“Last of the Mohicans!!!” There was no greater pain in high school than “Last of the Mohicans,” until “Heart of Darkness.” (Twain did a great job explaining why Cooper was a terrible writer).
What surprises me is the number of posters who dislike what I think is great. “Huck Finn.” Wow. Really? Okay but surprising.
Steinbeck??? I love “Mice and Men,” and “The Grapes of Wrath,” and just about everything else he wrote. “Sweet Thursday” is really charming.
I know that Dickens is tough sledding but read the scene in “Oliver Twist” when Bill Sykes gets his. Just masterful.
A lot of times great stories need to give a reader from a different era a “way in.” That’s why movies of classic novels from centuries past often work better than the novel as written, for a modern audience.
Finally, I remember reading, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” in college and loving it while being aware that I was lucky I hadn’t come across it in high school. Often a book and a reader have to meet at the right time in the reader’s life for the magic to be appreciated.
I didn’t read Great Expectations until I was in my 30s. I instantly loved it and, reading right through it, quickly realized what a well-made novel it is.
I had to read The Death of Ivan Ilich in 12th grade, and it was depressing in a good way, I loved it. It turned me into a hippie rebel against the conformity of the establishment world. Re-reading it in my late 30s while working, ironically, for a law firm was a bummer.
It took me some time to adjust to the slow rhythm of* My Ántonia*, but I got to liking it more than halfway through. It takes on greater meaning to know that the author put herself into the character of the male narrator and looked at the world of women through his eyes, including a woman he could only admire from afar, to express her hidden longings as a queer woman of the 19th century.
Came in to post exactly this. I must have started to read the *Iliad * at least a dozen times and just couldn’t stay with it.
I hated The Great Gatsby in HS as well, although I understand it now after a reread.
One “classic” I could not bear was Anne of Green Gables…and I was supposed to have read it twice! Once in HS and once at University. I just couldn’t do it so I bullshitted or avoided having to answer or reference anything about it on exams or essays.
And LittleOtt writes: “What surprises me is the number of posters who dislike what I think is great.”
Humanity is endlessly and infinitely variable – the more so, the more “outlier-ish” the individual re a particular aspect of life (which I see as a positive thing – makes the world that much more interesting). There’s sure to be a few people who will hate what most folk love; and a few who will love what most hate. I’d think that I am a heretic in the view of most SDMB participants, in that I detest Terry Pratchett; and – departing a bit from books classic or otherwise – likewise, mostly, Monty Python…
I had the same reaction to Gatsby, but the first time was in college and my re-read was when I was in my early 50s. I liked it much, *much *better the second time 'round.
Really? I mean if you were watching it as a kid, maybe, but as an adult, it should have been obvious why the sled was important. Heck, my daughter understood when she saw it when she was 12.
Rosebud is a McGuffin, of course. But it’s a pretty powerful one, since it’s so much more than just a sled.
No prob - I’ve actually never read East of Eden. I only recently read Grapes of Wrath for the first time, and being aware of the subject matter, I fully expected I would give up along the way. The fact that Steinbeck kept me reading through to the end only added to my admiration for his writing.
But Cannery Row…is beauty. If you like Steinbeck at all, I strongly recommend it. I read it for English class when I was 15 and loved it right away. It’s very short - my copy is about 120 pages - so you’ll like it or not quite quickly. To me, it’s the one indispensable Steinbeck.
I first read Catch-22 at age 15, before I really ‘got’ the darker side of the book, but the absurdist humor of the first 2/3 of the book (up until when McWatt says ‘oh well, what the hell’ for the last time) had pulled me in, and damned if I wasn’t going to finish it. But as an adult, the darkness of the last third of the book is much more understandable than it was to my 15 year old self.
Lord of the Flies was another one that was assigned reading in high school, and though I haven’t read it since, I remember it being a page-turner, and certainly the themes of the book have stayed with me. And man, does it ever seem relevant these days. I should read it again.
Yup. Saying that you hate a classic work of literature isn’t going to lower anybody else’s opinion of said work; at most it may lower their opinion of you. We’ve all got our blind spots and inability to appreciate some particular book/author, which is fine, but it doesn’t really say much about the book/author as opposed to us.
great Gatsby spawned a sub genre of what I call the “less than zero” style after the Easton Ellis book
there’s a amoral group of people that are spoiled over indulgent and privileged possibly criminal and the narrator is a nihilistic participant/observer who makes no real judgements at all
the reader either gets a vicarious thrill from the goings on of either shock and outage wishing they were them or are just left cold ……
I know this may be little bit controversial but I find William Shakespeare boring and tedious to read. I actually enjoy watching his work being performed on stage and film, but just reading his works in a book is a real chore for me.
Oh yeah, same for me. It could even be my contribtion to a thread like “What’s the classic book that you liked much more than expected”.
I found it on flea market one day and thought : “Ok, I’m not that interested but I might as well read it since it’s considered so important (and it was very cheap)”. I loved every chapter of it, from start to finish. I knew it was supposed to be funny but I expected to find a couple of passages polite-chuckle worthy, as is often the case with centuries-old humour. It was freaking hilarious. And the second part, with its interplay with reality, where you don’t know what is true in the book and outside of it anymore, is stunning in its avant-gardeness.
See also: everything by W. Somerset Maugham. I mean, I like Maugham but that’s not a bad description of his oeuvre.
Agreed. Also, I have incited outrage by daring to suggest that The Tempest is two-thirds of a great play and one-third unnecessary filler. The masque in particular was gratuitous fanservice (although when the “fan” in question is the King, the prudent course may well be to provide whatever service will keep him happy).
This assumes that “classic” writing and writers have an immutable reputation, when in fact general opinion and critics’ views can undergo radical alterations over time (Somerset Maugham is among those writers mentioned here).
Another “classic” I found disappointing was Erskine Childers “The Riddle Of The Sands”, which was extremely popular in England before World War I, and is still praised widely in some quarters today as a groundbreaking spy novel. It turned out to be long on mood, very short on action and weighed down by an interminable exposition of what it was like to sail a small yacht through narrow waterways along the Dutch/Frisian coast. I think you’d really have to be an avid weekend sailor to get into it.
I had almost the same experience, also found a four volume edition of Don Quixote at a flea market for almost nothing, expected a tough read given that it’s considered the first “modern” novel, but all in all it was an easy and very amusing read. Sancho Panza is probably the most likable character in a novel I’ve ever encountered. Can’t recommend an English translation though, mine was a classic German translation by Ludwig Tieck.
I’m very much on the same page as you concerning this one. It was “sold” to me as an early spy thriller: for me, spying, yes; thrilling, definitely not. A little interest for me in the early parts, re telling of a couple of obscure corners of the pre-World War I German empire; but when they get to the Dutch / Frisian coast – for me as for you, “boredom city” – I find anything to do with small-boat sailing, very tedious indeed.
One thing a propos The Riddle Of The Sands: the first-person narrator’s companion, the “alpha” guy and man of action out of the two, is called Carruthers. I suspect that this was the origin of the long-standing use of the name Carruthers as a stock comedy stand-by, for British empire-building types and generally stalwart and energetic fighters for Britain and the Empire.
A matter about Erskine Childers which somewhat baffles me: he was a keen British patriot, concerned about the German threat which played a part in the final unleashing of WWI – TROTS being intended as a warning about this stuff, as well as a “ripping yarn”. He was also a keen Irish Nationalist patriot, deeply engaged in activity against Britain, in the interests of winning Irish independence; to the point of being involved first-hand in smuggling guns and ammunition from Germany, for the use of Irish nationalists, should need require such. It would seem very difficult to me, for one person thus to “make the twain meet” – maybe some folk are just very good at compartmentalisation in their lives.
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