Which Of The Great Authors Can't You Read?

Joyce.

Eli, give Faulkner's A Rose for Emily a try. GREAT short-story.

Um ... there are a few other "masters" that I was forced to read in college, and couldn't stomach. My brain is dead... I'll recall at a later date.

My one experience with Dickens, apart from far too many A Christmas Carol productions, was so horrendous, that I haven't been able to read another thing by the man. I haven't written him off yet, but DAMN! Little Dorrit was painful!

Joyce is crazy, I like him but it's a chore to get me to read one of his books.

Joyce is an absolute chore, especially when he apparently lost his mind (aka Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake).

Dostoyevski was pretty hard going for me, as was Thomas Hardy.

Reading Dickens is like getting a flouride treatment at the dentist's office. But instead of sickly-sweet mint rinse, one's palate is immersed in oozing sentimental mush.

Conrad is, for the most part, a fucking bore(a Dutchman, go figure).

I tried reading the unabridged version of Don Quixote, and *damn* it was painful: It goes on for pages and pages about different aspects of chivalry. The style probably mocks some of Cervantes contemporaries, but never having read those, it wasn't much fun.

JRR Tolkien.

I started to read The Hobbit on two separate occasions and both times lost interest halfway through. It wasn't a difficult read, I just lost interest.

Then I went and saw the Lord Of The Rings movie, and absolutely fucking loved it, still do. I was suddenly on a Middle Earth high and bought the Lord Of The Rings book immediately. I dived right into it.

For a while I was loving it, as speeches that I remembered in the film would appear in the book. The meaty backstory in the songs and legends was fascinating. Then all the long descriptive passages suddenly became repetitive and tedious. Every irrelevent bend in the river, every sun-drenched leaf on every tree was described in mind-numbing detail. A good writer can strike a balance between describing things and leaving a certain amount to the reader's imagination. That's how pictures really stick in your head.

Tolkien cannot do this. He's a poor writer. I admire the scope and meticulousness of his vision, but it doesn't make for pleasant reading. I can read Dickens and other great authors no problem. I find the LOTR mythology fascinating, and visit the Encyclopedia of Arda website a lot, but the book is boring as fuck. I still can't wait for the next two movies. It's a testament to Peter Jackson as a filmmaker that he can assemble an exciting movie out of such source material.

Meanwhile, back in the Hall of Justice...

Melville can be a bit of a chore.

You guys are going to think me crazy, but I have yet to read Huck Finn. I've tried. I've read Tom Sawyer, loved it, and some of his short story pieces, but I just can't get into the book.

And I have a real problem with Dickens.

Tried Hugo a couple of times. Liked it a lot, just didn't have the time to get into it.

Hardy isn't that big of a deal, but to read these guys is so exhausting that it requires more energy than I have at one time.

Ernest Hemingway.

I know I SHOULD love his writing. I know that it speaks to me on some level. I know he wrote lots of crap. I know he also wrote at least 3 of the greatest works of literature ever.

I know that trying to wade through A Farewell to Arms was one of the most painful and tedious reading experiences of my life. I thought The Sun Also Rises might be more to my taste. Nope. I finally tried The Old Man and the Sea. I finished the damn thing, at least. That's about th eonly positive thing I can say about it.

I agree completely on Hemingway and Conrad. I should like both, but I just can't.

Also, I was perfectly willing to write off Salinger after Catcher in the Rye, but I just finished Franny and Zooey and absolutely loved it. I don't get the hype on Catcher at all, but I'm definitely gonna be hitting his catalog hard now.

Joyce is a bitch and half to read, but it's so damn impressive. Faulkner, too, at times.

Yea unfortunately I can't get into Tolkien. His style just drags me. I got like 100 pages into it but that was bout that. It was almost easier reading Le Motre D'Arthur!

There's none that I can't read, but there are thoes I don't enjoy. Hawthorne is terribly dull and I, too am not a fan of Pynchon.

Adolus Huxley (spelling on the name?). I just couldn't get through Brave New World as much as I'd liked to...

Thomas Hardy. Tess of the D'Urbervilles was excruciatingly tough to finish, but I did...

Hawthorne.

Hardy, to a lesser degree.
Have you read his poetry? I enjoyed that far more than his novels.

YES. Fucking A.

JD Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" is cool.
Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find"
Edward Albee's "The Zoo Story"
Messed up stories that are good to read.

I sometimes find it hard to read Hemingway because of his sometimes dry style. Sometimes.

For me it's definitely Hemingway. I admit that he's a great writer, but one that I definitely do not find interesting. I once had to do a paper on him (by my own choosing, idiotically) and it was a complete chore.

I have a hard time getting into Turgenev and always have.

Faulkner's another one.

Kerouak ain't my bag.

It's tough seeing all the dislike for Hemingway. Mariel, I'd understand. But Ernest! Boy howdy, that guy could pen a story.

Non-believers should really check out his following short stories (if you haven't already done so):

"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"
"Hills Like White Elephants"
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"

Amazing work.

The Hemingway hate is freaky. I'm with KM, read Hills Like White Elephants.

Hemingway is boss.

Actually, come to think of it, I do like some of his short stories, but the two or three novels I read by him bore the hell out of me.

ah c'mon, one of the greatest books of our time: Gravity's Rainbow.

I enjoyed the hell out of Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 (on the second reading, at least - the first left me a little unimpressed, actually).

Tried Mason and Dixon and, while the writing was interesting and some bits were really funny, I just gave up after two-thirds, when I realized it wasn't really going anywhere. I imagine this is somewhat the case with Gravity's Rainbow, as well?

I've become more plot-oriented in my old age.

For my French baccalaureate, I had to read Jean Jacques Rousseau's "Confessions". I never struggled so hard to complete a reading, and the worst thing is this: I only had to read through books 1 to 4.

I actually quit the first time around page 70. Put it back in the shelf, and didn't pick it up for about a month. Then picked it up again, and was amazed something was beginning to happen on page 90. But I made someone a promise to read it.

I finished Gravity's Rainbow. Months later when I was broke I went and sold that and some other books to a used book store. I was very hungry so I stopped and bought a burrito. It was more satisfying than Gravity's Rainbow.

I don't exactly dislike Tolkien's writing, and really enjoy some of it, but the description has foiled my attempts to read the LOTR trilogy multiple times. I'm still working at it, though.

I just read Catcher in the Rye for the first time today (I was stuck in an empty room for six hours with a copy) and I really don't get it. Well, technically, I haven't finished it yet, with an eighth or less of the book left, but I've pretty much found the body of it to be excruciatingly boring.

(Edited about six times because it's becoming more and more apparent that I'm speaking prematurely on Catcher)

I enjoy Dickens and Twain -- the Stephen Kings of their respective countries at the time.

Hawthorne is hard, hard going.

I like Hemingway - "A Farewell To Arms" but so far that's the only thing I like.

Bizarrely enough, "Tender Is The Night" bored the shit out of me. As did "A Catcher In The Rye".

And I am indifferent to Hardy generally, but cannot bear his poetry.

As for Tolkien, I like the bends in the river and leaves on the trees, but I can see how it would get other people down.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Tried reading both "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love In The Time Of Cholera" but just could not get comfortable with either. The same problem I had with Tolkien's Silmarillion last year. I think eventually I'll be in the right frame of mind to appreciate them...but not now.

I also gave up on "Love In The Time Of Cholera".

It's about a girl, right?

"Tender is the Night" is such a beautifully written book. And really sad, from what I remember. So is "Catcher" for that matter. Not knocking your taste, just wanted to show my support for those books.

Catcher in the Rye is boring?

Do you find sex boring too? How about a tornado?

I don't know if I'd call it boring. I think it's vastly overappreciated, and I wonder if it has something to do with when one first reads it.

This may not be true in all cases, but it seems a lot of readers latch on to Holden as some sort of rebellious figure they can relate to, perhaps since they first read the book as teens.

I was already 27 when I read Catcher, so the teen angst was familiar, yet not very relatable. The character is so annoyingly self-absorbed that it borders on parody for me. Actually, I'm thinking Salinger had to be going for parody, since Holden's thoughts on life are so unoriginal, yet SOOO exaggerated that it has to be intentional. But I still just wanted to smack the kid, not relate to him.

Given the other stuff I'm reading by Salinger now, it's clear the guy has an incredible knack for drawing complex and interesting characters, which is why I think Catcher had to be some sort of experiment in satire.

It's one of those books where authorial intent (or perceived authorial intent, at least) means everything as far as how it can be appreciated.

If I go into it again sometime expecting satire, maybe I'll dig it more. It might be that my problems lie more with how it's been interpreted than with how it's written. False advertising and such.

It's not satire. Not at all.

Hmm... You don't think Salinger is sort of making fun of Holden just a little?

Not really. He's certainly not doing it to the degree where it could be called satire.

That's very interesting, because I didn't get around to reading it until I was about 25, and I definitely got the idea that it was something I would have dug a lot more if I'd been younger when I read it.

I had exactly the problems you describe. The guy was utterly self-absorbed, repetitive, and while there was the occasional acute observation, he was just a tedious companion for my reading hours. The Internet is full of Holden Caulfields, it was like being trapped in a chatroom with them.

And Kevin - no offense taken. I thought it was beautifully written too. But possibly I expected too much, because I was expecting "Tender Is The Night" to really leap up and grab me, and it didn't. That surprised.

I think you can also be too young to read stuff. I read "Pride and Prejudice" at 13 and couldn't be arsed with it - everything but the broadest jokes were lost on me. But by the time I was 18 I was mainlining Jane Austen.

My favourite of hers is "Persuasion", by the way. "Persuasion" rocks the house.

Take away self-absorbed first person narrators and you're gonna lose a lot of great literature.

I agree, but I also think there's usually an extent to which the author is poking fun at them.

Lolita is a perfect example. Nabokov has the good sense to make Humbert not only self-absorbed, but fascinating, original, brilliant, and sympathetic through his prose - it's only when you take yourself out of the book for a moment that you realize what a sick bastard he is. His self-absorption is definitely played for laughs if you look outside of his point-of-view; you realize you've started rationalizing along with him!

I find Holden significantly less original and even less sympathetic (which is odd, considering Humbert's a certified pedophile and Holden's just a wank). I think he almost has to be taken like Humbert, though, where Holden's narration tells you one thing, but an objective viewing of the events and Holden's personality tells you another. Mainly, that Holden is a wank (although I think Salinger does recognize the wank in most of us at that age, so it's not a real harsh criticism).

By the way, I love this line:

"The Internet is full of Holden Caulfields, it was like being trapped in a chatroom with them."

Practically signature-worthy.

But none of that is "satire."

Thanks, guy! That's the second time someone's said something like that in a month.

I must be in my stride.

"satire - an artistic work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit."

How exactly is my interpretation of Catcher in the Rye not "satire?"

Holden is overplayed to the point of being ridiculous, thus Salinger is "attack"ing the "folly" of youthful self-importance.

I'm not asking you to share the interpretation, but I'd say the interpretation falls VERY clearly into the realm of satire.

Holden is hardly ridiculous. The kid bleeds; he's very real.

But if you think Salinger's intention is to attack Holden and his "youthful self-importance," then it's not a surprise to me that you didn't like the book. You missed the whole thing.

Actually, Holden is somewhat ridiculous. And is designed to be. The ending has him caving under the weight of conformity - something that he was so hyper-aware of throughout the entire book. It's as much of an indictment of society as it is of the individual, I'd say.

Anyway, Dave - if you give the book another chance, I'd say not to read it as a satire. You may have been turned off my Holden's self-absorption, but it pretty much stems from what life has dealt him (his young brother's death, for example). He is horrified by life, by what has transpired and by what is ahead of him. Although it's full of a lot of humor, it is a very sad book.

Where did you get the notion that he's "designed" to be ridiculous?