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Poe's a bit clumsy as a writer/poet. Not in the same league with the great masters of the English language. His ideas and poetic imagery are still laden with strong personal emotion and very worth experiencing.
Kubla Khan fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Aug 31, 2014 |
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Aug 31, 2014 19:06
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Control Volume posted:A Reader's List 100 Best Novels Where is this from because 
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Aug 31, 2014 19:10
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StashAugustine posted:Where is this from because http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/ at least this list reminded me of heart of darkness. ive always been meaning to read it but never actually got around to it
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Aug 31, 2014 19:11
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Kubla Khan posted:Poe's a bit clumsy as a writer/poet. Not in the same league with the great masters of the English language. His ideas and poetic imagery are still laden with strong personal emotion and very worth experiencing. Poe is good because while his prose isn't the best, his influence is far reaching on the European continent, especially with French writers like Baudelaire and de Maupassant.
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Aug 31, 2014 19:18
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I just read INVISIBLE CITIES by ITALO CALVINO and it's very good but the fact everyone describes it as Marco Polo describing cities to Kublai Khan but actually he's talking about Venice the whole time makes it sound a lot dumber and worse than it is and also entirely misses the point. Good book
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Aug 31, 2014 20:07
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Control Volume posted:http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/ from what i understand the Heritage Foundation or some group got Ayn Rand fans to mass-rush that vote so it's a bit skewed the rest of the list is actually quite good!
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Aug 31, 2014 21:26
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Control Volume posted:http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/ As a rough survey of the 20th century's respected books and authors that's a useful collection. The rankings themselves are ridiculous. James Joyce and Ayn Rand have their strong suits, but their novels don't sit alone atop Mount Olympus as peak (no pun intended) literature.
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Aug 31, 2014 21:44
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lol at any online poll pretending to have any validity as those ballot boxes are entirely stuffable.CestMoi posted:I just read INVISIBLE CITIES by ITALO CALVINO and it's very good but the fact everyone describes it as Marco Polo describing cities to Kublai Khan but actually he's talking about Venice the whole time makes it sound a lot dumber and worse than it is and also entirely misses the point. This post is insanely OOC.
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Aug 31, 2014 21:53
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LLCoolJD posted:As a rough survey of the 20th century's respected books and authors that's a useful collection. The rankings themselves are ridiculous. James Joyce and Ayn Rand have their strong suits, but their novels don't sit alone atop Mount Olympus as peak (no pun intended) literature. Please do tell me about Ayn Rand's "strong suits."
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Aug 31, 2014 21:56
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its a metaphor for captains of industry, idiot
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Aug 31, 2014 21:57
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Please do tell me about Ayn Rand's "strong suits." I was afraid someone would ask about James Joyce's strong suits. Rand had a strong personal philosophy, and it's exhibited for all to see (if not shoved down your throat) if you read her stuff. Galt's protracted address in Atlas Shrugged, for instance. How many female authors of her day wrote with such zeal? I'm not a huge Ayn Rand aficionado, but I think it'd be a chore to argue how her novels lack any strengths. Control Volume posted:its a metaphor for captains of industry, idiot Bravo.
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Aug 31, 2014 23:19
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LLCoolJD posted:How many female authors of her day wrote with such zeal? And here I was afraid this thread had stopped being funny. e: The women's suffrage movement in America came to a head within her lifetime, and she was contemporary with Virginia Woolf, Ida Tarbell, Harper Lee, Dorothy Parker... Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Aug 31, 2014 |
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Aug 31, 2014 23:27
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Speaking as someone who's read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, they're crap. Simplistic writing with boring characters and it's just a vehicle for her to shove her political views down your throat. I've heard one writer that she tried to model herself after was Victor Hugo and she managed to pick up all the wrong lessons from his work - her didactic rants add little to the story and her large casts of characters are largely indistinguishable window dressing that exist around the main boring schmoes. The one thing that I liked about Atlas Shrugged was that the family dynamic for the non Galt main guy mirrored Arrested Development and I could imagine that while I read.
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Aug 31, 2014 23:51
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:And here I was afraid this thread had stopped being funny. These threads can derail quickly. You prompted the attack on Ayn Rand, so don't play gotcha when you get a reply. We're adults here. To your point, the women's suffrage movement is a red herring... we were talking about female authors in Rand's generation and their literature. Besides, no one alleged that women never had anything to say until Rand came along. Getting to your list, Harper Lee and Ayn Rand are certainly not peas in a pod! Contemporaries they may be, but the two women came from very different backgrounds, their writing is vastly different, and a quick look just at their portraits shows that they're women with very different personalities. Getting to the list as a whole, if Rand differs from the esteemed contemporaries you've listed, then she at least stands apart in her own way (Rand argued her beliefs with the passion of a Lenin). If she doesn't set herself apart from your list, then there's much to be said of being in such grand company.
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Sep 1, 2014 01:34
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Rand differs from the contemporaries I listed in that she's an awful hack advancing an even worse cause. Also, journalism and essays are literary forms, which is why I mentioned womens' suffrage. (And Ida Tarbell, for that matter.) Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Sep 1, 2014 |
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Sep 1, 2014 01:38
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Rand differs from the contemporaries I listed in that she's an awful hack advancing an even worse cause. Well, I'm not an Ayn Rand nut myself, and I think her narratives are poorly-done vehicles for her economic/political views. On account of those views, I still think she does offer something distinct and memorable to literature. We can agree to disagree.  On a different note, I finished Blood Meridian earlier today. McCarthy also seems to be a polarizing figure, but his writing style doesn't bother me. I quite liked the book. In it I saw shades of Hemingway, Steinbeck, Traven, and Conrad. Despite the informality of his writing, McCarthy manages to draw from a massive vocabulary without (to me) sounding pedantic, and similarly there's fairly liberal use of metaphor that doesn't really get in the way. LLCoolJD fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Sep 1, 2014 |
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Sep 1, 2014 01:52
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Smoking Crow posted:Poe is good because while his prose isn't the best, his influence is far reaching on the European continent, especially with French writers like Baudelaire and de Maupassant. Baudelaire (in French) feels a lot more personal than Poe's constricted, biblical verse. You can savour the French man's work without being aware of any of Poe's influence, it won't change much (at least it didn't for me). Poe is good because he is Poe. The dark side of man distilled in poetry, written in blood by a sick, dying man. Kubla Khan fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Sep 1, 2014 |
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Sep 1, 2014 03:05
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Honoré de Balzac. Straight up.
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Sep 1, 2014 10:24
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The Dennis System posted:Honoré de Balzac. Straight up. My next read after Dead Souls is gonna be Le Père Goriot actually. I've heard good things about it and hope the public domain translation isn't terrible.
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Sep 1, 2014 13:13
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Mr. Squishy posted:lol at any online poll pretending to have any validity as those ballot boxes are entirely stuffable. Please don't typecast me. I also make boring white noise posts in this thread that make the asparagus av guy angry.
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Sep 1, 2014 13:59
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ulvir posted:My next read after Dead Souls is gonna be Le Père Goriot actually. I've heard good things about it and hope the public domain translation isn't terrible. Le Père Goriot is awesome. I'm not sure which translation I read, but since the version I got was free on Kindle, it probably was the public domain translation, and I thought it was fine.
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Sep 2, 2014 01:20
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LLCoolJD posted:shades of Hemingway, Steinbeck, Traven, and Conrad. Traven, as in B. Traven? I read one book by him in my teens (The rebellion of the hanged), and couldn't find more in Danish. I've never seen him mentioned anywhere. Any recommendations/opinions on his work?
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Sep 2, 2014 16:22
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rasser posted:Traven, as in B. Traven? I read one book by him in my teens (The rebellion of the hanged), and couldn't find more in Danish. I've never seen him mentioned anywhere. Any recommendations/opinions on his work? Yeah, B. Traven. I've read The Death Ship and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Don't let the names fool you; they aren't bad books. The Death Ship I thought was the better of the two novels. It's a dark book with an interesting subject matter. It is rich in 1920s revolutionary spirit — there are clear anti-bureaucratic and anti-capitalist sentiments, although they're not so heavy handed that they interfere with your enjoyment of the story. The more sensitive reader might be turned off by some unflattering descriptions of a couple of Africans (a very, very minor element of the book that hasn't aged well). It's been a few years since I've read it, but I don't remember it requiring a particularly big investment of time to get through. The author's life is clouded in mystery, but I would be shocked if he didn't base much of what is written here on some of his own maritime experiences. It's a relatively obscure book that might pleasantly surprise you. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is more of a straight-up adventure novel, but it's done well for what it is. I've seen the Humphrey Bogart movie, and (as you might imagine) the book contains much more substance. If you've read a bit about Traven's life, you'll know he lived in Mexico. So he wasn't just passing through. I'm not much of a judge, but his descriptions of Tampico ring of authenticity. The man seems to have done his research into the region's history as well. Like The Death Ship, this is a book focusing on the common man, and so there's no cheesy Zorro figure in it. I enjoy books like Nostromo and One Hundred Years of Solitude that touch on the beautiful but violent and rugged nature of old Mexico and the late- and post-colonial American tropics. For that same reason, I enjoyed this even if it wasn't as ambitious as those two books. LLCoolJD fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Sep 3, 2014 04:06
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LLCoolJD posted:Yeah, B. Traven. I think I read him close to my first Gabriel Garcia Márquez novel, and remember their settings not overlapping much. I thoroughly enjoyed the workers' fight with the federales in Revolution of the hanged, and also got my first introduction to feudal landlords from it. Márquez usually touches social subjects more lightheartedly and, iirc, alludes more to civil war and massacres than bring them into context. I think Traven is one of the few people writing about Latin America (here, including Mexico) that has made me go "Whoa, this poo poo happened!". I can't really think of anyone else, to be honest. Edit: i know this last sentence begs to be corrected. Bring it on, and inspire me in the process.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:28
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rasser posted:I think I read him close to my first Gabriel Garcia Márquez novel, and remember their settings not overlapping much. I thoroughly enjoyed the workers' fight with the federales in Revolution of the hanged, and also got my first introduction to feudal landlords from it. Márquez usually touches social subjects more lightheartedly and, iirc, alludes more to civil war and massacres than bring them into context. I think Traven is one of the few people writing about Latin America (here, including Mexico) that has made me go "Whoa, this poo poo happened!". I can't really think of anyone else, to be honest. I meant more generally as coverage of the Spanish colonies in the Americas. A sweeping generalization, I admit, but in the time period in question there are only so many "classics" covering those lands (and the interplay of Spanish colonial, indigenous, and modern capitalist cultures). I've not read Traven's jungle novels yet. The historical references and narrative in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre definitely show the violence in all of its grit. I also welcome recommendations for novels covering these regions during the times we've talked about.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:03
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Help me stop being a book-manchild. I have a strong desire to read the classics or, at least, books written by the masters. However, every time I pick one up and start in on it one of two things happen and I am unable to keep going. I would love some insight about my disability. 1) My myopic lizardbrain recognizes that the story has already been repackaged dozens of times in modern movies and cheap books, so it's familiar to me. Seeing the origin of the story is maybe a little interesting but that never goes far and I get bored. How can I change my perspective here? 2) The writing isn't clear to me so I can't establish a vivid picture of the story in my head. The latest book I tried and put down because of this was Crime and Punishment. Another one recently was Infinite Jest. Do I just need to improve my "reading skill" or what? I'll make a confession, I just finished two science fiction books that I found very enjoyable and clear to read - more enjoyable than the literature I WANT to enjoy. They were Old Man's War and Forever War. The latter was less clear to read and less enjoyable, but I guess it felt like it had more style or flavour. How can I fix this? I know I have the potential to appreciate finer art.
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Sep 7, 2014 21:01
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The fact is that a lot of classic literature is not as easy to digest as popular or genre fiction. You have to slow down and digest what you're reading, appreciate the style, the prose, the philosophy, etc. IMO the great joy of reading is when you enjoy something so much that you devour it and dread the last page because you know it's over, and whatever does that for you is fine. The "great" classics that have left the biggest impact on me and had me turning pages are Proust, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Charlotte Bronte. I do believe that there is a sharp learning curve when it comes to reading more dense literature and once you have taught yourself to take in the information you will find it easier to form mental imagery and you'll be reading a lot faster.
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Sep 7, 2014 21:29
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Tenacious J posted:Help me stop being a book-manchild. I have a strong desire to read the classics or, at least, books written by the masters. However, every time I pick one up and start in on it one of two things happen and I am unable to keep going. I would love some insight about my disability. I didn't get a lot out of Crime and Punishment and I don't remember much of it, because it seems like most of the book was just the main character wandering around town with a fever thinking random, disconnected thoughts about nothing. Then he'd stumble home, go to sleep, and then get up the next day and stumble around town with a fever again. Nothing happens in that book. The Brahs Karamazov was a lot more entertaining in my opinion.
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Sep 7, 2014 21:38
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I recommend looking into short stories, lots of classic authors have written them. Stuff like Crime and Punishment and Infinite Jest are really long, after all. With something short it will be easier to digest and you'll have a better idea if you'll enjoy their style before taking the plunge into a much longer work.
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Sep 7, 2014 21:41
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Read short things that are good. If you want vivid pictures then you should read Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino which doesn't really have a plot but is basically just beautiful descriptions of fantastical cities used to make philosophical points on the nature of knowledge and language and that sort of thing. Also try Fictions by Borges, a collection of short stories all loosely based around the nature of storytelling. Again, they tend not to have plots and are more explorations of concepts. If you want something with a little more story going on the you should read THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY, A NIGHTMARE, by G. K. CHESTERTON it's short and good and while you can definitely enjoy it without necessarily thinking about what the point of it was, you can also think about that too.
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Sep 7, 2014 21:56
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If you want something longer read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov I can guarantee you won't realise you've heard the plot somewhere else and the writing is all about establishing lovely vivid pictures in your brain.
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Sep 7, 2014 22:04
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Tenacious J posted:1) My myopic lizardbrain recognizes that the story has already been repackaged dozens of times in modern movies and cheap books, so it's familiar to me. Seeing the origin of the story is maybe a little interesting but that never goes far and I get bored. How can I change my perspective here? Stories are of trivial importance. If you were reading, say, the aforementioned Crime & Punishment for the story, you wouldn't feel too happy about finishing it. There is gently caress all of a story. And you know what? Stories are for keeping children sitting still for twenty minutes. In great literature stories are frames, connecting devices. You can take pretty much any great book and condense the story to two completely banal sentences. You absolutely shouldn't focus on them. e: don't be this guy: The Dennis System posted:Nothing happens in that book.
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Sep 7, 2014 22:24
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Tenacious J posted:Help me stop being a book-manchild. I have a strong desire to read the classics or, at least, books written by the masters. However, every time I pick one up and start in on it one of two things happen and I am unable to keep going. I would love some insight about my disability. If you're looking for good original writing by a master but with an easy to picture narrative, give Kurt Vonnegut a shot. Start with Mother Night to get acquainted with his style, and then move on to his less conventional stuff like Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut is easily my favorite American writer of the 20th century and I really think you would enjoy his work.
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Sep 7, 2014 22:35
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Tenacious J posted:Help me stop being a book-manchild. I have a strong desire to read the classics or, at least, books written by the masters. However, every time I pick one up and start in on it one of two things happen and I am unable to keep going. I would love some insight about my disability. Ok, this is a really interesting set of questions. For the first one, try asking yourself what this author is doing with this iteration of the story. Sure, say, The Stars My Destination is in some sense a sci-fi rewrite of The Count of Monte Cristo, but it's also its own original story, too. What's different? What's changed? For the second type of problem, yeah, sometimes you just need to work out your reading muscles. The way to do that is by challenging yourself with stuff that's on the edge of what you can handle. Old Man's War and Forever War are actually both pretty good starts in that direction. (They're also both re-writes of and responses to the same basic story Heinlein told in Starship Troopers). What I'd suggest is to try reading some more literary, high-brow science fiction to get yourself warmed up. Try Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, and A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller. (Maybe also The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester, mentioned above). Those all have very distinct authorial voices and if they aren't quite Nabokov or Joyce they'll help you prepare for that kind of thing and practice your ability to handle unusual language. Once you feel ready for something more serious, I'd say at first try authors like Steinbeck or Hemingway that wrote in a relatively plain, straightforward style. Maybe Steinbeck's Cannery Row, or better yet, Tortilla Flat, where Steinbeck was deliberately retelling the Arthur stories as if they took place among a group of American vagrants, so you can practice enjoying a new variation on an old story. If you want something more philosophical that will force you to really do some self-evaluation, try The Plague by Camus. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Sep 7, 2014 |
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Sep 7, 2014 22:47
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Ras Het posted:Stories are of trivial importance. If you were reading, say, the aforementioned Crime & Punishment for the story, you wouldn't feel too happy about finishing it. There is gently caress all of a story. And you know what? Stories are for keeping children sitting still for twenty minutes. In great literature stories are frames, connecting devices. You can take pretty much any great book and condense the story to two completely banal sentences. You absolutely shouldn't focus on them. A really great book can have a compelling story or plot and have still have whatever else it is you get out of books like Crime and Punishment. A book like The Bros Karamazov has tons of social and philosophical commentary and layers of meaning, etc., but it also has a compelling story/plot.
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Sep 7, 2014 23:47
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Wow, thanks to everyone. I appreciated every reply and intend to investigate/read everything mentioned. Short stories first.
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Sep 8, 2014 02:04
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I'd try Crime & Punishment again. It was one of the very first 'lit' books that I read after 10 years of steady fantasy diet. First time I tried it I really hated it (I read something like 50 pages?), but then I tried it again, got past the boring beginning and really loved it. I'd say it's one of the best 'beginner' books. Dostoyevsky in general is pretty good since he didn't deliberately try to make his books hard to read (like Faulkner, David Foster Wallace etc.), only hard part is that they're old. Murakami was my other 'beginner' author, but you'll probably have to read it in secret if you want to be 'cool'. mallamp fucked around with this message at 07:55 on Sep 8, 2014 |
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Sep 8, 2014 07:52
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I never liked "Crime and Punishment," though that might be partly because I find Dostoyevsky's intense hatred of atheism hard to stomach.
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Sep 8, 2014 08:33
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Barlow posted:I never liked "Crime and Punishment," though that might be partly because I find Dostoyevsky's intense hatred of atheism hard to stomach. I don't think it's a hatred of atheism so much as an over-abundance of piety. Tolstoy had the same problem. Jesus had a real hunger for Russian intelligentsia of that time and he snuck in their rooms at night and ate all their brains. I found Dostoevsky really loving tedious and I don't know how much of that is due to the stodgy translation. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Sep 8, 2014 |
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Sep 8, 2014 13:56
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Barlow posted:I never liked "Crime and Punishment," though that might be partly because I find Dostoyevsky's intense hatred of atheism hard to stomach. Compared to other writers of the era Dostoyevsky explores both sides (atheism vs. theism) pretty well... But in the end he did choose theism so if that bothers you then yeah, don't read him I guess. mallamp fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Sep 8, 2014 |
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Sep 8, 2014 14:29
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