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

[MetroStyles]

Originally Posted by dkzzzz

+1000000 I cannot stand him.

However I absolutely love the movie based on his book. It does happen that a movie turns out better than a book it is based on. It really does, at least for me.

What exactly don't you like about Kundera? I really like the topics he focuses on, and his writing style is pretty good. Some of his ideas are quite depressing, but that's another point.

 

[dkzzzz]

Originally Posted by MetroStyles

What exactly don't you like about Kundera? I really like the topics he focuses on, and his writing style is pretty good. Some of his ideas are quite depressing, but that's another point.

His writing style in UL of Being is Unbearable. He goes off on a tangent and leaves you hanging there and waiting for him to get over his own giant ego and stop talking about himself. I guess I do not find him interesting as a person and Kundera definitely insists on familiarizing the reader with his persona. That book was like one long and incoherent infomercial about his confusion with life.

 

[MetroStyles]

Originally Posted by dkzzzz

His writing style in UL of Being is Unbearable. He goes off on a tangent and leaves you hanging there and waiting for him to get over his own giant ego and stop talking about himself. I guess I do not find him interesting as a person and Kundera definitely insists on familiarizing the reader with his persona. That book was like one long and incoherent infomercial about his confusion with life.

I really liked his digressions. They were thought-provoking and were not completely separate from his main character's views (which were probably just his own views). I can see how his style is not for everyone.

 

[johnapril]

Deleuze and Guattari are tiresome.

 

[odoreater]

I started reading Ulysses by Joyce once and found it intolerable. Couldn't understand half the **** in there, so I dropped it.

 

[Teacher]

Originally Posted by odoreater

I started reading Ulysses by Joyce once and found it intolerable. Couldn't understand half the **** in there, so I dropped it.

The companion "guides" to Ulysses tend to be several times larger than the work itself. Granted, annotated versions of any work tend to contain a lot of annotations, but not like this.

 

[rach2jlc]

Originally Posted by Teacher

Absolutely. I do have a degree in literature, after all!

Originally Posted by Thomas

I figured you and Rach would be mark-up fiends.
But of course! My "I should like them, but don't, even after reading nearly all their longwinded, boring ****" list: 1. Henry James 2. D. H. Lawrence 3. Thomas Mann 4. Francois Mauriac 5. Paul ValÃ

ry 5. George Eliot, Jane Austen, Gaskell, all the Bronte's, basically all the 19th century Molluskular authors from England. 6. Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray, okay, most Victorian authors, except for the nasty Pornographic ones like Cleland and "Walter." 7. Joseph Heller 8. Norman Mailer 9. John Updike 10. Salinger (read after the age of 20. From 15-19, though, I LOOOOVED it). 11. Kurt Vonnegut, except for Slaughterhouse Five and, maybe, Mother Night (though it's been a long time since I read it, but remembered not going, "meeeeh.") 12. Saul Bellow

 

[Teacher]

Originally Posted by rach2jlc

My "I should like them, but don't, even after reading nearly all their longwinded, boring ****" list:

[. . .] all the Bronte's, basically all the 19th century Molluskular authors from England.

Couldn't agree more.

 

[johnapril]

Originally Posted by Teacher

The companion "guides" to Ulysses tend to be several times larger than the work itself. Granted, annotated versions of any work tend to contain a lot of annotations, but not like this.

No. Ulysses is 783 pages, whereas Gifford is 643, Gilbert 390.

 

[rach2jlc]

Originally Posted by Teacher

Couldn't agree more.
"Oh, but I say, Mr. Pennycoatwhistle, that when Ms. Thristlebonebottom brings her petticoats back with her from proselytizing the heathen savagese from Derby, that the wherewithal to flock to her banner would but bring us a devilishly, ghoulish delight from the heavens!" Pshaw! Give me Hemingway. "He looked at the tree; the tree was there." And Faulkner gets a pass for long, purple prose because he has the best adjectives ever, like describing a girl's hair as "Iowacornsilkcolored." Joyce gets a pass for this, too, because even when he's at his worst, you know he's such a nutty, wildly brilliant mind he somehow manages to make your mind enjoy the puzzle...

 

[Teacher]

Originally Posted by johnapril

No. Ulysses is 783 pages, whereas Gifford is 643, Gilbert 390.

I have no idea which ones they were as I refused to take the semester-long class on Ulysses, but my office mates when I was a GTA had guides that were much longer than the text.

 

[Teacher]

Originally Posted by rach2jlc

"Oh, but I say, Mr. Pennycoatwhistle, that when Ms. Thristlebonebottom brings her petticoats back with her from proselytizing the heathen savagese from Derby, that the wherewithal to flock to her banner would but bring us a devilishly, ghoulish delight from the heavens!"


Stop! You're giving me Merchant/Ivory flashbacks!

 

[johnapril]

Originally Posted by Teacher

I have no idea which ones they were as I refused to take the semester-long class on Ulysses, but my office mates when I was a GTA had guides that were much longer than the text.

Gifford and Gilbert are the standard texts. Maybe you guys had to use both. I had to use both during my third reading of Ulysses. After that, the fourth and fifth readings went more smoothly.

 

[odoreater]

Somebody should just translate that ******* thing into regular english. If you have to read other **** to accompany a book so that you understand it, then, IMO, it's not really that good.

 

[johnapril]

Originally Posted by odoreater

Somebody should just translate that ******* thing into regular english. If you have to read other **** to accompany a book so that you understand it, then, IMO, it's not really that good.

It might help to read a biography about the writer before getting all 2009 on his work. Richard Ellmann wrote a good one.