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I used to be really turned off by literary writing because I guess when I was younger I used to think that all literature was about sad, old people on the Prairies. That's what I was forced to read growing up in Canada. But, that's just public education being poo poo. In the past few years I have definitely come to realise that a lot of the distinction between genre fiction and 'high literature' really is just artistic quality. Cormac McCarthy and Thomas Pynchon, for instance, are two of the best living literary authors in English, but subject matter-wise they tend to write what would be genre fiction if somebody else was writing it. It's just that they're a lot better than anybody else. Anyone who likes to read but is turned off by 'classics' owes it to themselves to seriously sit down and make the effort. Something like The Crying of Lot 49, which is short enough to be approachable, or Blood Meridian, which is a Western, are probably good places to start for people who like genre fiction and are curious. Also, for the guy who doesn't like Shakespeare, you should really just watch Shakespeare performed. It's written to be performed. Give your ear a few minutes to get attuned. If you are a native English speaker it shouldn't be any harder to understand than the Wire. I prefer watching Original Pronounciation performances if I can get it because I find it much easier to understand than Received Pronounciation, but I'm a Newfie and OP is much closer to my native dialect. Your mileage may vary. Gleri fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jun 19, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 20:05
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I picked up the New Sun books by Gene Wolfe a little while back because of the recommendation in this thread and they have exceeded all my expectations. I can't speak for his other work, but these books are masterpieces.
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Jul 12, 2014 19:40
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Lord Krangdar posted:Is this real literature, or pulp fiction? That's not real literature; that's real life.
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Aug 5, 2014 18:37
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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 really like Dostoyevsky on converse grounds. It is really interesting to me, as an atheist who was raised atheist and so had little exposure to Christian thought, to explore what it might be like to live and see the world as a devout Russian Orthodox. I found that to be the case much more so in the Brothers Karamazov than Crime and Punishment, though. It's just like how Infinite Jest lets you be a drug addicted tennis champion and Ulysses lets you live a single day in turn-of-the-century Dublin.
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Sep 8, 2014 15:45
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