, "Why not get more to the grain? "America is nothing but a bunch a Bible-preaching, Burger-bulged-belly belching, redneck gun freaks who can't seem to pay their debt." Or, something like that."
What a stupid, gratuitous thing to say.
If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got.
- Mark Twain
Vanity Fair
I haven't got one. There are lots of British books that I love, but I can't narrow it down to one. I think there are elements in lots of works which I see as being typical of a certain place or time when they were written, e.g. I think of Victorian England with Dickens, rural Wessex and the condition of agricultural workers with Hardy, the industrial North with Gaskell, the upper classes in the '20s with Waugh, the need for women to find a husband in the early 19th century with Austen etc. all illustrating the social conditions of the country at that time. I can't think of a Scottish or Welsh novel off the top of my head, as I can't think of any I have read, (unless I think of Scott and Ivanhoe, and that was set in England). I have read Dubliners from Joyce, (which incidentally I loved), which also reflected the era and the place it was written in.Originally Posted by Brian Bean
But great literature is great literature wherever its from, and I think I said as much in the thread on the "Great American novel". I can see that external conditions like environment and conditions can define a novels country, but when all is said and done, people are the same everywhere, which is why I think I don't tend to go for the illusion of the great (insert country) novel.
For me, it has to be Dickens' David Copperfield. What a wonderful book.
Wasn't it meant ironically? I may be wrong, but perhaps JBI was showing the narrowness of stereotyping a country? (Sorry to misinterpret if you weren't JBI).
I read it in context and I said something about literature that 'sums up' a country.
Anyhow, if it says nothing about a place and a spirit, what's the point?
Maybe there's something with British colonialism that might count?
Yes, I would think that it was meant ironically, but in the town I live in... not so much. Although as a "disclaimer": it is obviously stereotypical.
-Mariamosis
My favorite is Jane Eyre. It made me love literature in general.
That makes it very special for me, although I don't know if it qualifies it to be considered THE British novel.
"Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not match the expectation." - Charlotte Bronte (Villette)
It was intended to be ironic, mocking the concept of a "book that best sums up a country."
I merely tried to point out the absurdity of the whole concept, by radically stereotyping Americans (I perhaps should have done it about Brits, perhaps it was in bad taste).
The best English novel was The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by Irish expatriate James Joyce.
Agree with you there: I hate Puig's reviews in USA today just giving the reader 6-7 paragraphs on a film, not even telling whatever the plot is about (though I'm sure they can't do that out of contractual reasons or something or other)
Though Roger Ebert was relevant until the "Juno" review: lost respect from me and I'm sure from other people when he published that trite piece of trash.
ICK. Still sickens me, "Jason Reitman's "Juno" is just about the best movie of the year"
On topic:
British Literature is the one bit I have yet to roam and I do not plan to. I find most british writers (notably dickens) to be incredibly analytical without offering much basis behind whatever they're saying. Also, most of the writers of that period (yes, shakespeare included) just don't seem to "connect" with me--I'm not sure whether it's on a higher level or not, they just don't.
Last edited by jcjp; 03-14-2009 at 08:17 AM.
I genuinely can't think of a single novel that really nails Britain. It would need to include the obsession with class: both in the sense of social position/ class war and in the more abstract sense of 'having class' or 'being classy' and the fear of being seen as rude, uncivilised and vulgar (which explains much of what foreigners find odd about British, and especially English, behaviour) ; being an island/ the island mentality; the weight (or burden?) of the past, both in terms of events and the build up of a rich, deep culture (this instills pride, but also a certain wistfulness- "look how good things once were- how great we once were" and cynicism "it's all been said and done before"); the irony (if Britain is anything, it is the home of irony), cynicism and reverence for humour (Bill Hicks, the American stand up, once said 'the difference between Britain and the USA is that Americans see humour as childish and distracting, the British take it seriously and regard it as hugely important); being the ruler of the largest Empire ever and then losing it all within a generation.
The island is an unusual and complex place- you could make a very strong case for Britain as the creator of the modern world: it was the birthplace of the industrial revolution, of urbanisation (the first country in the world to have the majority of its population living in towns and cities) of modern liberal democracy (if anyone is the father of Fukuyama's triumphant liberalism it is John Locke and if anyone was the voice of western liberal democracy against fascism and Communist dictatorship in the 20th century it was Winston Churchill ). Britain was also, arguably, the birthplace of modern science (Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Maxwell and Darwin... Darwin and Newton are two of the four most important scientists ever- along with Einstein and Galileo).
If I had to choose I'd go for something by Dickens or possibly George Eliot's Middlemarch.
Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh capture the humour, irony and cynicism that is so very British but they are too class- bound.
Last edited by WICKES; 03-14-2009 at 08:44 AM.
how about great expectations
There once was a scotsman named Drew
Who put too much wine in his stew
He felt a bit drunk
And fell off his bunk
And landed smack into his shoe ~(C) Ms Niamh Anne King
Bleak house even?
"Come away O human child!To the waters of the wild, With a faery hand in hand, For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand."
W.B.Yeats
"If it looks like a Dwarf and smells like a Dwarf, then it's probably a Dwarf (or a latrine wearing dungarees)"
Artemins Fowl and the Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
my poems-please comment Forum Rules
Wuthering Heights and Tess of D'uberville are the two great books in English Literature.
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