I can believe that. Unity of Plot, Setting, and Characterization – and then there’s Tom Bombadil. I also wonder about Shelob – IMHO a very ‘Hobbit’ episode.
I read about a third of the book, thoroughly enjoying it, and then made the grievous error of putting it down for two or three weeks while life happened. When I came back to the book, I was utterly lost figuring out who was whom again and just gave up. Never got back to it. I would like to, one day, but I gotta read it in an uninterrupted short span of time.
The very idea of Great Literature (or Great Music, or Classic Art, or Fine Cuisine and Drink) that people only dislike because they’re uncultured and haven’t made the enormous effort required to appreciate it, makes me hurl. 
The progression for me on truly excellent things tends to the following pattern:
“Hey, this is pretty good.”
“Wow, it’s great stuff.”
To update my own post: I’ve given up on LOTR. I finished about 2/3 of the first book, and I realized I had no idea where they were, no idea who the characters were, and no idea what was going on.
that is one of the best reviews of moby dick that i have read.
You know, this reminds me of the moms who are all “my little Ermintrude age 8, just finished her geometry homework, her Science Fair Project on cold fusion and just read The House of Mirth, which she just flew through” and all I can think is: but how much of it did she get? Does she understand that poor Lily was doomed from the start, and why? Wouldn’t she enjoy, say, Walk When the Moon is Full by Frances Hamerstrom more?
I read lots of books when I was young that I probably didn’t fully ‘get’. But I think they still had value. They exposed me to a large vocabulary, showed me that literature is vast and varied, and sometimes those stories stuck with me so I could learn to appreciate them more as I grew older (“oh, THAT’S what was going on in that story”).
I don’t have a problem with people reading above their age level, but let’s not pretend little Ermintrude - or little Aethelstan - is going to understand that the idle rich destroy everyone around them - including Nick - in The Great Gatsby or why no one in the book is a good role model. They’ll read a story about rich people having affairs and a rich guy who throws great parties and dies and gosh, isn’t Gatsby’s love for Daisy romantic?
I will tell you what Ermintrude will notice, though: the majority of “great literature” is by white men about white men.
She might not notice that. I doubt I did when I was young and reading above my grade level. On the other hand, it wasn’t something anyone noticed back then.
I wonder how many people in high school read Romeo & Juliet and think it is a romance or, at worst, a light romantic tragedy.
The story is nothing more than teenage infatuation run amok. It takes place over the course of about five days(?) and six(?) people die due to a very new love affair. The whole thing is a colossal disaster but I am not sure most people in high school get that and somehow think the takeaway is star-crossed lovers and everyone else just didn’t get them.
I’m curious. What is your take on Lolita?
I think it is a great book.
I doubt I would have a high school class read it. Mostly because parents would probably have me fired.
Save it for a college class.
To be clear, I am not belittling the story. Far from it. I think it was part of Shakespeare’s genius that he wrote a romantic tragedy that somehow doesn’t come across as the disaster it is without thinking about it a bit.
And that it is regarded as one of the Bard’s best while being a “5 Minute Fix” play, ie a play that wouldn’t have happened at all if any of the characters had stopped for 5 minutes. Romeo never would have gone to the party, or would never have encountered Tybalt on the street, or Paris at the tomb, or offed himself before Julie woke up, or…
Dropping that little fact on high school freshman is a hoot. Changes their whole approach to the play.
Isn’t this the basis of pretty much every story ever told? The characters have to do X at Y in order for Z to happen?
The Universe is a series of random moments strung together. Free choice is an illusion. We have no control over our destiny. And so on and so on.
I doubt if Ahab and the Pequod had sailed 5 minutes later it would have had any impact on the action.
If they had left five minutes late, there would be no story. Or at least, not the one told.
Even if leaving late was a conscious decision, that doesn’t mean they had control over their fate. There are far too many random factors that would have influenced it. The future cannot be predicted with any reasonable degree of accuracy.
It is true that many things are a momentary occurrence of a few things at a given moment. Most accidents are like that. My in-laws had a family tragedy (car accident) and it occurred to me had they left 10 seconds earlier or later it probably would not have happened.
The Pequod, however, probably could have left a week later and had the same results. Ahab was hunting his white whale. He was looking for the trouble he found.
Entirely possible, but there’s no guarantee he would have cornered the whale even then. Even if you go looking for something you can’t be sure of finding it.
I’ve long thought that several of Shakespeare’s plays, including Romeo & Juliet, have Idiot Plots. Which doesn’t necessarily make them bad or unrealistic—I’m sure it often happens in real life that people act irrationally under the influence of strong emotions, with tragic results—but I’ve found it hard to empathize with characters who were being so damn dumb.