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Regarding the Bible, I would say that reading it cover to cover is entirely optional. If you aren't familiar with the text you might want an abridged version. I personally really loved Ernest Sutherland Bates' abridgement of the King James bible, "The Bible: Designed to be Read as Living Literature," which is designed to be read straight through and only took me about as long to get through as War and Peace. It takes out genealogies and dramatically shortens many of the things related to Jewish legal codes, which means that most of what you are left with is narrative or poetry.
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Oct 2, 2014 08:28
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W/r/t Shakespeare, you needn't read the entire canon. The most famous and beloved plays are famous and beloved for a reason. King Lear and Hamlet are must reads as far as tragedies go, and I'd highly recommend both parts of Henry IV for histories, but yeah, you should really be watching Shakespeare alongside your readings. It's how it's meant to be experienced and just reading it denies you a critical facet of the work.
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Oct 2, 2014 08:46
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I'd read everything Shakespeare wrote, but if someone doesn't want to I'd read Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Merchant of Venice Romeo & Juliet, The Tempest The Henriad (Part 1: Richard II, Henry IV pts. 1 and 2, Henry V) (Part 2: Henry VI pts. 1, 2, and 3, Richard III) edit: If you want to narrow it down even further... the four tragedies, Romeo & Juliet, Richard III. Those are the ones someone might expect you to be familiar with. Sir John Feelgood fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Oct 2, 2014 |
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Oct 2, 2014 12:09
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And you should also remember that there probably isn't any need to go to these extremes. If you come from usual goon background (comics, lovely fantasy and/or thrillers) you could just move on to read good books, there's no need to go all academic and make reading a chore. Classics are cool but unless you're literature student or have read most worthwhile contemporary stuff already, you shouldn't burden yourself with them too much. mallamp fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Oct 2, 2014 |
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Oct 2, 2014 13:48
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Ignoring the sonnets with Shakespeare is a poor move, but I agree that it's poo poo behaviour to just lump people with the burden of "oh, to really understand Literaturrrre you have to have read all of them". But yeah, sonnets. Otto von Ruthless posted:Yes, you are going to miss something because you haven't read everything important that came before yet - but think of it more like building a web of associations. I don't think you have to be entirely linear here. Everything can always be re-read. The more you read, the more sense you will have of where you could go next, and you'll find that this is essentially a never ending process, the list of what you should read next will always grow and never shrink. This is a good point, there is never an end point when it comes to literature (or indeed any kind of knowledge). Nor indeed is there a moment where a lightbulb just clicks on and you are suddenly Well-Read and a Person of Letters. Giving people a list like Bloom's has a weakness in this regard in that it seems to give the impression that this is the baseline that literally everyone who is cleverer than you is at, and I can't see that leading to a particularly constructive way of reading in general.
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Oct 2, 2014 13:51
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You also needn't read all of Shakespeare's sonnets. There are some more treasured than most!  Sonnets 18 and 29 immediately come to mind for myself.
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Oct 2, 2014 14:00
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My problem with Bloom's list is that he includes Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, even though neither of them considered themselves western.
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Oct 2, 2014 14:20
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Smoking Crow posted:My problem with Bloom's list is that he includes Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, even though neither of them considered themselves western. I think the idea of the canon is more about works that influenced western literary culture, which those authors certainly did, regardless of how they personally considered themselves. I mean it also includes the Mahabharata and Ramayana which are from much further east than Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.
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Oct 2, 2014 14:32
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Now that we have talked about western canon let's talk eastern:
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Oct 2, 2014 14:33
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J_RBG posted:Giving people a list like Bloom's has a weakness in this regard in that it seems to give the impression that this is the baseline that literally everyone who is cleverer than you is at, and I can't see that leading to a particularly constructive way of reading in general. Certainly no one should be looking at it as a list to just check off or anything like that. My thinking is that Bloom's list (or some other formulation of the same thing, I don't really give a poo poo about Bloom, it's just a convenient thing to reference) could be a useful for a beginner to look at just to get a sense of what some 'important' books are. I might distill my advice down to 'Find a book that people generally seem to think is important and then read it'. Stravinsky posted:Now that we have talked about western canon let's talk eastern: Fair point - even if you are specifically interested in western culture, you shouldn't be ignoring the rest of the world. I'm not exactly sure how you would formulate the equivalent to that Bible, Shakespeare, etc. list (or if it really makes sense to think of it that way). As a start though: -Some sort of overview on Chinese philosophy (I had a class that used this and I think it's pretty good) -The Mahabharata, Ramayana, and Upanishads -The Four Great Classical Novels - I don't know what to pick from Buddhism. The Dhammapada maybe?
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Oct 2, 2014 15:25
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Stravinsky posted:Now that we have talked about western canon let's talk eastern: go on
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Oct 2, 2014 15:29
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Otto von Ruthless posted:Certainly no one should be looking at it as a list to just check off or anything like that. My thinking is that Bloom's list (or some other formulation of the same thing, I don't really give a poo poo about Bloom, it's just a convenient thing to reference) could be a useful for a beginner to look at just to get a sense of what some 'important' books are. I might distill my advice down to 'Find a book that people generally seem to think is important and then read it'. Where are the Japanese novels? -Tale of Genji -Kojiki and Nihon Shoki -Basho etc.
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Oct 2, 2014 15:35
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Coetzee is probably the easiest entry level literary writer because of the way he writes, waiting for the barbarians in particular is basically a fantasy novel, only not poo poo.
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Oct 2, 2014 16:02
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If we're talking about important "Eastern" novels we could always chat about The Dream of the Red Chamber. It's...long. And old. So it fits in with most of the content of this thread (it's pretty interesting).
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Oct 3, 2014 02:48
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Read The Arabian Nights. The Haddawy translation is great.
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Oct 3, 2014 04:09
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Shibawanko posted:Coetzee is probably the easiest entry level literary writer because of the way he writes, waiting for the barbarians in particular is basically a fantasy novel, only not poo poo.
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Oct 3, 2014 07:31
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mallamp posted:I think we'll get more and more good books with fantasy elements (no Tolkien, no lovely action plot, no genre crap in general) anyway, because the biggest fantasy generations are now adults and some of them actually grew up instead of becoming goons. Sadly we'll also get loads of dumb poo poo from the goony ones, but at least they are easy to avoid by cover alone. This is why I find it funny that you still see hardcore SF&F fans complaining about the sci-fi ghetto, and characterizing all contemporary literary fiction as the kind of stuff that Roth and Updike were writing in the 60s. Many of the most celebrated authors of the last 20 years or so have used elements from sci-fi, fantasy, crime thrillers, westerns, and all the other 'lowbrow' genres.
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Oct 3, 2014 20:46
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cemaphonic posted:Many of the most celebrated authors of the last 20 years or so have used elements from sci-fi, fantasy, crime thrillers, westerns, and all the other 'lowbrow' genres. The greatest living American writer, Cormac McCarthy, has literally written a book in all of these genres except fantasy. And while I don't see him adding elves to his work anytime soon, I also never expected to see him write apocalyptic sci-fi.
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Oct 3, 2014 21:51
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poisonpill posted:The greatest living American writer, Cormac McCarthy, BOOO. Pynchon is so much better
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Oct 3, 2014 22:03
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Pynchon is just a knockoff DeLillo. Discuss.
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Oct 3, 2014 22:29
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poisonpill posted:Pynchon is just a knockoff DeLillo. Discuss. Counterpoint: You are wrong & also probably not much fun at parties.
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Oct 3, 2014 22:37
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Having read a lot of both, they are nothing alike in style or tone or (mostly) content. Pynchon is also vastly funnier. Plus, Pynchon is pre-Delillo anyway!
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Oct 3, 2014 22:48
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When you think about it, TS Eliot is p. much a K-Mart brand William Carlos Williams.
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Oct 3, 2014 23:40
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A Rambling Vagrant posted:When you think about it, TS Eliot is p. much a K-Mart brand William Carlos Williams. 
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Oct 3, 2014 23:45
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A Rambling Vagrant posted:When you think about it, TS Eliot is p. much a K-Mart brand William Carlos Williams. This is how the world ends.
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Oct 4, 2014 00:00
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Sir John Feelgood posted:I'd read everything Shakespeare wrote, but if someone doesn't want to I'd read I have to say that I'm always vaguely disappointed when I see lists of essential Shakespeare plays that leave out As You Like It and Twelfth Night, but that probably has to do with my own personal affection for his works that deal with gender/sexuality politics. I find the nature of characters like Rosalind and Viola to be absolutely fascinating. What I also find fascinating is that both plays don't really properly function "as intended" when performed, because you actually have females playing female roles, which in truth warps the complexity of what Shakespeare was trying to say vis a vis gender, or at least removes a fairly important element from it. I'd love to see an all-male production of Twelfth Night; I know they've actually started having them again. The Renaissance ideal of the "beautiful male youth" is so central to both plays. And central to the sonnets as well, another body of work by Shakespeare I always felt was rather misunderstood due to a general distaste for the overt homoeroticism in, uh, about 125 of the 154 sonnets or so I think.
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Oct 4, 2014 00:00
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A Rambling Vagrant posted:When you think about it, William Carlos Williams is p. much a K-Mart brand T. S. Eliot. FTFY, you're welcome in advance.
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Oct 4, 2014 07:24
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JESUS CHRIST PEOPLE I WAS MOCKING POISONPILL'S POST Also, Ted Hughes' rendering of Ovid's Metamorphosis is, like, impossibly lovely.
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Oct 4, 2014 08:42
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A Rambling Vagrant posted:JESUS CHRIST PEOPLE I WAS MOCKING POISONPILL'S POST
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Oct 4, 2014 08:53
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Ted Hughes is the Wal-Mart Sylvia Plath.
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Oct 4, 2014 09:08
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In that wal-mart crushes small businesses.
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Oct 4, 2014 12:09
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A Rambling Vagrant posted:When you think about it, TS Eliot is p. much a K-Mart brand William Carlos Williams. Agreed.
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Oct 4, 2014 13:31
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poisonpill posted:Pynchon is just a knockoff DeLillo. Discuss. Agreed.
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Oct 4, 2014 13:39
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When you think about it Umberto Eco is just a poor man's G. K. Chesterton.
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Oct 4, 2014 13:40
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Ernest Hemingway is the poor man's Stephanie Meyer. Are we done with this now? I just read We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas. It's pretty good, a portrait of a family across three generations (although it's really focused on the middle one) as they struggle with social position and illness. Reads like Franzen without all the "I'm smart, look at me" stuff he does.
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Oct 4, 2014 15:55
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A Rambling Vagrant posted:JESUS CHRIST PEOPLE I WAS MOCKING POISONPILL'S POST Funny I just finished Rolfe Humphries' translation of Metamorphoses, which he plays more for humor I find.
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Oct 4, 2014 19:48
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Actually, Tao Lin is the Wal-Mart Don DeLillo.
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Oct 5, 2014 15:05
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Read whatever you like, gently caress the police.
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Oct 5, 2014 16:03
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GATOS Y VATOS posted:Read whatever you like, gently caress the police.
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Oct 5, 2014 19:04
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mallamp posted:Actually you do have to read whole western canon. In original languages. If you can't speak Spanish and French what are you doing with your life
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Oct 5, 2014 19:07
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