Tender isn't the night.

[davywavy]

One 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.

Comments

[vulgarcriminal.livejournal.com]

Perhaps not so relevant to the English and sub country folks reading this but I detest Thoreau. The only reason I'm reading Walden again is because of my friend's suicide, which isn't a very good reason for literature at all. I find him tepid, sanctimonious and boring. He's like Bono, only in 19th century transcendentalist form.

I agree with you about Will Self, he's repulsive.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I have always meant to read Thoreau, but the excerpts I've read have always struck me as so smug that I never bothered.
If anyone is going to be smug around here, it's me.

[vulgarcriminal.livejournal.com]

You're at least funny and smug. He's just fucking smug. God damn transcendentalists. I'm throughly pleased existentialism saved us from that nonsense. Emerson is just as bad. Long live Foucault!

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

Dickens for the "classics". Dull, depressing etc

or the Bronte's. Gods they were annoying

For Fantasy? David Eddings. Great characterisation, very very dull in all other ways. He wrote the same series of books 4 times, admits it even, and is considered amazing

Modern? Helen Fielding - FFS! Bridget fucking Jones must DIE! Give all single thiry somethings loveable anorexia and neuroses. Like we can't cope without a man????

If you like Celtic myth based fantasy, try Katherine Kerr, absolutely wonderful author.

For more modern, I can't remember the author, but The Happy Policeman is very good, and rather odd. The story isn't about the story, so to speak.

For SciFi/ Dark Futures (near futures), Fairyland is very strange and rather superb.

For fantasy but actually about anyone and everyone, Beauty by Sheri S Teper

Most things by CJ Cherryh and Orson Scott Card rock

[vulgarcriminal.livejournal.com]

Good lord sistah, preach on about the Brontes. Ugh, ugh and more ugh. They make me want to bash my head in with a two by four so I can understand what it's like to be that two dimensional.

I think our Dave needs some barmy. How about Blake? Or maybe some symbolist French poets?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Existentialist philosophy, yes, existentialist literature, no! No! And Thrice no! Franz Kafka, eh? What was he on?

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

Bronte Sisters = Helen Fielding of yesteryear. Pathetic whining women!

Blake I love. I don't know many of the French poets, but actually, for Barmy, Molliere is pretty good.

I have a deep love for the romantic poets, but that's more of a giggle thing, though some is genuinely beautiful. Wandered lonely as a cloud indeed!

No Exit!

[vulgarcriminal.livejournal.com]

Is a fantastic play; a corrupt reporter, a drag queen and a socialite during war times.

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

Yes! The Romantics

[vulgarcriminal.livejournal.com]

My favourite is: 'She walks in beauty like the night' which Suede ripped off. I couldn't stop laughing the first time I heard that song lyric. I think it was.... Byron?

Re: Yes! The Romantics

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

And on that cheek and o'er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent
The smiles that win, the tints that glow
But tell of days in goodness spent
A mind at peace with all below
A heart whose love is innocent

Byron. Who thankfully can write no more! Now spooky kids carry on his tradition of maudling sentimentalist crap!

For a sample of this, see http://www.livejournal.com/users/glytterpixiebat/

she added me, so I checked it out. I am presuming she is 12 years old and slightly subnormal, so have refrained from saying anything

Re: Yes! The Romantics

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

And on that cheek and o'er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent
The smiles that win, the tints that glow
But tell of days in goodness spent
A mind at peace with all below
A heart whose love is innocent

Byron. Who thankfully can write no more! Now spooky kids carry on his tradition of maudling sentimentalist crap!

For a sample of this, see http://www.livejournal.com/users/glytterpixiebat/

she added me, so I checked it out. I am presuming she is 12 years old and slightly subnormal, so have refrained from saying anything. She spells dark "darque". Ouch.

Re: Yes! The Romantics

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

have you considered her as a recruit to teh cam in that case?

Re: Yes! The Romantics

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

NO! really. She probably thinks "languid" is a positive social trait, "alabaster" is an appearance related trait and "dark poet" would be every nature!

ARGH!

[cygny.livejournal.com]

If you haven't read yet, I recommend Eiji Josjikawa. Japanese author who writes/wrote about Japanese Middle Ages, Shoguns, Samurai and the likes. Only found and read two novels by him but adored. 'Taiko' and 'Musashi'. This last is based on one of the most famous Samurai that ever lived, who became a legend and whose book about strategy became a must-read for everyone even remotely interested in any martial art. Musashi's book is called 'Legend of the five rings'.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I have read The book of Five Rings, and also the Hagakure (can't remember who that's by).
I could not recommend Junichiro Tanizaki, who is just plain odd.

[cygny.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, Book of Five Rings, not legend.
Anyone else you can recommend, of Japanese authors?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Other than Sun Tzu, I think that's my lot of japanese Authors read - I have read a lot of Mishima but not much anything else.

[cygny.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call Sun Tzu light reading though :P OK, well, always interested in more Japanese literature so let me know if you find anything else :)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

What Am I saying: The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon is well worth reading, The Diary of Lady Murashashi is less so, and the Tale of Genji is quite interesting too.

Re: Yes! The Romantics

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

Context is everything. This poem was addressed to a society beauty who wanted the public glory that came with being pursued by the most glamorous man of the day. But after much promising and delaying to keep him interested, she wouldn't jeopardise her position by actually fucking him.

So he wrote this poem as a farewell to her. She was immensely flattered by its crassly sentimental nature, as dwere most people in the circles they both moved in. But his friends at the gentlemen's clubs realised was crassly sentimental and purposely so. He was signalling to them what a frigid bitch he thought she had been to him - her face is 'eloquent' but there is only peace 'below'.
So it was an ironic joke at the woman's expense, and a signal to other rakes not to waste their time on her.

As for the Brontes, they were writing within the terrible strictures placed on women at the time - they repeatedly try to make what they write conform to the moral standards of the day, but other more contentious stuff keeps slipping out, particularly at the level of the language itself. Yorkshore parson's daughters writing in the mid nineteenth century who manage to celebrate adultery, violent sexual passion, incest and necrophilia in their novels get my vote anytime.

Couldn't agree more about Bridget Jones though. It delights me every time I check out the bookshelves in charity shops and there are 3 or 4 copies of her wretched drivel, along with a couple of copies of the Spice girls (Spiceworld?). I am sure the two are linked.

The Brontes

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I rather enjoyed The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, although my opinion waas coloured by a stage production I saw before I read it which featured possibly the best portrayal of regency rake I've seen since, oh, the last time I looked in a mirror.
I was rooting for him all the way through, and I thought the moralistic death was a cop-out. I wonder if I would have enjoyed it so much without a visual representation to work upon?

Re: The Brontes

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

If you were a character from the Brontes' ouvre you certainly wouldn't be him. Joseph in Wuthering Heights more like.

I find visual representations of literature always assist my less able students.

Re: The Brontes

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

i drew a pikcher in krayon abowt a buk i red, miss. wud yew like to see it?

If I were a Bronte character I'm just glad I wouldn't be Heathcliffe, due to him being hopelessly insane.
Actually, I could see myself being compared to Gilbert Markingham in some ways.

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

I can't stand David Edding's, I agree with what you said for him. I couldn't even get far enough into his books to grow attached to the characters and I've tried far more times than I have to read The Hobbit.

[kathminchin.livejournal.com]

Having plowed through The Great Gatsby I think I alienated my English teacher for all time by calling the female lead (cannot for the life of me remember her name) as being wet, self centred and whinging - rather like today's teenage girl magazines - and I put it in my essay as well.

Bronte is so turgid, although for some reason it translates well to TV series. I remember enjoying a dramatisation of Jane Eyre but loathing the actual book. Likewise Austen - works well on screen, sleep inducing to read. Mind, that may be because I studied Pride and Prejudice at GCSE, and then again at A'level...