Tender isn't the night.

[davywavy]

I read an article a few months ago in one of the girl magazines which my sister buys* in which some intellectual mum and her teenage son were interviewed. Intellectual mum read a lot of literary classics, and she despaired of the stuff her son read: B-list fantasy mostly - people like Robin Hobb, David Eddings and Raymond E Feist. The article set a challenge: the two would swap reading material for a month in an attempt to help them understand each other's tastes.
The results were predictable. Teenage son, given some George Elliot, found it tedious, unexciting and dull (and he'd be right) whilst intellectual mum become hooked on fantasy doorstep novels and was devouring them as fast as she could.

Back when I was at school, I was put off classic literature mostly by my English teacher's leaden renditions of David Copperfield. The man was an excitement vampire: I'm sure that no matter how interesting and exciting a piece of writing, he could have drained it of all sparkle and left behind mere words. Later, as a pretentious student, I embarked on a phase of reading classic literature or, as I put it at the time, "All the books you've heard of but nobody you know has ever read". In the light of this, I can actually agree with teenage son above: many acknowledged classics are as dull as ditchwater. In this sense, you can thank me for the warning. I read them so you don't have to. Fell on the literary grenade, as it were.
This leads me to my question for you lot today: which, in your opinion, is the 'classic' which least deserves that name?
For my money it would be F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the night. In many ways, this is a book I should be able to relate to and I probably would were it not for the fact that Fitzgerald couldn't write for toffee. It's unengaging, uninspiring, deary, slow and ultimately deadly boring. I wouldn't wish the reading of it on my worst enemy. Apparently Hemingway would write his books and then edit them by crossing out all unnecessary words in order to acheive his taut style. I can only assume that Fitzgerald did much the same, except that he crossed out all the interesting words instead.

But what about you, dear reader? Which book do you consider the most over-rated 'classic'? And why?**


^{*Yes, I read them. They're often unintentionally hilarious.
**It's traditional for the intellectually pretentious to squeak up about Shakespeare in answer to this sort of question. As such, I specifically preclude Shakespeare from the answers given. It's my quiz, and you're wrong. Okay?}

Comments

[blue-cat.livejournal.com]

I was utterly unable to finish Tess of the D'Urbavilles.

My mother & I were the parent/child you describe save only that she wouldn't touch my literature with a barge pole.

Mom raved about Tess, the exquisite poetry, the historical accuracy, the emotional impact, the descriptions flowing from Hardy's pen...

But she was an idiot! I cried in desperation. I don't want to read about a stupid girl who I have no sympathy for, only contempt.

*sigh*

[the-maenad.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the book is so incredibly lopsided. Page upon page upon page of Tess's ill-treatment and misery, and then, as though the book was written by RL Fanthorpe instead of Thomas Hardy, the escape, recapture, execution etc. are all crammed in at the end of the book. Sheer ham-fisted timing.

[blue-cat.livejournal.com]

*scuffs toe on the floor*

I never got that far in the book. I gave up in the middle of the emo...

[silanah.livejournal.com]

Wuthering Heights.

My friends despair of me and urge me to re-read just so I get it and fall in love with it, but good god, it's the best sleeping aid known to man.

How can you like a book where all the main protagonists are about attractive to read about as watching intestinal surgery (with more emo).

Burn. Them. All

N

ps just to be contrary - if I were allowed to nominate a Billy S one it'd be Romeo and Juliette.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I never got Wuthering heights either: Heathcliffe isn't attractive. He's a lunatic.

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

amen

[old-corbie.livejournal.com]

argh - two idiots get a teenage crush and everyone dies. which was billie's point, but everyone touts it as a love story.

i can only assume they haven't read it

excuse lack of capitals - broken arm

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Broken arm? Again?

[christ1974.livejournal.com]

I'm probably gonn aget excommunicated for this but I think Lord of the Rings is a really hard book to read. The story is great but such long windedness(if thats a word).

Another Classsic I found really uninteresting was Alice in Wonderland. Yet as a Child I adored Enid Blyton and The Magic Far Away Tree(not a Classic)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

A lot of people say LoTR; whilst I wouldn't agree with it, I can sort of understand why it just isn't for some people, if you see what I mean. A bit like Marmite.

[(Anonymous)]

Lord of the Ringpiece is great if you're a kid and don't appreciate decent writing. As an adult, it's utterly tawdry. Tolkien couldn't write for toffee. If only he'd got someone else to write his stories for him.

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

oh god, the second book of LOTR was appalling:

"oh look, more fields! ...and Tom FRIKKIN Bombadil"

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Tom Bombadil, the merry fellow, (his boots are green and his jakcet yellow) only crops up in book 1. /geek.

Cutting him out of the film was a truly great decision.

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

maybe i just mentally throw everything that i don't like about LOTR in book two, on the grounds that i quite enjoyed the set-up and denouement but was bored to tears in the middle. i confess, i haven't read it since i was considerably more wee than i am now!

i just remember book two being epic, and not in a good way. given my tender years, it seemed a kind of eng. lit. genre excercise to be waded through to get to Mordor.

i have contemporaneous memories of being tortured by Longfellow at around the same time.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Two Towers is probably the slowest of the three, but the film is easily the best of the trilogy.

[(Anonymous)]

you probably say the same about empire strikes back.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Depends. Star Wars retains the greater emotional impact for me.
Still off work? Is it half term, or are you malingering?

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

You know, I'd say 'anything by Earnest Hemingway'. I fear that stripping out all those words may have been foolish of him.

I tried to read 'The Old Man and the Sea' once. I never finished it, and rapidly lost the will to live.

On a pretentious level tho, I genuinely enjoy Dickens, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. The Dickens love comes from 6 months living in Nepal with no TV, no internet and a ration of two books per week from the second hand book store in Kathmandu to keep me entertained, which gave me a real appreciation for heavy literature that can actually keep one going.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Dickens has his moments, But for every "Christmas Carol", there's a "The Chimes" to counter it. Dostoevsky is profoundly miserable and probably contributes to the high suicide rate in Russia, and Tolstoy is quite good, if long-winded.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Oooooh I love old Dosty.

As a Yorkshire person one is compelled to read lots of Bronte; I hated Wuthering Heights too. Although I adore the scenery that inspired it.

Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy is pretty soporific as well. NOTHING happens.

[borusa.livejournal.com]

IMHO, Dickens gets better the slower you read him. If you can stick to a chapter a day, then it becomes a serial (which it was, obviously) and some of the oddities of structure become much less important.

I'd vote for James Joyce's Ulysses.

On a more interesting side note : Jane Eyre, Three Men In A Boat, Don Quixote are among those that I've read and found really are as good as reputed.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Don Quixote is indeed great fun.
Ulysses would also be up there in my list of 'Top Rotten Books'. I couldn't be bothered to finish it, TBH.

[vulgarcriminal.livejournal.com]

I'd have to agree with you about Tender is the Night. I just can't seem to finish it... much for the same reason I can't finish The Da Vinci Code.

[(Anonymous)]

The problem with Tender is the Night is that even though Scott Fitzgerald apparently wrote sober, he still seems to have brought the failings of his drunkard persona to the page - a tendency to buttonhole the reader with unstructured ramblings, no ability to edit, and an unfounded confidence that even the most obscure and personal of his poetic insights will be instantly accessible to the reader. Form time to time I actually got one of the poetic insights and thought "actually that's terribly good," but if you're not a self-obsessed drunkard with a taste for teenage girls yourself, I'm not sure it's worth indulging the fellow's literary excesses for the sake of getting a brief glimpse, every 50 pages or so, of what it is like to be one.

H

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

if you're not a self-obsessed drunkard with a taste for teenage girls yourself,

But I am, and I still hated his book. Just goes to show.

[vulgarcriminal.livejournal.com]

In that context I think you may be lying.

[hiromasaki.livejournal.com]

Hmm...

Ethan Frome was absolutely abhorrent. I could get better writing out of the daily soaps.

Other than that, we had a rather good reading list throughout school... Salinger (Catcher in the Rye), Huxley (Brave New World), Rice (Frankenstein), etc...

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

You were set Brave New World?! I am profoundly jealous... I didn't stumble across that til my late twenties. Ending is a cop-out though (both of them).

[mrmmarc.livejournal.com]

Best- Fiztgerald's 'Gatsby'.
Just a goddamn ACE book (and that is taking on the likes of Mobu Dick, Heart of Darkness and ALl Quiet on the Western frount).

Gatsby wins. hands down.

Worst?
Hmmmmn.
Mostly anything by George Eliot.
Tedious, tedious, tedious, TEDIOUS.
Tedious.

Dickens, rockin', but Eliot...

automatic snooze button (I use ti say the same about James but he's not THAT bad).

Most over rated- Stoker- Dracular is a mint in IP but one of the worst books EVER written.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Gatsby, whilst not being as unutterably dull as Tender is the night, I don't think I would rate above mediocre.
As the winner of the recent 'Summarising Fitzzgerald' competition put it "You might be rich but it won't make you happy, so nerrrrr."
Sums it up admirably, I think.

[old-corbie.livejournal.com]

Either Silas Fucking Marner or Shitty Cider with Fucking Rosie. first is a tedious boring hell with occasional moments of hideous child abuse. second is a crass, tacky, poorly-written rendition of the kind of nasty shit nobody says about schooldays for a reason

[lareinemisere.livejournal.com]

[Just popped in after seeing your comment on my comment over at Angus's - and, oh look, someone else who asks interesting questions!]

I agree with the various people above about LotR. Groundbreaking, granted, but so's a road-drill. That doesn't make it quality entertainment. I think Gnommi may be referring to book 2 of the 6, BTW (I, too, can nitpick with the best of them).

But if you're looking for tedious, long-winded description, I'll take your Tolkien and raise you a Victor Hugo. I made the mistake of voluntarily reading both Notre Dame de Paris (sometimes Known as 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame') and Les Miserables. The former genuinely spends more time describing the cathedral than it does Quasimodo - hence the title? I'm generally a pretty fast reader, and it took me a full month to plough through the latter. There were times when I got to the beginning of what looked set to be a full page of description of architecture again and could have just wept.

(And no, we're not talking ' something was lost in translation' here - this was in the original, and I have enjoyed other French classics. Since positive comments and showing off both appear to be allowed on this thread ;), my favourite book of all time is Les Liaisons Dangereuses.)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

God. Les bloody Miserables .I was doing quite well until Marius shows up. A hundred deathly, leaden slow, ill-written pages which go on and on and on and on until you think you will die of the sheer tedium. Don't remind me.

[breekom.livejournal.com]

I second the 'Tess of the D'Ubervilles' vote. I finished it for the second time not too long ago and still raged at Hardy, wishing he'd just made a model of Tess to make love to in real life rather than have me read about his literary infatuation for so long.

Having said that, I followed up Tess with Lawrence's 'Women in Love', which is populated by much heavy wordage and repetition, but which is, all round, far superior to Hardy's attempt at a big, fat book about love and other stuff.

Next book after Lawrence was Jilly Cooper's new tome. Bitch to read in bed but bloody entertaining. I like to balance my literature yang with a bit of trashin yin.

ps: Feist is ok. Bit repetitive but not bad. Best sci-fi fantasy is, you may be surprised to know, C.S. Lewis' 'The Cosmic Trilogy'. Only read it if you're smart.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Naturally I've read CS Lewis Cosmic Trilogy, on account of my being smart :)

[breekom.livejournal.com]

Oh, naturally. I've never met anyone who drinks apple tea who isn't.

[gwaunquest.livejournal.com]

I always loved CS Lewis and read all his books - does that make me even smarter?
I would nominate Brideshead Revisited only I haven't read it. I watched the TV series waiting for something to happen, got past half way and decided I must have missed it. Anything by Jane Austin.How to sell yourself into arse licking sex slavery.
I had a series of excellent English teachers. One actually handed me a copy of Alan Garners "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" and asked me to tell her what I thought of it.
Classic for me would be "Long Dark Teatime of the Soul" by Douglas Adams and "Armaggedon- The Musical" by Robert Rankin.