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Smoking Crow posted:Dr. Faustus is by Marlowe... Oh, I was thinking of the wrong Faust. Looked at the wikipedia summary of Marlowe's & it sounds fun. Maybe I'll read it if I crave more Faust after Goethe.
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Oct 27, 2014 18:44
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Wolpertinger posted:Never really seen the appeal of capital L Literature - reading it is a whole lot of work and very little enjoyment - not something I look for when I'm lookin for something to read. Plus, a whole lotta literature is hella depressing, which makes me want to read it even less. Not all literature is Moby-Dick.
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Oct 28, 2014 00:51
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juniperjones posted:Not all literature is Moby-Dick. I wouldn't be too hard on him, not everybody is cut out for reading. I mean, he doesn't want to read literary classics, you evidently didn't want to read the 30 pages between his post and the end of the thread. v  v
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Oct 28, 2014 03:17
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Moby Dick is actually cool and fun though so weird reference to go for.
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Oct 28, 2014 11:28
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Ugh I hate this avuncular madman telling me about whales why is my hobby so hard. He's such a good storyteller and so engaging, I'm crying.
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Oct 28, 2014 11:29
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Mr. Squishy posted:Ugh I hate this avuncular madman telling me about whales why is my hobby so hard. He's such a good storyteller and so engaging, I'm crying. A whale killed my parents, jerk.
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Oct 28, 2014 11:30
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juniperjones posted:Not all literature is Moby-Dick. *mind explode*
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Oct 28, 2014 18:33
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Anyone here read the Danzig trilogy by Günter Grass? I have had it sitting on my shelf for a while but I have been a bit reluctant to enter what I am expecting to be an extremely bleak world. I read his book The Flounder some years ago and wasn't very taken with it, parts of it were interesting but much more of it I found irritating. But The Tin Drum in particular has a very strong reputation and the other books in the trilogy look interesting as well.
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Oct 28, 2014 21:48
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I read The Tin Drum this summer. It was... Kind of a slog at some points, but an okay book. Give it a go if you like
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Oct 28, 2014 23:12
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The Tin Drum is pretty drat awesome, I thought. And it weirdly inspired two very different books, Midnight's Children and A Prayer for Owen Meany.
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Oct 29, 2014 04:02
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The Belgian posted:I'm reading Goethe's Faust I now after reading the Urfaust. I'm enjoying it a lot though so far I like the Urfaust more. I'm in the same boat with Jung; Faust is too full of alchemical references and metaphors to not have been designed as an alchemical text in the first place; you might want to consider reading it from this perspective to get the most enjoyment out of it. It's the same as reading the Bible, it might be really fun or really boring depending on how you interpret it. Haven't read the Urfaust so can't comment on it.
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Oct 29, 2014 04:31
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There seems to be a lot of contention around Borges English translations on Amazon, specifically Andrew Hurley's work on "Collected Fictions". Does anyone have a preference here?
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Oct 29, 2014 17:49
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Earwicker posted:Anyone here read the Danzig trilogy by Günter Grass? I read Tin Drum several years ago. I can't remember a ton of it, but I definitely don't remember it being especially bleak, so I wouldn't worry about that. Like, sure it is set in Nazi occupied Poland, but it is about a kid who decides never to grow up and has sonic voice powers, so it is definitely more of a farce than a depressing tragedy. The parts I remember were about him being sex-obsessed since he was an adult in a child's body, and he keeps trying to seduce various women. A book that is super bleak and depressing that I just read was A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. I think it was recommended by someone in one of these threads or another. It is about the caste system in India during the Emergency, and basically this group of people just get poo poo on repeatedly, but luckily they come together through mutual suffering, but then more terrible poo poo happens to them. A good read but avoid if you are depressed, or maybe if you are depressed but are a privileged white guy like me you might feel better that you are not in this awful situation, I guess.
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Oct 29, 2014 20:39
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From time to time,i reread my favorite french novels in their original version alongside the earliest English translation i can find. And it NEVER fails to drive me insane. A warning: if you want to read some french literature in English, well gently caress y- i mean, be really really careful with the translations you choose. Because some of them (like the old Victorian translations or the earliest US ones) basically censored the scandalous parts (the ones including sex, drugs and excessive frenchness) using the best tool they had: an axe. To the point where the translations sometime make absolutely no sense. One particular chapter of the Three Musketeers in the first English translation reads like a summary written by Sarah Palin, age 12 (and it's a shame because it's one of my favorite chapters). And the Count of Montecristo without the marijuana, the erotic dream sequence and the lesbianism... well, it's just not the same thing. In the same vein, a few of the oldest US translations of Jules Verne are basically heavily edited summaries rather than actual translations. But don't worry, they added some extra antisemitism and/or Jim Crow era racism to the original text just for you! Most of the modern translations are relatively good (especially since the 80s) but you can still find reprints of the terrible translation around and the kindle versions are often using the 19th/early 20th century translations because gently caress you  .And that's just for the basic stuff like Dumas' books, Jules Verne or Maupassant. If you want to read something a little more serious like Camus' novels, Gustave Flaubert or Marcel Proust, well, you better get ready to waste a lot of time reading reviews before even choosing your translation. Several english translations of Madame Bovary are worth their weight in arsenic.  So here is my suggestion: Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Chandelos de Laclos is always a good introduction to french literature and it's a really enjoyable read (even in english!) if you get the translation by P.W.K. Stone. It was Marie Antoinette's favorite book so if you want to experience what the "from Versailles to the guillotine" experience feels like, try the 19th century translation by Ernest Dowson. Toplowtech fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 30, 2014 01:28
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I'm reading Moby Dick right now, and I'm really surprised by how good it is. It's super good. I'm blown away.
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Oct 30, 2014 06:10
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Nanomashoes posted:I'm reading Moby Dick right now, and I'm really surprised by how good it is. It's super good. I'm blown away. Hey, me too, and I feel the same way! I'm at the embarkation of the Pequod
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Oct 30, 2014 06:27
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Anybody read A Brief History of Seven Killings or any other Marlon James? I just came across it and judging by it's description and a review I read it sounds like a Jamaican James Ellroy novel, definitely worth checking out.
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Oct 31, 2014 22:16
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savinhill posted:Anybody read A Brief History of Seven Killings or any other Marlon James? I just came across it and judging by it's description and a review I read it sounds like a Jamaican James Ellroy novel, definitely worth checking out. No, but that sounds really interesting! I'm going to go add it to my massive to-read list. I did quite a lot of modules on fiction from that area of the world, and I enjoyed them a lot. Thanks for mentioning it.
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Nov 6, 2014 10:15
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Maud Moonshine posted:No, but that sounds really interesting! I'm going to go add it to my massive to-read list. I did quite a lot of modules on fiction from that area of the world, and I enjoyed them a lot. Thanks for mentioning it. I started it and it's really good so far. Thought I might have trouble with some of the Jamaican patois POVs, but they're not hard to follow.
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Nov 6, 2014 23:29
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I'm reading William Least Heat Moon's book River Horse which is a sort of literary travel book, much like his first book Blue Highways. It's "literary" in the sense that the author has a strong working knowledge of the history of American literature and culture and constantly makes fascinating connections and references in all of the odd localities he visits on his trip. The general premise is that he and a friend are travelling by boat all the way across the interior of the United States, starting at NYC and going up the Hudson to the Erie Canal and then down to the Allegheny, through a long series of other rivers and canals with a minimal amount of portage, and ending up in the Pacific off of Oregon. I am enjoying the book quite a lot, even if his writing is a little over the top at times in the manner of an enthusiastic but out of touch English professor. It has already given me a lot of great ideas for road trips. But after that I have a stack of classic Eric Ambler thrillers so Gunter Grasse and Real Literature can wait
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Nov 6, 2014 23:44
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Smoking Crow posted:Dr. Faustus is by Marlowe... Well Mann's novel is titled Doctor Faustus so I can see why he would be confused.
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Nov 7, 2014 01:34
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Earwicker posted:I'm reading William Least Heat Moon's book River Horse which is a sort of literary travel book, much like his first book Blue Highways. It's "literary" in the sense that the author has a strong working knowledge of the history of American literature and culture and constantly makes fascinating connections and references in all of the odd localities he visits on his trip. The general premise is that he and a friend are travelling by boat all the way across the interior of the United States, starting at NYC and going up the Hudson to the Erie Canal and then down to the Allegheny, through a long series of other rivers and canals with a minimal amount of portage, and ending up in the Pacific off of Oregon. I am enjoying the book quite a lot, even if his writing is a little over the top at times in the manner of an enthusiastic but out of touch English professor. It has already given me a lot of great ideas for road trips. Wow, serendipity. My colleague recommended Blue Highways and River Horse to me yesterday but couldn't remember the author. Thanks for this post!
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Nov 7, 2014 22:08
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I jus tfinished Mason & Dixon and it's pretty fantastic I'd recommend it for those of you that like books. I'm nowe reading The Palace of Dreams by Ismail Kadare which I have just discovered is an English translation of the French translation of the original Albanian and I think that's why it reads sort of weird but the ideas seem cool. Also the version I have has a quote from the book on the front and having read the first two chapters, then that quote, I think I now know exactly what is going to happen.
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Nov 9, 2014 21:19
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CestMoi posted:I jus tfinished Mason & Dixon and it's pretty fantastic I'd recommend it for those of you that like books. Here's an interesting article by the English translator of Kadare explaining the re-translation: http://www.complete-review.com/quarterly/vol6/issue2/bellos.htm Because Albania was a Stalinist shithole for a long time and at one point had less than ten foreigners (inc. diplomats) living there, you probably won't get great ALB-ENG translations for a while. But Kadare is great and you should read him. The Successor was the amazing despite being a re-translation. I'm jumping between Ionesco's plays, Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas and Pamuk's lectures on writing atm. All good, so I pick and choose the read according to the mood.
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Nov 10, 2014 16:37
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It's pretty good it's just stilted I guess? I probably wouldn't give it much thought if I hadn't realised I was reading a translation of a translation just before I started. I might see if I can pick up Broken April in French since it looks like Kadare was explicitly on board in the French translation process. Should I go for BRoken April or another, better one?
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Nov 10, 2014 20:28
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Smoking Crow posted:Pun Pun.
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Nov 12, 2014 11:41
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CestMoi posted:It's pretty good it's just stilted I guess? I probably wouldn't give it much thought if I hadn't realised I was reading a translation of a translation just before I started. I might see if I can pick up Broken April in French since it looks like Kadare was explicitly on board in the French translation process. Should I go for BRoken April or another, better one? Sure, why not, apart from The Successor I've only read Spring Flowers, Spring Frost from him which seemed boring, but I was also a boring teenager then, so.
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Nov 12, 2014 15:24
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This is going to be a difficult post, but please bear with me. I'm trying to broaden my horizons here So I'm an avid reader and I've actually been asking myself the same question the OP is asking for a while now. I read a lot of the "Big Mac and Cheese" books that everyone here seems to hate, and I haven't touched any of the High Art literature since college. Mainly because everyone has been yelling at me that the yardstick for quality literature is "How many hidden subtexts can you find?" The more you can find/invent the better the literature. Now I am a very literal person so this is agony for me. I would literally get into arguments with my teachers about this. The page says what it says and that's it. Now simple stuff I'm ok with. Yes, I get that the book is actually about oppression. I'm not so big on "The color of the room symbolizes existential dread. Isn't this author so amazing?" So I guess what I'm asking before I dive in is: Is there classical literature that stands on its own as an entertaining story or is it deep analysis all the way down?
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Nov 20, 2014 05:26
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Travic posted:Is there classical literature that stands on its own as an entertaining story [...]? Yes.
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Nov 20, 2014 05:31
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Travic posted:So I guess what I'm asking before I dive in is: Is there classical literature that stands on its own as an entertaining story or is it deep analysis all the way down? Yes there are a ton of entertaining stories in literature starting from the most classical of classical literatures like the Iliad and Oydessey and continuing pretty much up until now. While the use of symbols is indeed a thing in literature, and sometimes color can be used as a symbol, I'm not really sure how that makes the stories themselves any less entertaining. I mean the idea that "The page says what it says and that's it" is pretty dumb since it essentially claims that things like metaphors and analogies and symbols and wordplay don't exist, which they obviously do, but I don't see how that works in contrary with entertainment. If you want to ignore any reading other than the most superficial one and just read about the adventures of a Greek warrior or the scheming of Richard II, there's nothing stopping you and they are still good stories, but you are missing a lot. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 05:52
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Travic posted:So I guess what I'm asking before I dive in is: Is there classical literature that stands on its own as an entertaining story or is it deep analysis all the way down? Yes, of course. If a novel or play or collection of poetry has distinguished itself so brilliantly that it's accepted as a great work of art, remembered decades or centuries after it was written, it will be because it is entertaining and pleasurable to read. You're not in high school anymore. You can read books just to enjoy the prose, and the prose in literature is better and more interesting than genre fiction or whatever mass-market paperbacks you have in mind as a counterexample.
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Nov 20, 2014 05:53
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Travic posted:Mainly because everyone has been yelling at me that the yardstick for quality literature is "How many hidden subtexts can you find?" The more you can find/invent the better the literature. Also, bear in mind that this line of thought is just that person's opinion--whoever it is who is telling you this nonsense. And opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and everyone's stinks, etc. etc., so on and so forth regarding subjective enjoyment. There are many ways to enjoy literature. If you are interested in pursuing literature for enjoyment, then find a method that is enjoyable to you. It may sound obvious, but isn't always, especially if you have lots of people in your life who are trying to tell you that literature must be enjoyed in a specific way, particularly a way where it's basically just treating it was a Where's Waldo of subtexts.
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Nov 20, 2014 05:58
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Travic posted:This is going to be a difficult post, but please bear with me. I'm trying to broaden my horizons here Yes, there is tons. The most accessible I can think of, at least in British lit., are Dickens, Austen (arguable, she's beloved but not my favourite), and Charlotte Bronte. Russian: Turgenev (Fathers and Sons), Tolstoy (particularly Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Illyitch). Flaubert's Madame Bovary comes to mind...as does Don Quixote and Tom Jones, among others. Basically, the idea that classic literature doesn't tend to have an engaging story is horrible and presumptuous and is indicative of incredible ignorance. Did you really argue with your teachers about this? If so, that is quite embarrassing.
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Nov 20, 2014 06:09
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Earwicker posted:"The page says what it says and that's it" is pretty dumb since it essentially claims that things like metaphors and analogies and symbols and wordplay don't exist, which they obviously do, but I don't see how that works in contrary with entertainment. If you want to ignore any reading other than the most superficial one and just read about the adventures of a Greek warrior or the scheming of Richard II, there's nothing stopping you and they are still good stories, but you are missing a lot. Blind Sally posted:Also, bear in mind that this line of thought is just that person's opinion--whoever it is who is telling you this nonsense. And opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and everyone's stinks, etc. etc., so on and so forth regarding subjective enjoyment. Well that's encouraging, but I should explain. I love metaphor and word play and intricate, clever ways to use the English language. What I am talking about is sort of a product of my English Literature schooling. I was told year after year, book after book, "Read this and find some hidden meaning. Make it up if you have to." I am not kidding. That was the extent of the appreciation of the prose. After so many years of the same approach I assumed there was nothing more to it and swore it off entirely. As you said I'm not in school anymore. I'm just researching a bit to see if my teachers were full of poo poo so I can give it another shot. The Doctor posted:Basically, the idea that classic literature doesn't tend to have an engaging story is horrible and presumptuous and is indicative of incredible ignorance. Did you really argue with your teachers about this? If so, that is quite embarrassing. I didn't argue about literature having an engaging story. I argued with them about them making up subtexts that didn't actually exist. The arguments generally went like this:  Little Women is actually about <completely unrelated topic> What? I read the story and based on these three paragraphs I can deduce Little Women is actually about something else. But that's not true. You just made that up. Who's to say my interpretation is incorrect? The author? She may have intended this to be the true meaning of her book. ...
Travic fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 06:48
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author Yeah, if you can find some way to justify it, you can make up whatever subtext you want.
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Nov 20, 2014 07:13
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What you are talking about sounds like a sort of parody of a stereotype of an incompetent lit professor. While it's possible that all of your teachers were that ridiculous, it seems more likely that in at least some cases they were probably talking about symbology and subtext that was actually there, or at least some for which there are reasonably arguable grounds, and of which you were instinctively dismissive. Just a hunch.
Earwicker fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 07:41
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Travic posted:This is going to be a difficult post, but please bear with me. I'm trying to broaden my horizons here Just read something simple and fun for starters then. Kafka's Metamorphosis is fun as all gently caress because it's about the main character turning into a beetle which sounds just like a Family Guy episode and reads that way too, except it's good and also short. Everybody can enjoy the Metamorphosis.
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Nov 20, 2014 08:31
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Shibawanko posted:Just read something simple and fun for starters then. Kafka's Metamorphosis is fun as all gently caress because it's about the main character turning into a beetle which sounds just like a Family Guy episode and reads that way too, except it's good and also short. Everybody can enjoy the Metamorphosis. The Metamorphosis is mad depressing
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Nov 20, 2014 13:50
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Shibawanko posted:Just read something simple and fun for starters then. Kafka's Metamorphosis is fun as all gently caress because it's about the main character turning into a beetle which sounds just like a Family Guy episode and reads that way too, except it's good and also short. Everybody can enjoy the Metamorphosis. I still remember reading The Metamorphosis and I absolutely love it.
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Nov 20, 2014 14:54
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Ok guys my professor suggested that the author thought about the choices they made when writing, anybody got some suggestions that avoid this nonsense
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Nov 20, 2014 15:14
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