Most disappointing "classic" author?

[bruto]

he was for his time distinctly progressive as regards the treatment of children.....Undressing them, for example, was thought by some to be going a bit far. :rolleyes:

[båtsman]

Wow, two of my favorite books. I am disappointed by neither Stoker nor Huxley.Maybe my expectations were to high. But Dracula really had some long, dull parts. Sometimes it was great, but it was too much in between.

I sure don't know what you're talking about with Dracula being weak. I think he's pretty badass in the novel. He just has a few things he can't do, like crossing running water except at the slack or flood tides or entering a home uninvited.When they were hunting for him, Van Helsing mentioned things Dracula couldn't do all the time. I thought it just made Dracula look weak.

[fleabeetle]

Undressing them, for example, was thought by some to be going a bit far. :rolleyes:

"To the pure, all things are pure" -- I'm ready to give him the benefit of the doubt here...

[BPScooter]

I must assume that everybody is aware of Martin Gardner's "Annotated Alice"? If not, do please find it, it's a great thing. His Annotated "Ancient Mariner" is also really indispensable and great fun.

[hgc]

Maybe my expectations were to high. But Dracula really had some long, dull parts. Sometimes it was great, but it was too much in between.

When they were hunting for him, Van Helsing mentioned things Dracula couldn't do all the time. I thought it just made Dracula look weak.


An unconquerable beast is dull. So much of the story is the thrill of the hunt.

[fleabeetle]

I must assume that everybody is aware of Martin Gardner's "Annotated Alice"? If not, do please find it, it's a great thing. His Annotated "Ancient Mariner" is also really indispensable and great fun.

Heard of it (Alice, that is -- think I'll pass on the Mariner); never looked at it. Your recommendation to be borne in mind !

[roger]

Forgot to mention Melville: While his literary worth is probably well-earned through the body of his work; I found the unabridged [/i]Moby Dick[/i] to be vastly overrated. Remove the pointless, uninteresting, display-of-ignorance digressions; and the rest is better, though not necessarily good.Now, see, after what you have written, I find this opinion astonishing.

For me, so much of what counts as great writing requires great use of the English Language. Like art, I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it. :) So, ya, we can criticize some plot elements of Shakespeare, although you did a good job of explaining them in the context of the historical era. But, for me, the overriding quality in Shakespeare is his use of language to support the universal themes he is covering. It's genius, and I find observing genius to be stirring, whether it is the English language, science, or whatever. Seriously, can you imagine coming up with even a few of the turns of phrases that Shakespeare litters the page with? Of course, if somebody doesn't have an ear for it, then of course they won't resond the same way, and start looking purely at plot points.

I'm reminded of a thread several months ago where somebody claimed that Baroque and classical music had no soul or passion, and that only romantic works had it. Amusing/befuddling to somebody for whom a Bach Cello Suite routinely reduces him to tears for the beauty, soul, etc.

With that polemic out of the way, let's just look at the opening paragraph:
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. For me there is so much in there. It invokes the feeling of depression as much as any poem ever has, it has humor ("bringing up the rear of every funeral" is simultaneously funny and depressing). It recalls my same urge to take to the mountains. It is, to me, beautiful writing. I won't insist that you must agree with that, but I'll never really understand the contrary view (of course, I have similar flat responses to language others enthuse about). I could keep writing and writing about how great this is, but of course it will not convince anybody if they don't already see beauty in this paragraph, and all that writing will fall ponderously short of the language used by Melville.

And Moby Dick just keeps up to that standard, paragraph after paragraph, page after page, chapter after chapter. It's an astonishing performance, and a tremendous privilege and pleasure to read this story, in awe of such masterful control and use of the language.



As I said, I don't expect everyone to share my appreciation for Melville's English usage; however, when somebody calls a writer like Dickens a hack or whatever I think they are really failing. Like I said, there are some famous writers that I don't enjoy reading, but I don't confuse that with the author not having talent or having too large a reputation. It's merely their form of art does not resonate with me.

edit: in comparison, here's a unskillfull use of the English Language to say the same thing.

Hi, I'm Roger. I'm going to tell you a story about how awhile ago I went to see when I got depressed. I was poor anyway and I didn't have anything better to do. It's something I often do when this happens. I'll be walking down the street and just want to shove people out of the way, or better yet shoot them. Christ, I sit around thinking about my own funeral. So, rather than staying in that rut I go to sea, far away from the things that bother me. I think many people probably have the same feelings, and even those who don't think they have the same feelings about the sea would find that they did if they ever went out on it.

Boring. Horrible. Worthless.

[båtsman]

An unconquerable beast is dull. So much of the story is the thrill of the hunt.The problem is, I was never thrilled.

[Damien Evans]

Charles Dickens. I went about 3 posts before I saw his name, and yeah. The man is utterly unreadable, the height of garbage.

P.S. If anyone wants some good, non-Tolkienesque fantasy, feel free to PM me. Tolkien was not the first fantasy writer, he's not the best fantasy writer, he just popularized it. He's basically J.K. Rowling with more blather and bad poetry.

Not even wrong.

[Damien Evans]

I fell asleep after "never mind how long precisely".

[Pure Argent]

Wow, two of my favorite books. I am disappointed by neither Stoker nor Huxley.

I sure don't know what you're talking about with Dracula being weak. I think he's pretty badass in the novel. He just has a few things he can't do, like crossing running water except at the slack or flood tides or entering a home uninvited. For crying out loud, he...... killed the entire crew of a ship and sailed the ship into port alone in a giant storm that he cooked up... controlled a fly-eating lunatic in an asylum from afar... brought the voluptious Lucy Westenra into his undead harem... so much badass in one book is rare.Not weak.

Not to mention the fact that no matter how many times the Belmonts defeat him he just won't stay dead.

[luchog]

For me, so much of what counts as great writing requires great use of the English Language.
See, that's the problem. I don't find Melville's use of language in Moby Dick to be particularly exceptional overall. I don't deny that it has some brilliant moments; but it's inconsistent. The few gems shine brightest because the body of the work is dense and stilted, the symbolism heavy-handed, and the digressions jarring.

[gumboot]

"Comedy" then (e.g., "The Divine Comedy") didn't necessarily mean a funny play (thought it could be funny). It could mean any play with a "happy ending" in the sense that the good guys win.

E.g., "The Merchant of Venice" is a comedy not because it's supposed to be funny, but since the good guy gets the girl, and she and her father convert to Christianity -- which, for Shakespeare and his audience, was a happy ending for them, too, since now they believe the true faith.


The whole "comedy/tragedy" think has changed dramatically over time. From the Greek tradition they're actually two types of drama - Comedy being drama in which the Gods interfere in the lives of men and manipulate them for their own ends. In this way A Midsummer Night's Dream is a classic comedy. However it wasn't uncommon for Greek comedy to end in as much death as a tragedy.

Tragedy, in contrast, dealt with some sort of hero who faced trial and conflict not through the workings of the Gods, but due to a single fundamentally flaw in his own character, which ultimately was his undoing. In this regard Macbeth is a classic tragedy.

Humor, by contrast, could be an element of either comedy or tragedy. The porter scene, in Macbeth, for example, is hilarious, as are many scenes of Romeo and Juliet.

Around Shakespeare's time the Greek distinctions were blurred because writers tended to make comedy-style drama more lighthearted and farcical, while tragedies and histories would often be much more serious. The end result is that humor and comedy were conflated to mean the same thing.

[gumboot]

Some have complained about Romeo and Juliet as being a "stupid plot". Well, yes; but only because they're not reading it right. That is, they're reading it through a modern filter, and in mind of modern staging conventions. When performed, Romeo and Juliet are typically cast as the same, or similar, ages; typically mid-teens. One of the deaths in the story is also often dropped. If you carefully read the play, it states clearly that Juliet is 13, and strongly implies that Romeo is in his early 20s. One of Romeo's murders is also typically dropped from most staging. So instead of the story of two star-crossed emotional teens; it's actually the story of a naive girl, emotionally manipulated by an unstable man who kills two people for no other reason than an uncontrolled temper. It's a completely different story when you keep that in mind.



I have to say I am very, very familiar with Shakespeare's work, and this play in particular, and I have never, ever heard such an interpretation of the story, nor do I think there's any merit whatsoever in such an interpretation. Shakespearean theatre was not subtle.

A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life

It's right there in the play. R+J is undeniably about blind, passionate, uncontrollable love.

Elizabethan English, in particular, saw Italians as strange and exotic, and the men as incredibly emotional and passionate. Your assessment just doesn't fit with the script or the historical context at all.

[luchog]

Elizabethan English, in particular, saw Italians as strange and exotic, and the men as incredibly emotional and passionate. Your assessment just doesn't fit with the script or the historical context at all.
Actually, as noted in a previous post, it's there in the source material.

[luchog]

Elizabethan English, in particular, saw Italians as strange and exotic, and the men as incredibly emotional and passionate. Your assessment just doesn't fit with the script or the historical context at all.
Actually, as noted in a previous post, it's there in the source material. Although Juliet is typically portrayed as 16, instead of the 13 that Shakespeare explicitly states her as; Romeo is almost invariably in his early 20s.

And there is a great deal of subtlety in Shakespeare; particularly in his underhanded jabs at the Protestant ruling class while appearing to pander to them. The "knowing wink" is a very frequent occurence; especially when he seems most intent on flattering the royalty.

That's the beauty of Shakespeare, he works very well on multiple levels. Broad entertainment for the masses; but interwoven with more subtle threads for those of a simliar, often Catholic, viewpoint.

[GreyICE]

Not even wrong.

You know, for all his defenders, all you have to do is take a typical page from the book and defend how it was written to further the plot, describe the characters, and create a convincing and intriguing world.

I will merely point out the insipid blather, the endlessly repeated little 'tricks' he likes, and if it has any poetry I will quote it verbatim and leave it at that.

I can literally flip open random pages of those books and read lines that sound like they come from the KJV (Return of the King is ESPECIALLY bad for this), blather, and honestly stupid stuff. I lay it to anyone to defend the birthday party, or the poetry, or the scene with the ents marching and the speech, or the poetry, or the fact that he deliberately omitted important battles, or the poetry, or the 'humor' he included, or the poetry... did I mention the poetry?

This is not to say that he's actually 'abysmal' he's no Danielle Steel, but for being highly overrated? Yeah, he's that.

[Björn Toulouse]

Hemingway.

I had only read The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast. The former I barely recall and the latter was very dull, so I was eager to read something that had more promise. I just read A Farewell to Arms last week and was entirely disappointed with it. Hemingway seems to have tried to write the ending of the book as quickly as I wished to be finished reading it. I realize that three books is not enough to make a thorough assessment, but I doubt that I will read another of his, especially after the many comments about him in this thread.

Perhaps it was a great book in its time, with that war still fresh in the minds of many, but it was to me like a bottle of vintage wine, the value of which having been increased with age until uncorked and sampled.

[BPScooter]

Well, come on, y'all.

Sir Walter Ralegh had his head chopped off, in public, and wrote a few lines of prose prior, and some verse he didn't disavow.

Whoso amongst us dares the same?

[Björn Toulouse]

Well, come on, y'all.

Sir Walter Ralegh had his head chopped off, in public, and wrote a few lines of prose prior, and some verse he didn't disavow.

Whoso amongst us dares the same?


Which one? Write prose and verse, or chop off someone's head?

[Damien Evans]

You know, for all his defenders, all you have to do is take a typical page from the book and defend how it was written to further the plot, describe the characters, and create a convincing and intriguing world.

I will merely point out the insipid blather, the endlessly repeated little 'tricks' he likes, and if it has any poetry I will quote it verbatim and leave it at that.

I can literally flip open random pages of those books and read lines that sound like they come from the KJV (Return of the King is ESPECIALLY bad for this), blather, and honestly stupid stuff. I lay it to anyone to defend the birthday party, or the poetry, or the scene with the ents marching and the speech, or the poetry, or the fact that he deliberately omitted important battles, or the poetry, or the 'humor' he included, or the poetry... did I mention the poetry?

This is not to say that he's actually 'abysmal' he's no Danielle Steel, but for being highly overrated? Yeah, he's that.

Changing your words around doesn't make you any less wrong.

Oh, and I happen to think that The last march of the Ents is the best part.

[GreyICE]

Changing your words around doesn't make you any less wrong.

Oh, and I happen to think that The last march of the Ents is the best part.

Uh, no. I said he's an earlier J.K. Rowling. Wrote some decent books, and got highly overrated. He's really mediocre.

Nothing changed, I just explained things to you.

If you actually ENJOYED that endless pontification as they're marching along... that's just... wow.

[Damien Evans]

Uh, no. I said he's an earlier J.K. Rowling. Wrote some decent books, and got highly overrated. He's really mediocre.

Nothing changed, I just explained things to you.

If you actually ENJOYED that endless pontification as they're marching along... that's just... wow.

How many languages has J.K.Rowling invented?

What is she a professor of?

[GreyICE]

How many languages has J.K.Rowling invented?

What is she a professor of?

Yes, I must admit that if I wished to read a manual on how to write my own language, I'd rush to Tolkien.

As usual, his supporters pretend his credentials wrote him a great book.

[BPScooter]

:-) Bjorn--I was just thinking about all of us sitting here criticizing someone else's writing, rather than take the risk of really writing prose/poetry and risking having *our* heads chopped off in public. A convoluted thought, granted! And mighty presumptuous of me, since many of you may be noted public literary figures behind those clever pseudonyms and avatars. I'm definitely not, but I did collect about $12 in royalties once from UMI when some poor souls bought my dissertation. (I also know Ralegh wasn't beheaded for his literary output).

[roger]

See, that's the problem. I don't find Melville's use of language in Moby Dick to be particularly exceptional overall. I don't deny that it has some brilliant moments; but it's inconsistent. The few gems shine brightest because the body of the work is dense and stilted, the symbolism heavy-handed, and the digressions jarring.
But there is a huge gap between language and style not appealing to you, and the claim that a novel is "vastly overrated". Moby Dick deserves it's reputation. He strove to do a mighty thing - find poetry in the prosaic. Obviously, the result is uneven, and does not capture the souls of all who read it. But what great endevour is wholely successful (perhaps Shakespeare)?

In so many ways that comes down to taste - do you prefer the perfectly written duet, or the sprawling, sometimes out of control, yet always striving symphony? Preferring the former, you should still recognize the genius, potential, and achievement in the latter.

He tackled complex themes, he attempted to create an art form of the the historical novel, he incorporated and heightened many features of the romantic novel, he explored philosophy, morals, what it is to be human. He explores history, biology, theology. It's filled with sarcasm, satire, humor. It's filled with multiple perspectives and literary devices. There's a lot of meat on those bones other then yes, the rather overly allegorical story of Ahab. Did he overreach at times? Sure. Did he accomplish everything he set out to do? No. Is it flawed? Yes. But he did so much. There's a life's time of study and appreciation in that book.

Not liking it? Sure, I get that. Calling it overrated, in that others that do like it are mistaken? I don't get that at all.

[TheAnachronism]

The most disappointing classic author for me is definitely Novalis. I challenge anyone here to get at least halfway through Heinrich von Ofterdingen (available on Google Books as Henry of Ofterdingen) without throwing the mouse through their computer screens.

[arclein]

a worthy insight. I read LOTR in 1967 and appreciate that Tolkein literally created the genre with this work. That he was not the modern writer in current sensibilities is understandable. In fact, with all classical writers one must consciously make a mental adjustment to their tempo and taste. Of course Wodehouse was speaking to Edwardian sensibilities and is a wonderful writer.

I also have always thought that Lovecraft stunk and had an audience because no one then was able to satisfy genre demand.

arclein

[BPScooter]

I must admit that the earliest-ever novels (I've never read Novalis) I've tried to appreciate are Don Quixote and Simplicus Simpliccimus which are extraordinarily time- and place-bound. I didn't have the background knowledge to appreciate any of it, but they are recognized as pretty darn important books. I think the etchings of Goya and such helped. These were bizarre times and everyone had to be very careful about what they wrote and read.

[BPScooter]

Just so we know, here is Luchog's catalog of literary sins, with which I agree:

"Completely aside from matters of taste, what I find unpardonable sins in literature (aside from poor use of language) are clearly contrived plots, mawkish sentimentality, deus ex machina or internal inconsistency, underdeveloped and/or unsympathetic characters, "Mary Sue"-ism and author tracts; and use of plot devices and "twists" which rely on either concealing information from the reader that a reasonable observer would normally have access to, or introducing non sequitor elements in an otherwise consistent narrative."

[Cactus Wren]

I have tried to read The Scarlet Letter.

I know that Hawthorne was writing in 1850. I know as well that he was writing about a period two centuries before. I don't care. There is not, and cannot be, any excuse for giving a small child the line, "Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter: and of a truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter running along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!"

[rsaavedra]

I greately enjoyed reading Agatha Christie's And then there were none. Just started reading Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, and so far I find it less of a joyful read. Have only read that one from Christie, and am only half way on that Holme's story though. So is this just me, or just too early an impression or comparison?

PS. Actually, could these authors be even regarded as "classics"?

[BPScooter]

Good point, rsaavedra, I don't think anyones really approached that important question in this growing thread! It's probably a good idea moderate one's bashing of a canon while figuring out what constitutes it in the first place... I suppose we're just operating on a notion something like "books a lot of people have regarded reverently" to some degree, and that's bound to be a moving target.

[Elizabeth I]

But he did so much. There's a life's time of study and appreciation in that book.

But "he worked hard" doesn't equal "he did a good job." I might study painting all my life and work for years on a gigantic mural, but the fact that I worked hard wouldn't make it great art.

Not liking it? Sure, I get that. Calling it overrated, in that others that do like it are mistaken? I don't get that at all.

I don't see that at all. It's a difference of opinion that makes horse races. If a whole bunch of people think that a book is the apex of the art, and a whole bunch of other people think it's the most boring waste of paper ever created, then you have a pretty wide gulf between those two points of view, with the admirers thinking the detractors are Philistines and the detractors thinking the admirers are impressed way too easily.

[roger]

But "he worked hard" doesn't equal "he did a good job." I might study painting all my life and work for years on a gigantic mural, but the fact that I worked hard wouldn't make it great art. That's not what I said/meant. Reword it as "He accomplished so much".

It's a hard row to hoe to claim something has objective quality, or what not, I recognize. Nonetheless, we can easily claim that a novel of 80,000 'a's in a row has essentially no content. I could compress that information into 3 bytes. Further up the scale, we have say a nursery rhyme. If you are rhyming 'cat' with 'rat', and your 3 year old is running around making up little dittys that are indistinguishable from the work in question, we can fairly say it is probably not a great work of art. Etc., on up the scale of complexity. You can have a sub average IQ person write a novel that "is a scary story about zombies fighting mutant rats", and a lifelong poet strive to write a novel that captures the human despair and striving in facing a terminal illness. If both writers achieve what is possible for them and their topic, I submit the latter has the greater chance of being a 'great book' - one worth preserving, reading and rereading. If they tackle even bigger themes, such as war, and try to incorporate new structures, the chance is bigger still. If they strive for novel use of language, the chance grows more. Because stories - man meets girl, zombie eats brains, are a dime a dozen. There's no particular reason to pick one from the other, and preserve it for hundreds of years unless there is something more. That doesn't mean the zombie story might not be an exciting, rip roaring read. But another rip roarer will be along next season on the best seller list. Romeo and Juliet? You ain't seeing something like that ever again.

The fact is that Moby Dick resonates in very profound ways with a huge number of people. Go read the Amazon reviews. Sure, there are a few one star "oh my god how boring" statements, but on the whole you have page after page of people enthusing about the poetry of the language, the complexity of the structure, the multitude of disciplines he was working in, references to the Romantics, to philosophy, to ethics, etc. It's a mind changing novel, if not a life changing one, for a lot of people. The ideas expressed in the novel are profound, and difficult, and unanswerable.

At that point I think you have to conclude it's a work of high quality.

We have another thread on here, playearth, where people are posting incredible images of geology. We are all different people, all from different parts of the planet, yet we are all responding to these pictures in the same way. Surely a few people will come along and yawn at some to all the photos. That does not make it wrong to claim that these photos represent human's sense of beauty - there is something more going on here than a coincidence of personal preference.

To turn that into a thought experiment - travel back 300 years in time and bring with you one of those tear off magazine subscription tabs that come in magazines, and a post card of Bryce Canyon. I submit, without proof, that 90% of the people that see the Bryce image will gasp, and 99% will find it more interesting than the magazine subscription card. We are wired to appreciate some things, and not to appreciate others, despite the lack of 100% agreement. Likewise, take my prose, and then Dickens', show it to 1000 people, and I again submit without proof that the vast majority will prefer Dickens. So, while we certainly can't rank things (this is novel #5 in terms of greatness), we can certainly arrange things in terms of human appreciation and value of the object in very broad terms.

To take it to another novel - I can't get through Proust. I hate the book. I find it boring, tedious, etc. However, I am not claiming Remembrance is bad, nor overrated. Only that it doesn't work for me. Proust was brilliant, and he exercised all his skill in creating this. Furthermore, the book is reportedly life changing for so many, and find it in an echo of our own humanity (what else is art, great art, than that?). I can only conclude that it is a great book that I for whatever reason haven't been able to appreciate (perhaps a bad translation?). Any other conclusion would be a galling act of hubris.

Likewise, I'm meh about T. S. Eliot. Doesn't resonate with me much. But to argue there is nothing there, that he is overrated to be called one of the best 20th Century poets? Doesn't make sense to me. There is so much there. It's art on a multitude of levels, just not art for me. And it works for so many people.

In these things time tells. I am doubting Andy Warhol will stand the test of time. But, if he does, I could only conclude my assessment of him misses the mark. If in 200 years from now he continues to reach into people's heart and just wrest their hearts from their chests, how is that not greatness?

[luchog]

Not liking it? Sure, I get that. Calling it overrated, in that others that do like it are mistaken? I don't get that at all.

A failure is still a failure, no matter how much work is put into it. I recognized what he tried to do, I even acknowledged that he even managed to do it from time to time. What I am criticizing is the fact that he failed far more often than he succeeded; and thus the work isn't deserving of the almost obsessive praise that it's given. His other work is perhaps not as ambitious, but is far more successful. Moby Dick is notable for what it attempts to achieve, but it is far from the only attempt, or even the most successful. But that's not how it's typically presented; especially in academic study. Interesting literary experiment? Definitely. A masterwork? Not really.

And yes, in general, I'd rather hear a well-performed simple duet than a sprawling, cacaphonous symphony. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the attempt, or fail to notice the few sublime passages that provide a glimpse of what the results could have been. Far from it. I'm quite a fan of experimental works, and can appreciate elevated ambitions, even when they don't quite manage to achive all they set out to. Hell, I'm a fan of Captain Beefheart, after all. But I, and I believe most people, get more enjoyment out of mastery of a form.

[luchog]

I also have always thought that Lovecraft stunk and had an audience because no one then was able to satisfy genre demand.


Lovecraft, at least, was fully aware that he was a hack; and had no illusions about the quality of his work. In fact, he tended to rate his work lower than many of his fans; who are also typically aware that he was hardly a master of English literature.

What Lovecraft is best known for is the creation of a unique and innovative "mythos", and his grasp of the nature and function of supernatural horror. His essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" is probably the best analysis of gothic horror and its early derivations.

That said, he did have a few short stories which do show very good, if not masterful, use of language.

[CptColumbo]

I greately enjoyed reading Agatha Christie's And then there were none. Just started reading Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, and so far I find it less of a joyful read. Have only read that one from Christie, and am only half way on that Holme's story though. So is this just me, or just too early an impression or comparison?
I prefer Doyle to Christie, especially the short stories. Many of the Holmes novels tend to be history lessons about the early 19th century, while the short stories are just about the mystery.

I also tend to prefer the non-Poirot/Marple mysteries by Agatha Christie, except for "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd."

[Elizabeth I]

That's not what I said/meant. Reword it as "He accomplished so much".

It's a hard row to hoe to claim something has objective quality, or what not, I recognize. Nonetheless, we can easily claim that a novel of 80,000 'a's in a row has essentially no content. I could compress that information into 3 bytes. Further up the scale, we have say a nursery rhyme. If you are rhyming 'cat' with 'rat', and your 3 year old is running around making up little dittys that are indistinguishable from the work in question, we can fairly say it is probably not a great work of art. Etc., on up the scale of complexity. You can have a sub average IQ person write a novel that "is a scary story about zombies fighting mutant rats", and a lifelong poet strive to write a novel that captures the human despair and striving in facing a terminal illness. If both writers achieve what is possible for them and their topic, I submit the latter has the greater chance of being a 'great book' - one worth preserving, reading and rereading. If they tackle even bigger themes, such as war, and try to incorporate new structures, the chance is bigger still. If they strive for novel use of language, the chance grows more. Because stories - man meets girl, zombie eats brains, are a dime a dozen. There's no particular reason to pick one from the other, and preserve it for hundreds of years unless there is something more. That doesn't mean the zombie story might not be an exciting, rip roaring read. But another rip roarer will be along next season on the best seller list. Romeo and Juliet? You ain't seeing something like that ever again.

The fact is that Moby Dick resonates in very profound ways with a huge number of people. Go read the Amazon reviews. Sure, there are a few one star "oh my god how boring" statements, but on the whole you have page after page of people enthusing about the poetry of the language, the complexity of the structure, the multitude of disciplines he was working in, references to the Romantics, to philosophy, to ethics, etc. It's a mind changing novel, if not a life changing one, for a lot of people. The ideas expressed in the novel are profound, and difficult, and unanswerable.

At that point I think you have to conclude it's a work of high quality.

We have another thread on here, playearth, where people are posting incredible images of geology. We are all different people, all from different parts of the planet, yet we are all responding to these pictures in the same way. Surely a few people will come along and yawn at some to all the photos. That does not make it wrong to claim that these photos represent human's sense of beauty - there is something more going on here than a coincidence of personal preference.

To turn that into a thought experiment - travel back 300 years in time and bring with you one of those tear off magazine subscription tabs that come in magazines, and a post card of Bryce Canyon. I submit, without proof, that 90% of the people that see the Bryce image will gasp, and 99% will find it more interesting than the magazine subscription card. We are wired to appreciate some things, and not to appreciate others, despite the lack of 100% agreement. Likewise, take my prose, and then Dickens', show it to 1000 people, and I again submit without proof that the vast majority will prefer Dickens. So, while we certainly can't rank things (this is novel #5 in terms of greatness), we can certainly arrange things in terms of human appreciation and value of the object in very broad terms.

To take it to another novel - I can't get through Proust. I hate the book. I find it boring, tedious, etc. However, I am not claiming Remembrance is bad, nor overrated. Only that it doesn't work for me. Proust was brilliant, and he exercised all his skill in creating this. Furthermore, the book is reportedly life changing for so many, and find it in an echo of our own humanity (what else is art, great art, than that?). I can only conclude that it is a great book that I for whatever reason haven't been able to appreciate (perhaps a bad translation?). Any other conclusion would be a galling act of hubris.

Likewise, I'm meh about T. S. Eliot. Doesn't resonate with me much. But to argue there is nothing there, that he is overrated to be called one of the best 20th Century poets? Doesn't make sense to me. There is so much there. It's art on a multitude of levels, just not art for me. And it works for so many people.

In these things time tells. I am doubting Andy Warhol will stand the test of time. But, if he does, I could only conclude my assessment of him misses the mark. If in 200 years from now he continues to reach into people's heart and just wrest their hearts from their chests, how is that not greatness?

But that's exactly the point. I believe you admire Melville, I just don't understand how you possibly could. If someone told me that Moby Dick approached being the Great American Novel, I would think that he or she had overrated it.

[roger]

"I'm right because I don't like it".


kind of makes the thread pointless.

[Aitch]

My opinion* is the nearest to truth as I have never read the book and am therefore completely unbiased. ;)

* "It's OK if you like that kind of thing."

[BPScooter]

Ah..zzzz snooze as far as mutually defining literary merit.

So, I read Kerouac, Brautigan, Kesey and really enjoyed it but got a little more out of Hemingway.

Ho hum

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is a dead man and his literary contribution is better than a lot of others.

[Elizabeth I]

"I'm right because I don't like it".


kind of makes the thread pointless.

Huh?

[rsaavedra]

Good point, rsaavedra, I don't think anyones really approached that important question in this growing thread! It's probably a good idea moderate one's bashing of a canon while figuring out what constitutes it in the first place... I suppose we're just operating on a notion something like "books a lot of people have regarded reverently" to some degree, and that's bound to be a moving target.

I prefer Doyle to Christie, especially the short stories. Many of the Holmes novels tend to be history lessons about the early 19th century, while the short stories are just about the mystery.

I also tend to prefer the non-Poirot/Marple mysteries by Agatha Christie, except for "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd."

Thanks for your replies! I think I'll keep reading quite a bit from both authors to get a better impression. I already have the complete Sherlock Holmes; will try to get as much from Agatha Christie as possible.

[poeatszeitgeist]

Good point, rsaavedra, I don't think anyones really approached that important question in this growing thread! It's probably a good idea moderate one's bashing of a canon while figuring out what constitutes it in the first place... I suppose we're just operating on a notion something like "books a lot of people have regarded reverently" to some degree, and that's bound to be a moving target.

It is a GIANT issue among the community of English professors and literary theorists. We typically say that the canon is made up of "universal works", works that have stood the test of time because they speak in some vague way to us centuries (in some cases) later. Of course, general aesthetics is looked at quite closely as well.

Still, the giant elephant in the room is that the canon means there are "universal standards", and thus far these "universal standards" are the standards of the Western world, and historically, these standards have been set in stone by white males.

Feminist and postcolonial theorists are working very hard not only to recover texts, but to make the canon more inclusive to works that have unfairly been disregarded, as well as display how arbitrary these universal standards really are. There's some real treasures being uncovered right as we speak, and it's a very exciting time in literary history.

[rsaavedra]

It is a GIANT issue among the community of English professors and literary theorists. We typically say that the canon is made up of "universal works", works that have stood the test of time because they speak in some vague way to us centuries (in some cases) later. Of course, general aesthetics is looked at quite closely as well.

Still, the giant elephant in the room is that the canon means there are "universal standards", and thus far these "universal standards" are the standards of the Western world, and historically, these standards have been set in stone by white males.

Feminist and postcolonial theorists are working very hard not only to recover texts, but to make the canon more inclusive to works that have unfairly been disregarded, as well as display how arbitrary these universal standards really are. There's some real treasures being uncovered right as we speak, and it's a very exciting time in literary history.

Very interesting. Your post mentioning the so called "canon" brings to mind St. John's College and its so called "Great Books Program." Their curricula basically consist of readings lists of the "Great Books."

[luchog]

Feminist and postcolonial theorists are working very hard not only to recover texts, but to make the canon more inclusive to works that have unfairly been disregarded, as well as display how arbitrary these universal standards really are. There's some real treasures being uncovered right as we speak, and it's a very exciting time in literary history.

Postmodernism aside, I would tend to agree with this. The entire "stood the test of time" argument tends to fall very flat; since more often than not, the continued existence of many works owes at least as much to an accident of history as to the value of the work itself.

What most people fail to realize is that up until the Industrial Revolution, owning books was largely the province of the wealthy. In fact, literacy itself was largely the province of the wealthy. There was nothing like the wide availability of printed material we currently enjoy. Copying texts was a long, slow, labour-intensive, expensive process; and doing so was typically an individually commissioned work, rather than a commercial production.

Shakespeare is considered by most to be a master of English literature; yet two of his plays have been lost entirely, or exist only in fragmentary form. Is this because they failed to "stand the test of time"? No, it's because the very few copies of them that existed have all been destroyed, either through decay or accident. Fires, insects, mould, and other forms of decay have destroyed entirely many ancient and medieval works of literature. The deliberate repression and destruction of "subversive" texts by religious and political groups has cost many more. The burning of the Library of Alexandria caused the loss of incalculable numbers ancient literary works.

What works have survived have typically been those preserved in private libraries; which invariably reflect the tastes and preferences of their owners. For many, fashion as much as quality, reflected their purchasing of printed materials. They may never have had any desire to read a particular author; but it was considered an point of social status to include a copy in one's library. Thus many decidedly mediocre authors have been preserved; and thus meet the criteria for standing the "test of time" since they still exist, when better writers have been forgotten simply because they were too unfashionable or subversive for the tastes of the time. The fact that they still exist owes more to their historical value than any literary quality they may possess.

A substantial amount of ancient pornography has also survived, despite it's crudity. Like mediocre literature, their preservation has been due predominantly to their anthropological value, its greater availability resulting from prurient interest, and to fashion.

Works that "stood the test of time" prior to mass printing are merely those which stood the test of the tastes of a very narrow subset of wealthy individuals and historical circumstance.

Even in the modern world, widespread availability is hardly a question of quality. As noted in another thread, Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code is a very popular book, despite being rather poorly written. It's popular because it plays on the sentiments and beliefs of a large number of people, and because a large number of people consider it fashionable to have read it, regardless of any inherent value it may have as a work of literature. Similarly the work of Tom Clancy and Stephanie Meyer. Will these works "stand the test of time"? On a purely logistic basis, there are far more copies of them around than there are copies of T.S. Eliot, Khalil Gibran, or Ranier Maria Rilke.

[rsaavedra]

Just realized, the wiki link I used in my previous post didn't link directly to the page that includes St. John's College reading lists per year. Here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_%28United_States%29

[BPScooter]

...so.... who has ancient pornography? in the old school way? ;;{{not me}}}

Well, now that we're not casting motes in eyes. The idea of sin has been dealt with by the best of the philosophers and Church Fathers. They all agree that we should Knock it Off and just stop all that sin that we do.

[poeatszeitgeist]

Even in the modern world, widespread availability is hardly a question of quality. As noted in another thread, Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code is a very popular book, despite being rather poorly written. It's popular because it plays on the sentiments and beliefs of a large number of people, and because a large number of people consider it fashionable to have read it, regardless of any inherent value it may have as a work of literature. Similarly the work of Tom Clancy and Stephanie Meyer. Will these works "stand the test of time"? On a purely logistic basis, there are far more copies of them around than there are copies of T.S. Eliot, Khalil Gibran, or Ranier Maria Rilke.

Really great post.

I hope T.S. Eliot survives a lot longer than Dan Brown. :boggled: