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Literature you wanted/were supposed to like, but just couldn't - Page 2

post #16 of 249
3/10/09 at 12:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by holymadness View Post
This. Got through twenty pages of Remembrance of Things Past before giving up. If I want 40 hours of rambling by a navel-gazing hypochondriac, I'll volunteer at an old folks home.

However, some of these other answers make me .

It's not like the opinion of people who don't like Proust matters in the least...
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post #17 of 249
3/10/09 at 12:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuuma View Post
It's not like the opinion of people who don't like Proust matters in the least...
My Proust-loving friends tell me they found it impossible to enjoy until they hit their forties, so it seems to me that there is something inherently geriatric about the whole enterprise. If you can assure me that the narrator gets out of bed at least once in Swann's Way, I may give it another try, but I expect it'll work better as a sleeping aid than as riveting literature.

Dostoevsky and Fitzgerald, on the other hand, are at the apotheosis of human literary achievement.
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post #18 of 249
3/10/09 at 12:50pm
I tried to read Proust to impress a girl, actually an "older woman." We broke up.
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post #19 of 249
3/10/09 at 12:57pm
+ 2 on Ulysses. Philip Roth, as well.
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post #20 of 249
3/10/09 at 12:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bullethead View Post
+ 2 on Ulysses. Philip Roth, as well.

Roth is one of my favorites.
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post #21 of 249
3/10/09 at 1:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by holymadness View Post
My Proust-loving friends tell me they found it impossible to enjoy until they hit their forties, so it seems to me that there is something inherently geriatric about the whole enterprise. If you can assure me that the narrator gets out of bed at least once in Swann's Way, I may give it another try, but I expect it'll work better as a sleeping aid than as riveting literature.

Dostoevsky and Fitzgerald, on the other hand, are at the apotheosis of human literary achievement.

I had a cheap antithesis/apotheosis joke at the ready but will leave it in the quiver to say that my exposure to Dostoevsky and Fitzgerald were based on those two books - their two most popular. Maybe I'm not sympathetic to the story or the characters, and have to be more careful to distance myself, and that could be part of our differences. FWIW, I'll take Hemingway and Nabokov over Fitzgerald and Dostoyevsky any day of the week.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Manton View Post
I tried to read Proust to impress a girl, actually an "older woman." We broke up.

I respect this. A lot.
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post #22 of 249
3/10/09 at 1:03pm
This is my first experience with people who didn't like Gatsby. I can't say I understand this heretofore unknown species.
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post #23 of 249
3/10/09 at 1:11pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by iammatt View Post
This is my first experience with people who didn't like Gatsby. I can't say I understand this heretofore unknown species.

Surely you've met people who didn't like Gatsby - they just didn't admit to it. I think that Gatsby, like Moby Dick, was made compulsory reading because no one would seek it out on their own.

Just MHO.

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post #24 of 249
3/10/09 at 1:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas View Post
Surely you've met people who didn't like Gatsby - they just didn't admit to it. I think that Gatsby, like Moby Dick, was made compulsory reading because no one would seek it out on their own.

Just MHO.


I like Gatsby and found it infinitely more interesting than Moby Dick.
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post #25 of 249
3/10/09 at 1:13pm
Moby Dick is awesome. My favorite novel.
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post #26 of 249
3/10/09 at 1:13pm
I despise Dickens. Tolkien too. I hate to admit it, but I really have to force myself through Hemingway - though I Still respect him.
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post #27 of 249
3/10/09 at 1:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Manton View Post
Moby Dick is awesome. My favorite novel.

As I told you before I tried reading twice (or three times, not sure) and I never made it to the ship leaving port. Uhhghgh!
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post #28 of 249
3/10/09 at 1:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Magician View Post
(...)
I hate to admit it, but I really have to force myself through Hemingway - though I Still respect him.

I hate his safari books but love the rest of them, particularly the Bullfighting books.
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post #29 of 249
3/10/09 at 1:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas View Post
I hate his safari books but love the rest of them, particularly the Bullfighting books.
I've started and stopped For Whom the Bell Tolls more times than a 92 Geo on a cross country drive.
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post #30 of 249
3/10/09 at 1:24pm
Haruki Murakami Ryu Murakami Philip Roth
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