Results 1 to 20 of 125
"Classics" that you can't stand
The latest in a surge of threads by RP as he becomes ever more desperate in his quest to avoid studying for finals...
So, what "classics" of literature are there that you can't fucking stand?
For me:
Catcher in the Rye. Ugh. I don't really know what more to say about it than that.
On-the-fucking-Road by Jack fucking Kerouac. The triumph of pseudo-intellectual hipsterism as a lifestyle, which made it forever inescapable in this country. Add to this The Dharma Bums for flagrant abuse of Eastern religions.
Heart of Darkness by Conrad- I really wanted to like this but his prose is way too dense and when I got to the end it was sort of an anticlimax. I didn't think he described "the horror" that well at all. I thought the movie Apocalypse Now! did a lot better with the same theme.
The Great Gatsby.
A boring story about rich people and their boring lives.
"Win, lose or draw...long as you squabble and you get down, that's gangsta."
On the Road was pretty awful, a trend I've noticed continues throughout most of beat literature.
I thought Heart of Darkness was alright, but it was dense, and I think its one of those books you need to read several times over in order to understand well.
David Copperfield was a miserable reading experience. It was for a class and I read the first 300 pages, saw there were about 500 more and just gave up.
I didn't see what was so great about Slaughterhouse Five, or any Vonnegut for that matter. He's a funny writer and easy to read, but I don't think he goes much beyond that.
Last edited by which doctor; 14th December 2009 at 17:18. Reason: meant to say slaugherhouse 5 instead of breakfast of champions
The pictures in Breakast of Champions were amusing.
Like when he said "This is what an asshole looks like", and drew an asterisk.
"Win, lose or draw...long as you squabble and you get down, that's gangsta."
Indeed. Respect for saying this.
Meh. Maybe if I'm stuck on a deserted island with only that book, I will give it another shot.
Oh yeah, I totally forgot A Tale of Two Cities. "Don't try to change anything cause you'll just make it worse" literature at its apex. Also reading Dickens I kind of felt like he had just gone to creative writing school, and was trying to write a book where he used all the neat concepts he learned about like metaphor, irony etc
Breakfast of Champions is far from his best. In fact in his essay in Palm Sunday where he grades all his novels he gives that one a C-. I think his best ones are Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five, though I could not really say what I think is "great" about them. They just feel very genuine.
Actually, I meant to say that Slaughterhouse Five was the book I didn't like, not that Breakfast of Champions was much of an improvement. The only other Vonnegut I've read is Bluebeard which I thought was better than both S5 and BoC.
Oh, yes, I thought that was horrible as well. Couldn't get past the first few pages; the writing style was like the sound of nails scraping a chalkboard.
I borrowed that book a couple weeks ago and am a couple dozen pages into it, and think it's pretty decent. The writing style is pretty good and it has some really wonderful sentences in it, but the whole everyday speech type of writing can get annoying.
One sentence that I thought was great was this one, for example:
Originally Posted by Excerpt
1984 and Lord of the Flies.
1984 not so much for political reasons, but I fucking detest the atmosphere the book creates and conveys to the reader. Lord of the Flies because I is my intimate belief that the story and it's characters are silly.
Anything written, or supposedly written, by Shakespeare. A load of tedious drivel that has bored millions children across the globe.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
- Hanlon's Razor
Random, you fucking kill me, man. I love Catcher in the Rye and Heart of Darkness. I think Conrad/Marlow in Heart of Darkness not divulging into the 'horror' allows a lot of room for interpretation. Was Kurtz horrified by what he was leaving behind or what he had become? It made it interesting for me, at least.
And death to whoever doesn't like Vonnegut and Slaughter-House-Five. He's one of my favorite authors. Speaking of that book and the asterik asshole mentioned above, after Christmas I'm getting 'So it goes' with the asshole under it tattooed on my upper back.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was just plain dull. I think the message was kind of stupid and Huckleberry was just as annoying at the beginning as he turned out to be in the end. Dumb story. Besides that, I am a pretty big fan of classic novels and such. I'll try to think of other ones.
The basic ideas of Marxism, upon which alone a revolutionary party can be constructed, are continuous in their application and have been for a hundred years. The ideas of Marxism, which create revolutionary parties, are stronger than the parties they create, and never fail to survive their downfall. They never fail to find representatives in the old organizations to lead the work of reconstruction. These are the continuators of the tradition, the defenders of the orthodox doctrine. The task of the uncorrupted revolutionists, obliged by circumstances to start the work of organizational reconstruction, has never been to proclaim a new revelation – there has been no lack of such Messiahs, and they have all been lost in the shuffle – but to reinstate the old program and bring it up to date.
- James P. Cannon, 'The Degeneration of the Communist Party'
Catcher in the Rye is amazing, as is Heart of Darkness.
I can't stand most Jane Austen novels because they're tedious and boring. I also strongly dislike anything by Edith Wharton for the same reasons. I don't know whether Ian McEwan's novels have reached classic status yet, but they're all pretentious. VERY pretentious.
Economic Left/Right: - 9.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: - 7.85
I think that the Beat generation had some very gifted poets among them of course would be Allen Ginsberg, in doubt? Read Hadda Been Playing On The Jukebox.
Also, anyone who defends Vonnegut is a friend of mine.
Sirens of Titan was better.
That's an awful idea. "So it goes" was probably the most annoying part of reading Slaughterhouse Five
I wrote a philosophy paper on that comparing it to Spinoza's universe
fucking ace
Also I'm starting to regret the door I opened with this thread.
Henry. Fucking. James.
As an English major I am forced to do two papers in pre-20th century English literature (in keeping with how Eurocentric the academic discipline is). Come back to me in 2 years for that question since I plan to put them off as long as possible.
omg this^
Actually yeah, I loathe Pride and Prejudice. Again it's the whole "boring story about rich people and their boring lives" thing Explosive Situation mentioned earlier. When I had to study it last semester the lectures were like zzzzzzzzzzzz oh no they thought they didn't like each other at first how exciting zzzzzzzz
And when Marx says, 'Hitherto the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways', what that 'hitherto' means is not a renunciation of theory and that all we need to do is wade in with our fists and there will be no more need for thought. This idea is in fact fascist, and it would be grossly unjust to Marx to impute such views on him.
--Theodor Adorno, 'On Theory and Practice'
not a classic and none should ever be but while we are talking pretentious- two words= martin amis
i personally dont like dickens imho zola towers above him..
R.I.P Juan Almeida Bosque
"The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely
the oppressive situations which we seek to escape,
but that piece of the oppressor which is
planted deep within each of us." Audre Lorde
I'd like to second dislike of Lord of the Flies (did anyone read about his new biography? Apparently Golding raped a high school student when he was in college and he pitted his students against each other as his "research" for Lord of the Flies). Also 2nd dislike of: Jane Austin, Cather in the Rye, Great Gatsby, and On the Road and most beats(I like Ginsburg's long-poems though).
I'd like to denounce the Shakespeare, Vonnegut, and Twain haters though. If you dislike "tha Bard", it's only because you haven't had to read Milton, Dante or other Elizabethan stuff like Marlowe.
1. Anything written by a Bronte - I'd rather read the Heathcliff comic (Garfield even) than read about Heathcliff the lame-o.
2. Scarlett Letter.
3. Naked Lunch
4. Anything by Milton
5. Red badge of Courage
A Farewell to Arms, Frankenstein and Hamlet*.
Ah, memories of high school English classes...
*I'm not a fan of Shakespere, but I didn't mind Julius Ceasar.
EDIT: And for the love of God, absolutely ANYTHING by Tolkien.
