Yeah, the Scarlet Letter truly is awful. It’s just that none of it works; I never developed any sympathy for either Esther or Dimmesdale. However, that’s not what made the book awful; the metaphors were absolutely disgusting. Honest to god, if I ever find myself teaching a ninth grade english class, I’ll give them Scarlet Letter as a how-to guide on the use of metaphor. Never have I seen any author actually come out and state when something was a metaphor for something else. I remember being about halfway through it, and reading the bit on how a comet falls in the night sky and looks surprisingly a lot like the letter “A” and truly questioning whether or not I cared about my grade enough to finish the book. Bleh.
Oh yes! We had to read The Spire at school. I didn’t. I gave up and pretended to turn the pages, then invented my essays on it. Appalling grades, but it was worth it!
And the one DH Lawrence book I hate more than Sons and Lovers and that’s The Rainbow. Can anyone tell me what this book is meant to be about? Or better still, let’s just tear it up and use it as hamster bedding.
Darn!, I though this was a movie thread. So I guess I won’t say ’ On the Waterfront".
Thanks for the tip! I’ll give it a shot. He’s one of those authors I’ve tried hard to like just because so many people kept recommending him to me and I keep wondering what I’m missing. 
I’ll add my voice to the chorus against Gatsby. Also, I didn’t particularly enjoy Catcher in the Rye I didn’t hate either book, but I just can’t understand why they are considered “classics.” They left me indifferent. I desteted David Copperfield by Dickens, but I have to say A Tale of Two Cities wasn’t bad.
Check this thread" for my first response to that question. I found The Scarlet Letter to be boring as Hell, and don’t even get me started on The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
I did like Catcher in the Rye, though, and Moby Dick isn’t so bad once you figure out that you can safely skip every other chapter.
I’m with ya on both of those. I wanted to beat the shit out of Holden Caufield, and Pip.
WRT Animal Farm, I loved it, but even if you don’t at least its written in plain English, and is short.
I loved Tale of Two Cities! I hated, hated, hated *Scarlett Letter, The Sound and the Fury, Great Expectations, *and anything by Faulkener, Hemingway or Steinbeck. I loved anything by Dumas, or Austen. I loved Don Quixote, Jane Eyre, Gone with the Wind (I know the problems with that book and I don’t care). I hated Wuthering Heights passionately.
Darn it, I always preview, but didn’t this time and screwed up my code. That’s what I get for working on this while on the phone with a customer.
I could be worse. What if you had screwed up the customer’s code? He would have had to walk around all slanty until a moderator got around to fixing him.
I hate Dickens. Well, not all of his books. I did like A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol, but the rest? Bleh. I even have a really nice copy of David Copperfield waiting to be read, but I just can’t. (at least it looks pretty on my bookshelf) I don’t like the man’s writing style in the least. I don’t like the feeling of drowning in type.
This isn’t exactly a classic, but my 10th grade English teacher was going on about it being a “new American classic” when we read it: Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. Ugh. Double ugh. I hated the setting, hated the characters, hated the whole book. This is the only book that I would have gladly burned.
jessica
I think a great many of us hated specific “classics” because we were introduced to them as teenagers (or younger) and simply put, we were (are) not prepared for many of their levels (in this way I think classics of music and lit are similar).
I tried to read the Brothers K when I was young and then again when I was older and it sure improved as I aged. The same happened with Heart of Darkness. I think for those two and many others the abstractness of their themes presented in concrete frameworks was extremely illusive as least to me when I was young but not the case when I was older.
As for books like the Scarlet Letter, Silas Marner and most of Dickens’ works, we have to remember, for all practical purposes, they were the soap operas of their day. And when you read them with that thought in mind they can be extremely entertaining.
The Pearl, however…now that is painful. How could the man who created Cannery Row, Travels with Charlie and the Grapes of Wrath have produced the Pearl?
Daisy Miller: Check. Hideous.
A Separate Peace: Check. Characters whose motivations made no sense to me.
But the winner is: Great Expectations. Words. More words. Great, indigestible chunks of…words. And more words. And more words. If ever a book needed a laxative, this one is it.
Never liked Hemmingway until I read “In Our Time”, which is more a collection of short stories, but some of them do have a continuous narrative running through them. It is my reccomendation for anyone who has been unable to get into Hemmingway, but would still like to.
Faulkner: Read “Go Down, Moses” as part of a class, with much discussion. I liked it in that setting, but I can see where it might be hard to enjoy if reading it on one’s own.
I don’t remember “The Scarlet Letter” as being as painful as G.E., but maybe I’m blocking it out.
**
I would echo the recommendation for Faulkner. He is infinitely easier to get into if you can find some of his short stories.
The Sound and the Fury? I shudder at the memory of trying to read that.
It makes you wonder what the definition of a classic is. Often it was something that once seemed “new”–Ulysses–or courageous for the time–“To Kill a Mockingbird.” (Do teachers seriously assign “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” as literature?).
Sometimes they want students to read a book by a big name writer & choose a shorter one–The Old Man and the Sea. I’m pretty sure I read it, but didn’t think much of it, even though I liked Hemingway.
George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” is one of my favorite books but I’ve never even picked up “Silas Marner”. (Scared away by someone who told me it was awful about 30 yrs. ago. Maybe it’s time to try it.)
I think students are expected to identify with the protagonists in many of these books–“Catcher In the Rye,” “Huckleberry Finn,” “Great Expectations,” “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Which shows how out of touch the teachers are. I feel “Catcher In the Rye” & “To Kill a Mockingbird” are OK, but I don’t see what makes them great.
I reread “Huckleberry Finn” recently when I heard about criticisms that it was racist. Not so much racist–aside from the dreaded n-word–but assuming it’s supposed to be about blacks, the only insight into the life of black Americans of the time is how whites felt about them, not about what it was like from the black perspective. Otherwise it’s OK, but fairly silly. Twain’s shorter stuff is much better.
I like everything I’ve read by Conrad, including “Heart of Darkness,” even though a lot of it seems pretty dated. I liked “Bartleby” but thought I had to read every chapter of “Moby Dick”, so I hated it.
“Wuthering Heights” used to be one of my favorites.
I’ve always liked Dickens, in fact I reread Great Expectations recently after seeing the movie. But it’s true he was paid by the word. I understand it’s considered a classic because it goes against the conventions of the genre. (Like students with minimal background are going to grasp that.)
Then are authors that I can’t stand like D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, Henry James. “The Turn of the Screw” is the only James I ever was able to finish, and it’s the last time I’ll even try to read him.
For awhile, some people seemed to think Kurt Vonnegut was great, but thankfully that seems to have past. (“And so it goes.”)
My nominations:
“Jude the Obscure” and “Under the Volcano”. The similarity is the self-pity. Dunno, maybe teenagers would like 'em.
BUT I have my reservations about lists like this. We should really be recommending things instead of scaring each other away.
Great Expectations considered a classic because it goes against the conventions of the genre? Oh, I see, the conventions of the genre must be to write a book that doesn’t SUCK!
I would have to agree that Mockingbird isn’t very good. A bit simpistic in my view.
BTW hopefully the OP and everyone else agreeing do not live in Chicago. I just heard on the radio here in England that there are trying to make the whole town read that one.
My personal worst was Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s
Aurora Lee. Pseudo-poetic deep& meaningful nonsense, IMHO.
Good deal, two Hemingway suggestions! Thanks! I’ll second, btw, the suggestion that whoever hated Faulkner’s novel-length works try his short stories – I don’t really care for his longer stuff but “A Rose for Emily” is one of my favorite short stories.
I’ve noticed two things that consistently beat me back from some of the books that made this list: (1) some 19th century writing in the fullness of its “if it’s verbose, it’s got to be good [paying]” stage (some Dickens works hit me like that) and (2) not being able to get everything out of the story because of a lack of either personal experience or general knowledge that prevents me from really understanding what is going on.
For example: while I love TKaM, I readily admit that that could be because my parents are Southern, and being a Navy brat, the ‘home towns’ I have to identify with are the little hole-in-the-wall places where my relatives lived. To me, Lee did a great job at giving a sense of place and in characterization; I can read it and almost smell the honeysuckle on my great-grandmother’s porch again. But, if I didn’t have that to draw on, I don’t know how I’d like the book. On a slightly different note, I hated, loathed and despised The Scarlet Letter when first forced to read it. Composting was too good for my copy. Then I went on a kick some years later and started really reading up on the history and politics of the times, and ended up re-reading it. It didn’t make Hawthorne’s prose style any easier to plow through, but it did bring to light nuances and symbolism that I’d overlooked before.
Does anyone else think it’s ironic that some writers were considered the next thing to hacks in their time, but they’re considered classics in our time? If memory serves, Melville’s works scandalized people for their descriptions of the Polynesian women, and while people actually waited on piers to get the next installment of some of Dickens’ works, he was also derided as a muckraker in some circles. Makes you wonder what will be considered classic from our time a century from now, huh?
BTW, didn’t intend to hijack – please go on with the regularly scheduled classic jumping.
Oh god, the Left Behind books could become classics?
MOMMY!!!
Geezusgoozlypleazums, NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!