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

[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.