get out of (literary) jail free

[adelaidesean]

Sometimes I feel bad about not reading enough "capital-L" literature.

Then I remind myself that as a mad teenager I once read James Joyce's Ulysses from cover to cover, which surely earned me enough enduring lit-cred to never have to read again.

Everyone should have a book like that, I reckon. Do you? If so, what is it? Gravity's Rainbow? War and Peace? The Grapes of Wrath?

Comments

[ebenstone.livejournal.com]

Ulysses is credit enough for a lifetime! I don't think I started reading "literature" until I started going back to school to be a teacher.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Sensible move! I do believe in dipping into the canon every now and again, but some books are just too much work. They have to be...not savoured, exactly, but saved for the right moment in one's life. Forcing someone to read one is like forcing someone to swallow a whole roast dinner in one mouthful. Imho.

[maelorin]

meh lit-cred.

much of what is called literature seems to be merely implausible to read ... "it must be good, it was so hard to read" O.o

if i want that, i go find that article by whatshisname on that stupidly tedious topic that got published in some journal somewhere.

phd. give me fun, or try trying ...

[angriest.livejournal.com]

I think half the award-winning Australian literary novels that get shoved on you at university deserve points for getting through them. Drusilla Modjeska, Thea Astley et al. Couldn't stand them.

Also (although not Australian) Margaret Attwood.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

I almost suggested one of Attwood's titles but thought I'd be howled down if I did. Haven't read any myself, put off by an apparent lack of space octopi.

Ditto re a lot of Australian literature. It really seemed to lose the plot mid this century (pardon the pun).

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

I have only just discovered Atwood. I'm finding it hard to read anything *but* her work at the moment!

[karenmiller.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not terribly impressed with Literature. Give me a good story well told and I'm happy. For my money, way too much Literature is about people showing off to themselves.

But that's just me!

[deborahkalin.livejournal.com]

H'm, War & Peace, Les Miserables, Moby Dick, Crime & Punishment, The Idiot, Ben Hur, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Heart of Darkness, Anna Karenina...

I've tried reading Ulysses several times, but keep getting distracted away from the hard work to something more fun. With that list up there, I think I'm safe. (Although, hafta say, those Russian classics? Rock. Crime & Punishment is fantastic.)

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

You are completely excused from jail!

I loved Anna Karenina when I read it years ago. Must read some more from in that vein one day.

[tallaudrey.livejournal.com]

Does The Fountainhead count? Or is that just masochism?

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Only you can answer that question, grasshopper.

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

Anything by Patrick White. Except, maybe, The Ham Funeral.


I agress most modern literature has disappeared up its fundament. Most of my literature reeading stops at Proust. Anything after that forget it.

Oh, about Proust. Great book to read on a long plane trip to Paris.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

I can't hear Proust's name without thinking of Monty Python (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8rhIw_9ucA).

[derekcfpegritz.livejournal.com]

The only piece of "great" literature I found to be truly great--and mind you, this is coming from a guy with an MA in literature--was Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. But even Wuthering Heights can't hold a candle to COrmac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Wuthering Heights is on my list of books to read very soon. I've promised my wife, so there's no backing out of it now. :-)

She's also a big fan of Cormac McCarthy, so he's on the list too.

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

I was all about the 'meh' in regards to *serious* literature until extremely recently. Its like suddenly I get it... the power of words and what they're really for. And what they're NOT for is contributing to the blanket of background noise currently smothering western culture. Books that do nothing but get you from A to B bore me.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

I agree. There's an intersection point between "literary" and "genre" books where all the action is happening. That's probably where every writer dreams of landing, myself included (although I know I'm not there yet, and may never be). Some books are widely regarded as being at the point when they probably aren't, and both sides of the fence are guilty of making such claims. But ultimately it comes down to taste, perhaps, and also what definitions of "literary", "genre", "sides" and "fence" come into play. If they should come into play at all. :-)

[mondyboy.livejournal.com]

I did the whole lit thing at Uni. I read Hobbes and Locke and Solzehnitsyn and Plato and Aristotle and Hogg and so many others that it's genuinely becoming a blur. I own Ulysses... though I doubt I'll ever read it.

Personaly I take the view now not to feel bad about not reading capital-L literature. I just want to read stuff I'm gonna enjoy, whether it's a Doctor Who tie in novel, a bit of grungy crime or something by Sean Williams (what a suck am I!).

There's enough good shit in the horror / SF / Fantasy / Crime genres to keep me happy for a long, long, long time.

Go and read some Jack O'Connell, coz he's brilliant.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Jack O'Connell

Not a name I know. The web makes him sound awesome. Duly noted!

[joeboo-k.livejournal.com]

Ulysses should be mine, but after finishing the book I had no idea what I just read. I guess I did skim a little to leech the pain away.

I really feel that reading the four novels Jane Austen published while still alive is my get out of jail free card. I tried. I really tried. Sense and Sensibility was far less odious than the other three, but I've no patience for it.

Or anything written about the travails of the upper class (which includes the oh so sad falls from riches of said upper class).

Give me some agrarian lit. I'll read A Thousand Acres or Beyond the Bedroom Wall thrice and thrice again.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

So you won't be off to the see the various Austen sci-fi spin-offs (http://io9.com/5154815/three-jane-austen-science-fiction-movies-in-the-pipeline) coming out in the near future? Or maybe you will, because you'll enjoy the sacrilege. :-)

I didn't understand Ulysses either. It should only come as an annotated edition. But I do remember some bits. The bits that made sense.

[davidcook.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I feel bad about not reading enough "capital-L" literature.

Me too !

But I did read Gravity's Rainbow and Dhalgren many years ago, and I read half of The Remembrance of Things Past (although apparently it's called In Search of Lost Time these days).

I'll catch up with the rest ... some day :)

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Shane Dix has been trying to get me to read Dhalgren for years. Has its moment passed, I wonder? Guess I'd better read it to find out. :-)

[lisahannett.livejournal.com]

Hemingway: 'Old Man and the Sea' = a book I would like purged from my memory... A few hours of precious reading time I will never get back.
(PS - my love of Atwood's writing will never diminish. Ever. She rocks.)

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

One of my rough and ready definitions of a good book is one that makes a reader feel passionate--either positively or negatively. Bad books are the ones that make you go "meh". By that measure, Attwood is really up there, and I will read her books one day. I'd also include Steinbeck, even though I loathe his books, and would love to have the hours back I wasted on them when I was younger.

So if I still plan to read Old Man and the Sea one day, it's not because I don't value your opinion!

Have you read The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch? I loved her books, once upon a time.

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

Anyone read To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf?

Mind you, she wrote a "biography" of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel, Flash. That was fun.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Woolf is on my to-read list. I think I need another lifetime...

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

I'd say no, no, and yes, for the three you mention. The latter also the shortest. :)

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Short is good for this exercise. :-)

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

I've got a few I want to go through, though Crime and Punishment and Heart of Darkness top my list.

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

I can recommend Heart of Darkness. It's short, and it still packs a punch. Must admit, I haven't read any Dostoevsky at all.

[possbert.livejournal.com]

I've read War and Peace AND The Sillmarillion. That must earn me no reading points in my next life too.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Holy cow. I didn't even think of The Sillmarillion. That's one I definitely couldn't get through.

[mireille21.livejournal.com]

Then for me I guess it would have to be Les Miserables, or The Count of Monte Christo. Both versions I read were old Elglish translations so very heavy going. *Gets introspective* I wonder what it is about me and great French tragedies.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Is "Elglish" a typo? If so, I love it. That would be the pidgin spoken by elves as they integrate into Middle Earth, maybe. :-)

[gloripebbles.livejournal.com]

The Fountainhead I got through. Have still not been able to get through Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Crime & Punishment. However have gone through The Iliad, Aeniad (morning sp...possible oops), Catalus. Have also read Petronius. Still to this day found it amusing to analyse a book where only 2/3 has survived (Satyricon).

Does wading through Sophocles count? Personally I was more fascinated by Euripides (a very early black humourist). Aeschylus - not bad - kinda meh about him really.

Yes, I read stuff from waaaaaaaaaaay back.....then skipped a couple of centuries and well, really haven't got back into it *lol*.

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

Which translation of the Iliad? I'm reading the Robert Faglse translation at the moment.

[tanaudel.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
And Wuthering Heights, although I confess to enjoying it the first time I read it, which was far too young. I've studied it three times since then and feel like little bits of my soul are getting stripped off since then.
And Lord of the Flies.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Nice list. I remember Lord of the Flies vividly from Year 9 English. Have never read it since.