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

[(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.