# Classics that everyone says are good but you can't stand at all... **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 16, 2003, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923 "2003-01-16T05:06:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/101 "2003-01-19T07:08:11Z")
I like to think that I can handle an author who may not be “accessible”… but everything I’ve ever read that Herman Melville wrote convinces me that he must have been being paid by the word. I fought my way through Moby Dick, and realized that what we have here is a very good story that is almost drowned by the man’s sheer insistence on burying it in excess verbage… ---
**Author:** ![Jervoise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@Jervoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jervoise)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/102 "2003-01-19T07:41:26Z")
I read _War and Peace_ when I was 18, just because it’s such a “classic”. Hated nearly every page of it. **AnnaLivia** : I agree. I was forced to read _The Woman Warrior_ (“The Woman Wanker”, we called it) in my last year of high school. Utter dreck. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/103 "2003-01-19T08:22:13Z")
“Defender” is _still_ a top-of-the-line video game! Bach? You don’t like Bach? No, I mean… you _dislike_ Bach? Is this even possible? I have a bad habit of letting threads lie unread until they get quite large. Had I read this one earlier, I would’ve put my Catcher interpretation in this one, rather than starting a new thread about it. I, too, couldn’t stand **Huckleberry Finn**. Dammit, Twain, you spell “going” “G-O-I-N-G”, not “G-A-W-A-Y-N-E-” or “G-O-I-N” or whatever local dialect you’re trying to spell out. And to do this to everybody - WTF??? ---
**Author:** ![Virgowitch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/9fc348/32.png) [@Virgowitch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Virgowitch)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/104 "2003-01-19T08:44:08Z")
Catcher in the Rye ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/105 "2003-01-19T12:35:04Z")
I’ll join in on _Catcher in the Rye_, a book seen through the eyes of a whiney kid who somehow thinks he’s in a position to look down on everyone around him. Snore. Ditto _The Scum…_…err…_The Sun Also Rises_. It’s Bret Easton Ellis’ _Less Than Zero_, sixty years earlier, without the sex, and just as aimless and meaningless. There’s something to be said for _plot_ in a novel, and one young person, or a bunch of people, drifting around aimlessly with no goal in mind, isn’t a plot. _The Great Gatsby_ has a plot, but whatever people like about it, I’m certainly missing. Another thing it’s up to an author to do is to get you to care about the characters. If Stephen R. Donaldson can get me to care about Thomas Covenant, who is one of the most unlikeable protagonists I’ve come across in a novel, then surely “great authors” like Hemingway and Fitzgerald can give us reasons to care about _their_ characters. Don’t go saying bad stuff about _Catch-22_ or _One Hundred Years of Solitude_. The former begins with the mild absurdities of military life, and is genuinely funny in the early going; it gradually draws you into the tragic absurdities, and the humor becomes mordant. By the time McWatt says “Oh well, what the hell” for the last time, you’re in a completely different sort of landsape than you were at the beginning, but Heller has gotten you there honestly. As for _Solitude_, sheesh, that sucker had me completely pulled in by the second sentence, if not by the end of the memorable first sentence. (Last time I looked, that first sentence was somebody’s sigline here, but I don’t remember whose.) I didn’t _dislike_ Austen’s _Sense and Sensibility_, but I felt she lost an argument with herself: if there’s couples who really _must_ be together by the end of the novel, then ‘sense’ is hardly everything. And it wasn’t sufficiently enthralling writing to convince me to give her another chance. Especially with all that stuff about money at the beginning, which was never let go of throughout: the attitude is very much that, in order to be a “real” person, you mustn’t have to _work_ for a living, and the novel’s all about ensuring a sufficient income to avoid that dire fate. I realize we’re reaching across time and economic class here, but I still found it to be a damned irritating theme. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/106 "2003-01-19T12:42:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by WolfDaddy \* > Scarlett O’Hara must have been the inspiration for that great line from _As Good as it Gets_: > > “How do I write women so well? I think of a man, and take away _reason_ and _accountability_.” I just saw _As Good As It Gets_ last night! And you’re right, Scarlett is the perfect inspiration for that line. (Speaking of unlikeable protagonists. In long retrospect, how either Rhett, who actually has a few insights about the human condition, or Ashley, who’s introspective to near the point of immobilization, can go for decades without seeing that there’s absolutely nothing under Scarlett’s flashy surface to like or dislike, is beyond me. My assumption is that Margaret Mitchell wasn’t exactly deep, herself.) _GWTW_ is really a very famous (though reasonably well-written) trashy novel, and that’s all. ---
**Author:** ![Siege](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/107 "2003-01-19T13:39:52Z")
**Terrifel** , thank you for mentioning _Wuthering Heights_. I have tried to make myself finish it and like it, to the point of taking it with me on a cross-country flight. It’s not going to happen. I found myself disliking both lead characters and wishing they would just behave sensibly. I liked _Jane Eyre_ and ond of these days I might finish _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_, but as far as I’m concerned, the Bronte sisters are a mixed bag. I have to agree with **jr8** who wrote > [@](#): > > If you have to spend more time reading the footnotes than the text itself . . . it’s not worth the effort. . That to me is wear the author crosses the line from art to pretension. Then again, I’m proud to be the good friend of an unabashed hack with about 70 published books to his credit. CJ ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/108 "2003-01-19T17:47:10Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Cruktar_ > \*\* (…)and if I try to wade more than 50 pages into a Ray Bradbury book it makes me nauseous. I absolutely loathed Something Wicked This Way Comes. Each and every sentence he writes seems to be dripping with with the convinction that he’s a far great author than he actually is.\*\* That’s your problem, right there: reading a Ray Bradbury story longer than 50 pages. I had the same reaction to **Something Wicked** , but I think the problem is not so much that Ray Bradbury is a poor writer; he is in fact one of my favorite authors. However, his brilliance lies in the ability to present small, startling ideas and images in a compelling, poetic fashion. You really ought to check out his short story collections like _The October Country_ or _S is for Space_. Bradbury’s short stories are, quite simply, dynamite. His writing style does tend to become rather overwhelming in large doses, though, like an overly sugary pastry. You can only cram so much glittery pixie dust into a story before it starts to lose its credibility. No offense intended, Ray. We love you, keep writing them. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/109 "2003-01-19T17:55:18Z")
It’s probably unfair, but my problem with Ray Bradbury was that he was about the only “SF” writer the academic types who decided on textbooks thought was worth including. Hell, when I was growing up, you coudlget the idea that SF consisted entirely of the short story “By the Waters of Babylon” and Ray Bradbury. His short stories are good, but there are a lot of MUCH better SF writers than Bradbury, and have been since the 50s. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/110 "2003-01-19T18:07:01Z")
There are, indeed, plenty of science-fiction writers better than Ray Bradbury. However, Bradbury doesn’t write science fiction. He’s a fantasy writer. Granted, he uses a lot of sci-fi elements in his stories, so if that’s your definition of sci-fi writing then, yes, he fares poorly by comparison. Even in the 50’s, though, everyone knew that the actual Mars was nothing like Bradbury’s description of Mars. Bradbury knew it too. He was using it as a latter-day Desolate Wasteland metaphor, like Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” That’s probably why Literature texts favored him. That, and the fact that Bradbury’s best stuff is in the form of short stories. He’s very anthology-friendly. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/111 "2003-01-19T20:58:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Terrifel \* > **There are, indeed, plenty of science-fiction writers better than Ray Bradbury. However, Bradbury doesn’t write science fiction. He’s a fantasy writer.** I agree. But Bradbury was what you got in textbooks when it came to SF at one time. I understand things have improved since then. ---
**Author:** ![FranticMad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c68b51/32.png) [@FranticMad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FranticMad)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/112 "2003-01-19T21:06:56Z")
Ballet. What could possibly be more tedious than ballet? The Nutcracker, that’s what – boring even by ballet’s usual undiscerning standards. Oh, it’s a great little hobby for young girls and boys, but to pump a million bucks into some “ballet company” that puts patrons to sleep in their tuxedos and furs clutching the $200 tickets in their pocket while dreaming of the wine bar at intermission when they will pretend to enjoy the whole dreary affair and chat to other ennui-stricken acquaintances about “oh this version is even better than last year’s by the blah blah blah company”, when couples are all whispering to each other “can we leave now and not be noticed?” Not to mention the anorexia and deformed ligaments that renders dancers neurotic and unable to move without a walker after age 38. Meanwhile parents are worried about their kids taking E and dancing till dawn while happily sending little Judy off to ballet school where she thinks she’s going to become a ballet star, which is an oxymoron and a cruel lie. And then put this stuff on TV just to slow down my channel-flipping? Gimme a break. ---
**Author:** ![Adam\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@Adam\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Adam_P)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/113 "2003-01-19T21:57:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by DocCathode \* > [ > **Frankenstein** - Utter crap. Huge plotholes. Subplots that are as convoluted, boring, and unnecessary as they are long. Things that are obvious to everyone except the characters (The creature just wants love!!! That woman was framed ! Don’t talk to the guy with the chainsaw and hockey mask!). How in Cecil’s name does Frankenstein spend all that time building the monster but only realize that it’s hideous(yellow mummy like skin that is stretched so tight it seems certain to split any instant, watery eyes, scars aplenty etc) when it wakes up? How is it that the creature is inteligent enough to teach itself to speak and read French, Latin, and German but never thinks of wearing clothes that hide its appearance? > > . \*\* FRANKENSTEIN is indeed garbage. Of the three major 19th century horror novels–FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA, and DR.JEKYLL AND MR HYDE–it’s the worst written. Its massive influence on popular culture is mainly due to the brilliance of its central idea and, of course, the movies. But the idea was lifted from a late-night opium-addled conversation with Byron and the movies are only loosely based on the book which is a good thing since it’s nearly unreadable. Unlike Stoker or Stevenson, Shelley didn’t have much talent as a writer. First-time readers are always amused to find that she has him talking like a philosophy professor rather than mumbling “Love dead, hate living…” My votes for crap books that should be dropped from the canon go to LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL by Thomas Wolfe and LORD OF THE FLIES by William Goldman. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2003, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/114 "2003-01-19T23:20:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Michael Ellis \* > \*\* I found Walt Whitman’s The Learned Astronomer personally offensive. \*\* That’s interesting. I checked into this thread so I too could profess my great hatred of Whitman’s works; his poems ooze pompousness to an extreme degree even for a poet of his era. \ However, the one poem you hate is the only thing I’ve ever read by him that I was indifferent to rather than appalled by. I guess by default it makes it my “favorite” of his poems. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2003, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/115 "2003-01-20T01:04:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Evil Captor \* > **Hell, when I was growing up, you coudlget the idea that SF consisted entirely of the short story “By the Waters of Babylon” and Ray Bradbury.** Read Babylon once, around '91. Lemeesee- “I am John, son of John and my heart is big as I go to the place of the gods!” And I thought ‘This is strong magic.’ I prayed to the great god Ashing. Re Bradbury- He’s far from my favorite sf or fantasy writer. However, I find his descriptions of things interesting and worth exposing kids to. Poetic, distinctive, using all the senses, if only I could remember a good example for this post. Re-Ballet I hate it for the same reasons I hate opera. All this art and artifice and I never see, hear or feel (with the exception of one aria from Paliaci [Speliing? My gut tells me Pagliaci]) any emotion being conveyed. Faust selling his soul to Mephistopheles or the Nutcracker killing the Rat Queen should be impassioned moments. Instead, vocal pyrotechnics and grande secondes that only serve as showcases for the writer and performers. Shakespeare- That is why I love Shakespeare. Iambic pentameter, Latinate words contrasted against Teutonic words, layers of meaning (including quite a few dirty jokes- Hamlet “I meant my head in thy lap. Thought you I meant count…ry matters?” Henry the Fifth “My horse is my mistress.”) but all filled with the proper emotion. Macbeth’s many ‘I know I’m screwed but I’m going out like a man’ speeches are fine examples. Hmm, so my wife is dead, the weird sisters have fed me half truths and made me their puppet, I’be done horrible things, all the bloodshed has gained me nothing and I’m about to die. ``` "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day til the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lit fools the way to dusty death Out! Out, brief candle! Life is but a poor player that struts and frets its hour upon the stage and then is seen no more. Tis a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury- signifying nothing." ``` ---
**Author:** ![shy\_guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@shy\_guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shy_guy)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2003, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/116 "2003-01-20T03:11:12Z")
Twain can basically go fuck his cold, dead self for ever having read _Huckleberry Finn_ (the only book I’ve physcically destroyed upon finishing it). Same goes for the book with the only protagonist I hate more than Huck - _Catcher in the Rye_. I was indifferent to _Gatsby_, and really do not see why such a big fuss is made about it. However, I did enjoy _Pride and Prejudice_ and the Shakespeare I read in high school a great deal, so I guess the system isn’t completely flawed. … no, wait, I just remembered having to read _The Scarlet Letter_ and _Their Eyes Were Watching God_. The system is, in fact, completely flawed ---
**Author:** ![Forbin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5e9695/32.png) [@Forbin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Forbin)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2003, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/117 "2003-01-20T03:16:48Z")
**Frankenstein** At last, a hated “classic”. Hackneyed, cliche filled, stupid novel. I began to skim about halfway through. Found nothing, absolutely nothing, to like about Herr Frankenstein. At every dramatic turn of the plot he’d become unaccountably agitated, or faint, or some such crap. I liked the monster much better. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that gave me half as much desire to give the protagonist a good punch in the mouth. Of course I know the monster could also be viewed as the protagonist, but you know what I mean. ---
**Author:** ![well\_he\_s\_back](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3ab097/32.png) [@well\_he\_s\_back](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/well_he_s_back)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2003, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/118 "2003-01-20T06:04:01Z")
I sure was glad to see that someone else also disliked “Beloved”. I also hated all Ayn Rand’s books and now they’re listed as classics in our local library. Although they are too new to be considered classics the Philip Pullman “Dark Materials” trilogy - “The Golden Compass” and its sequels - well, they won lots of awards but I thought they were horrid, horrible, an awful joke. Yuck. Just unreadable. Sorry, I get upset thinking about the good reviews those books got. ---
**Author:** ![leechbabe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7cd45c/32.png) [@leechbabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leechbabe)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2003, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/119 "2003-01-20T06:35:58Z")
Could I just add **Perelandra** by CS Lewis. Pages and pages of boring, boring and more boring. ---
**Author:** ![Loopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loopus/32/15343_2.png) [@Loopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopus)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2003, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923/120 "2003-01-20T07:08:11Z")
I agree wholeheartedly with those who mentioned _The Great Gatsby_. I find the plot and characters to be utterly vile. It makes me feel profoundly depressed every time I read it. Why should it be considered an accomplishment to write such a book? It’s like Fitzgerald took everything awful about life and wrote a book about how they always triumph over the few good things in life. The bastards keep making me study it in my English classes (11th grade, 12th grade, and now in college). But at least it’s readable (in fact, it’s one of the best-written books I’ve ever read). _Beloved_ was the only book I was ever assigned to read that I just wasn’t able to finish. I broke down about halfway through and bought the Cliff Notes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classics-that-everyone-says-are-good-but-you-cant-stand-at-all/148923.md?page=7)