Tender isn't the night.
Jul. 22nd, 2004 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyOne of the problems of having spent my formative years gamely reading all of the world's great literature that I could get my hands on is that these days I'm having to make do with the world's ho-hum literature instead.
This thought struck me with force this morning as I was looking for somehting to read on the train to work and my eye alighted on the half-read copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the night which has been sitting by my bed for some weeks. Like the copy of magical beasts and where to find them in Harry Potter, it squats there, malevolently daring me to try and read it, glaring vilely and promising dire retribution should I so much as pick it up.
For the life of me I can't understand how Fitzgerald has got the reputation he has (apparently he's a regular on A level English Lit reading lists); his prose is supremely unengaging, his characterisation repetitive and leaden, and his preoccupations (not matter how rich, successful, and pretty you are you'll never actually be happy. So ner) bloody irritating. This book reminds me in some ways of Yukio Mishima's Forbidden Colours; in that I'm bloody well not going to let it beat me, so I'll put my head down in a determined way and make it to the end if it kills me.
This leads me to the question I'm asking of you lot today; who, in your opinion, is the most over-rated "great" author? Is it perhaps Dickens, whose tiresome 'jokes' and supremely punchable characters are so beloved of English teachers everywhere? Perhaps it is Anton Chekov, who could do with just lightening up? Or perhaps someone more modern like Will Self, who you just want to punch and punch and punch until he takes the hint and stops? Let me know your thoughts.
Oh, and if anyone can recommend anything good to read I'd be grateful. I've got bloody Albert Camus next unless anyone can save me.
This thought struck me with force this morning as I was looking for somehting to read on the train to work and my eye alighted on the half-read copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the night which has been sitting by my bed for some weeks. Like the copy of magical beasts and where to find them in Harry Potter, it squats there, malevolently daring me to try and read it, glaring vilely and promising dire retribution should I so much as pick it up.
For the life of me I can't understand how Fitzgerald has got the reputation he has (apparently he's a regular on A level English Lit reading lists); his prose is supremely unengaging, his characterisation repetitive and leaden, and his preoccupations (not matter how rich, successful, and pretty you are you'll never actually be happy. So ner) bloody irritating. This book reminds me in some ways of Yukio Mishima's Forbidden Colours; in that I'm bloody well not going to let it beat me, so I'll put my head down in a determined way and make it to the end if it kills me.
This leads me to the question I'm asking of you lot today; who, in your opinion, is the most over-rated "great" author? Is it perhaps Dickens, whose tiresome 'jokes' and supremely punchable characters are so beloved of English teachers everywhere? Perhaps it is Anton Chekov, who could do with just lightening up? Or perhaps someone more modern like Will Self, who you just want to punch and punch and punch until he takes the hint and stops? Let me know your thoughts.
Oh, and if anyone can recommend anything good to read I'd be grateful. I've got bloody Albert Camus next unless anyone can save me.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-22 02:20 am (UTC)If anyone is going to be smug around here, it's me.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-22 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-22 02:28 am (UTC)No Exit!
Date: 2004-07-22 02:38 am (UTC)I want some of Kafka's drugs and I very much suspect that Burroughs took them too. Yay! Rat poison!
Oh! Read 'Hell's Angels' by Hunter Thompson, it really is interesting. If only because:
1. Ginsberg was insane
2. The Hell's Angels are insane
3. Hunter Thompson is more insane than all of them combined
Re: No Exit!
Date: 2004-07-22 08:41 am (UTC)