Never a fan of Tess, but Far from the Madding Crowd and The Mayor of Casterbridge are both probably on my top 10/20 of all time. So if this guy is right, then bring on the pillows.
No use for Joyce, tho.
“Like so much modern prose, this demands to be read quickly, with just enough attention to register the bold use of words. Slow down, and things fall apart.” I for one really like this article - that right there put into words exactly what I’ve often thought about that particular style of prose, although I do like Annie Proulx. (Just can’t think too much about the words.)
Jude the Obscure made me want to slit my wrists. Tess made me want to slit someone else’s wrists. I tried to read Far From the Madding Crowd but couldn’t get into it. Maybe I’ll try it again, I think I’ve still got it lying around somewhere. I don’t think I’ve read any of Hardy’s poetry.
As far as some other classics go, I love Austen, can’t get into Dickens, like Charlotte but not Emily (I do sometimes enjoy re-reading Wuthering Heights but I have to be in the right frame of mind or I drown in the Atmosphere) and haven’t read Anne, didn’t like War and Peace, wanted to slap Madame Bovary, can’t get into Moby Dick, Jules Verne freaking rocks, and the TB patients on The Magic Mountain needed to die more quickly so the damn book would end.
I had to read several Hardy novels in high school (Native, Tess, Jude, and Mayor, IIRC) and would quite happily never read another. I much prefer his poetry to his prose.
I abandoned Ulysses after making the mistake of reading a scholarly edition with 27 endnotes (not even footnotes!) per page. I practically wore through the spine getting through the first 20 pages and gave up. I may try again with an unbenoted version - I don’t really care which obscure bit of the Odyssey/even more obscure Oscar Wilde text/ever more obscurerer early Joyce work is being alluded to, I just want to read the damn book.
Yes, I think 19th century English fiction makes different demands on the reader than does late 20th century or 21st century fiction: the sentences are longer, the vocabulary is more formal. (On the other hand, a 19th century reader thrown some fiction from this period might have trouble with it, and not just because of the unfamiliar slang.) But authors like Austen, Dickens and Hardy were all writing for a broad audience, and all trying to write in a transparent fashion, so they shouldn’t be that hard to read today. Of course, with Austen you have to carefully keep track of who has the money and who is eligible to marry whom; and Hardy’s greater novels like Tess and Jude can be very depressing; but I wonder about anyone finding Dickens that hard to read.
I was supposed to read Tess in high school, but just couldn’t get through it. Eventually I rented the film version (the Nastassja Kinski version) just to get through the test.
And Moby Dick was a long slog. I seem to remember a long chapter that was entirely about a rope.
And after I read and enjoyed an abridged version of Robinson Crusoe, I tried to read the unabridged one, but almost died of boredom.
Dickens was far more accessible. I remember that A Tale of Two Cities was generally liked. (It had the advantage of being bloody. But no one needed to tell us that he was being paid by the word.)
I guess this would be the appropriate thread in which to mention that while in grade school I read Moby Dick 2-3 times for the sole reason that it was the longest book in the school’s library.
Then did not re-read it for 12 years or so until I brought it with me to read on my honeymoon.
I read *The Return of the Native *and *Crime and Punishment * in high school. They weren’t bad. But I hated Heart of Darkness.
I was supposed to read The Return of the Native in high school. It was dreadful. That is the only assigned book I have never completed. Eating a pillow is a pretty good description.
I mean, I read Silas Marner, for heaven’s sake, I can slog through an assignment when needed. But Hardy was dreadful. All that slogging across the red, red soil of the heath. Blah.
Somebody shoot me now because I remembered that much.
I loved Middlemarch! I even kept a section of a notebook to record all the passages that struck me as insightful and beautiful (that George Eliot…a very shrewd observer of human nature). That said, Eliot’s Mill on the Floss gave me trouble when I had to read it in high school, and Silas Marner didn’t hold my interest past page 10. Middlemarch was great, though. 
(Weelllll…except for one particular character I wished we could have seen flayed and roasted alive, described in the fullest detail conceivable, and whose parts I ended up skipping entirely in the interest of maintaining my blood pressure. But that’s no reflection on the quality of the writing.)
A summary of Ethan Frome sounds like it was custom written just for me and my tastes, but I just…couldn’t…do it. So I watched the movie with Liam Neeson and that was hard going, too – but at least it had Liam Neeson, so the evening was not a complete loss.
Am I the only one who liked Ulysses? I read it a few years ago and I’m intending to read it again once I finish what I’m currently reading.
At least Ethan Frome is short, though very boring, and it doesn’t help that the main character is boring and unlikeable. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man suffers from that fate as well, on top of being written by James Joyce. I couldn’t get through 5 pages, and I don’t know how anyone could enjoy that dreck.
It’s my favorite book of all time.
I read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in college and thought it was OK; I was very interested in British imperialism at the time, and appreciated the similarities to Apocalypse Now. My book club read - or tried to read - Lord Jim a few years ago, and it was a very tough slog.
I read Conrad’s A Turn of the Screw in college, too, and thought it was pretty plodding for a ghost story, although there were moments of mild fright… more like disquiet, I suppose. My book club read his novella The Beast in the Jungle just this month and most of us - myself included - found it meh.
The Great Gatsby was all the F. Scott Fitzgerald I ever wanted to read. I’ve read no complete Dickens story other than A Christmas Carol, and doubt I ever will.
I read Austen’s Pride and Prejudice earlier this year and liked it very much, but since everyone tells me it’s her best book, I’m not champing at the bit to read any of the others. Maybe someday.
Never tackled Moby Dick or Ulysses, other than brief excerpts; I know I should, but suspect I’ll hate 'em.
I’m willing to be educated, but I don’t understand why Charles Dickens is such a genius. He was paid by the word, and you can tell. I had to read Great Expectations in high school, and it wasn’t exciting, and if it was deep, I missed it.
Heh heh heh. The Onion: Film adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov ends where most people stop reading the book.
Henry James, no?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything on this message board I agreed with more. I’d rather eat a pillow even if the cat had pissed on it.
Ha–I was supposed to read it in high school and again in college, but neither time could I get through it! Still have a copy on my shelf 10 years later; still haven’t read it.
I forced my way through Conrad’s Heart of Darkness because it was a classic. I read each and every word, in sequence, from beginning to end, but they made no sense to me. I just didn’t get it. To this day I can’t tell you what it’s about.
OTOH, I loved A Tale of Two Cities and Crime and Punishment.
I was never a fan of Hardy. I love Dickens with a passion, consumed most of his novels when I was young, as I did those of his predecessors, Henry Fielding (Tom Jones), Tobias Smollett (Roderick Random, Humphrey Clinker) and Laurence Sterne (Tristram Shandy).
Thackeray I could always take or leave. As to George Eliot, Middlemarch was fantastic, as were Silas Marner and The Mill on the Floss, though Daniel Deronda didn’t work for me.
Who else? Jane Austen. Enjoyable, but Emma and Pride and Prejudice were enough, I never sought out the others. Oh and Samuel Richardson. I actually got about a third of the way through Clarissa Harlowe, supposedly the longest novel in the English language. I loved the character of Lovelace and the epistolary convention didn’t deter me (Humphrey Clinker and Les Liaisons Dangereuses used the same form) but life must have intervened, I guess, I never did finish it, although I remember some really powerful moments. I’ll have to give it another go one day.
Nearly forgot the Russians. War and Peace was a wonderful read, as was Crime and Punishment. Never made it to the end of The Brothers Karamazov, I can’t remember why.