A Year's Worth of the Most Celebrated Novels

[Philip Coates]

For a year now, I've been a member of a "Great Books" discussion group. The following are among the world's most famous books and often considered part of the "literary canon". We read one full-length novel every month (very rarely we substitute a slightly shorter work, a play, or non-fiction book).

This is what I have read this past twelve months:

THE METAMORPHOSIS (Franz Kafka)

WINESBURG, OHIO (Sherwood Anderson)

THE SUN ALSO RISES (Ernest Hemingway)

THE DIVINE COMEDY: INFERNO (Dante Alighieri)

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS (Jonathan Swift)

JANE EYRE (Charlotte Bronte)

THE RED AND THE BLACK (Stendhal)

LIGHT IN AUGUST (William Faulkner)

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

KING LEAR (Shakespeare)

I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS (Maya Angelou)

BABBITT (Sinclair Lewis)

For this month, it's THE GRAPES OF WRATH (John Steinbeck). But I'm not finished yet.

Before I explain** what's been really interesting or unexpected about the year (many of these I would never have read if I weren't in this group) and what conclusions I've drawn, I'd like to ask if anyone has read some (or any) of these books -- and which ones you loved**, which ones you hated, and which you never finished and can't draw comprehensive conclusions about.

**If no one responds, I can probably just let the thread die.

Edited March 30, 2011 by Philip Coates

[kiaer.ts]

King Lear is in my top three with Shakespeare, who is by far the best writer of English as English who ever lived. Rand was wrong to malign him. I suspect she did not appreciate the beauty of his language in the original Klingon.

Gulliver's Travels was obvious. This may because it was so successful, and so copied in subsequent fiction. Easy to read, something everyone should do once, like LSD.

Grapes of Wrath I had to read for school as well. Also obvious as all socialist works are obvious. But well written. Certainly better than some of Steinbeck's other novels, which I have read and forgotten.

I haven't read The Inferno for itself, but did read a rather interesting art book adaptation that cost $200 when it was published in the late 80's. It's another story that everyone knows like Homer, through adaptations even if they haven't read the original. Your mentioning it prompts me to add it to my library list.

By Hemingway I have only read one short story in high school. I don't remember trhe title or what it was about. I remember not being lead to want to explore him further.

Do you recommend any of the works, Phil?

Were I in such a club, I would recommend:

The White Plague, Frank Herbert

Watership Down, Richard Adams

Richard II

Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley

Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell

I, Claudius & Claudius the God, Robert Graves

Oh, and I read that work by Kafka, then dropped the class for which I had read it at Rutgers. Tiresome crap.

Edited March 30, 2011 by Ted Keer

[pippi]

Yuck, The Grapes of Wrath

[kiaer.ts]

Yuck, The Grapes of Wrath

Let me quote this gem, before it evaporates.

[pippi]

Yuck, The Grapes of Wrath

Let me quote this gem, before it evaporates.

Please do

[pippi]

The migrant people, scuttling for work, scrabbling to live, looked always for pleasure, dug for pleasure, manufactured pleasure, and they were hungry for amusement.

The Grapes of Wrath

Chapter 23

[kiaer.ts]

The migrant people, scuttling for work, scrabbling to live, looked always for pleasure, dug for pleasure, manufactured pleasure, and they were hungry for amusement.

The Grapes of Wrath

Chapter 23

Yeah, and he sucked her tit too at some point. But you have not explained your complaint nor provided some alternative value, puppy. Or is that pee pee?

[Philip Coates]

> Do you recommend any of the works, Phil?

Yes I -strongly- do, Ted. (I'll write a longer post later.)

[jriggenbach]

THE METAMORPHOSIS (Franz Kafka) - This is not a novel, of course, but a short story. Was the book your group read a collection of Kafka short stories? I first read "The Metamorphosis" in high school. Later, after reading more Kafka, I decided it wasn't the work I'd suggest to anyone who hadn't read Kafka and wanted to find out what he was like. "In the Penal Colony" or The Trial would be better, I think.

WINESBURG, OHIO (Sherwood Anderson) - This blew me away when I read it in high school, but I can no longer remember exactly why, and a couple of attempts to re-read it in the last couple of decades failed; I found myself unable to get interested in it.

THE SUN ALSO RISES (Ernest Hemingway) - I read this in graduate school, in a course on Hemingway and Faulkner. I think it's a good book, well written and all that, but I'd give a newcomer to Hemingway some of the short stories or A Farewell to Arms instead.

THE DIVINE COMEDY: INFERNO (Dante Alighieri) - I've never read it. My prejudice against Christianity has always made it seem unappealing. OTOH, I had the same feeling about Paradise Lost when I was assigned to read it as an undergraduate, but when I read it I was startled to find that it is a magnificent work, well worth reading even if you regard Christianity (and Judaism and all other religions) as a tissue of absurdity and bunkum.

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS (Jonathan Swift) - I read this in junior high school, I think. I've reread portions of it in the years since, most recently back in the late '90s, when I was teaching a course in Fantasy & Science Fiction at an art college in San Francisco. A true classic, though its importance is more historical than artistic.

JANE EYRE (Charlotte Bronte) - I read this and her sister's novel, Wuthering Heights, at around the same time in high school. Though I don't agree with Lord David Cecil that Wuthering Heights is the greatest novel of the Victorian Era, I thought back then and I still think now that it is a better, a more original, and a more artistically impressive work than Jane Eyre.

THE RED AND THE BLACK (Stendhal) - I never have got around to this. I started it once, but had to stop reading it in order to attend to something else and never came back. I saw a European film adaptation that led me to expect that I'd find Stendahl's way of working out his plot less than impressive, but it remains on my reading list, and there is a copy on one of my many bulging bookshelves.

LIGHT IN AUGUST (William Faulkner) - Faulkner is America's greatest novelist and this is one of his three or four greatest novels.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) - I've read a little Marquez, but not this one. What I read neither impressed me nor left me cold. I vaguely intend to read more of his work one day.

KING LEAR (Shakespeare) - If I were leading a group of this kind, I'd choose Hamlet or Macbeth or maybe The Tempest. But King Lear is a fine play, and I agree entirely with Ted's comments above about Shakespeare and Rand's reaction to his work.

I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS (Maya Angelou) - I've never read this. I've read a little of Angelou's poetry. It didn't do much for me. My impression is that she is included in lists like these (along with Toni Morrison) because it is believed that we must have at least one or two "great" writers who are black. I'm not much of a fan of any sort of affirmative action, but I'm inclined to say that if we must have such an policy, we ought to at least pick a black writer who actually is great - say, Samuel R. Delany.

BABBITT (Sinclair Lewis) - I read this in high school. It's not Lewis's best novel, but it'll do.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH (John Steinbeck) Again, I read it in high school. I don't really recall it that well. What little I do recall comes, I suspect, from the movie with Henry Fonda. This book didn't impress me that much, particularly in comparison with the other Steinbeck I read at the same time (and have reread in the years since) - Of Mice and Men (his greatest novel, I think), Tortilla Flats, and some of the short stories - particularly "The Ears of Johnny Bear."

JR

[Philip Coates]

Thanks for the detailed response, Jeff. I'll give some of my reactions a little later...

[Greybird]

I've tried twice to finish reading The Grapes of Wrath, but the naturalism never took hold of me. The film, however, has magnificent acting, especially from Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell. And stellar visual imagery as well. John Ford found it almost impossible to direct a bad movie.

Fonda was cruelly robbed of the Oscar for Best Actor in 1940 by the Academy's make-it-up-to-'em tendency. James Stewart won for being the second male lead in "The Philadelphia Story," and he was brilliant and funny, but not in the same class as Fonda's smoldering, earnest Tom Joad. Yet that award was largely propelled by Stewart's being shut out in 1939, for "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," in lieu of the sentimentality that favored Robert Donat's Mr. Chips.

By the way, I despise the socialist and government-paternalist impulses in "Wrath" and the Lincoln-worship at the core of "Smith," but that doesn't at all diminish their achievements as compelling filmed stories.

[caroljane]

Pippi, I can see how the Steinbeck sentence would put you off reading the book, because of the sense of life it conveys to you.

But just as a sentence, even without its context, it's good.

Edited March 30, 2011 by daunce lynam

[caroljane]

> Do you recommend any of the works, Phil?

Yes I -strongly- do, Ted. (I'll write a longer post later.)

I have read them all except the Angelou and Light in August, the only Faulkner I have read is Soldier's Pay.

I read the Stendahl is French, also the Chartreuse de Parme, and I don't remember them as anything but easily understandable.

Reading Lear was an indescribably strong and deep experience for me. I have commented on this elsewhere here. The greatest of the great.

Jane Eyre is fine, but as JR noted Wuthering Heights is far superior, a unique work of individual genius that can be read and re-read and yield different insights every time. I don't consider it "romantic" at all.

For the Victorians I would definitely include Vanity Fair and Middlemarch.The rereading comment above also goes for them.

Babbitt I loved, especially for its humour.

What Greybird says about the Grapes of Wrath movie, I feel about the book. It's a polemic of course - but then so is Atlas Shrugged. Its artistry is indelible.

Edited March 30, 2011 by daunce lynam

[kiaer.ts]

That wasn't me on Wuthering Heights. I watched the movie and read the Cliff's Notes.

[pippi]

Yeah, and he sucked her tit too at some point

Really???

Pippi, I can see how the Steinbeck sentence would put you off reading the book, because of the sense of life it conveys to you.

I read the Grapes of Wrath about a year ago.

Edited March 30, 2011 by pippi

[caroljane]

My apologies to JR, I mixed you up with Ted. I suppose that doesn't happen too often here.

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Thirteen in Thirteen - Overall Impressions

Being forced to read the thirteen classics I named in thirteen months has been surprisingly interesting and, to answer Ted's question, I would recommend reading -all- of these books for that reason. While some are underrated and some are overrated, none of them was without value or insights whatsoever. And most had something quite unique or arresting about them (one reason they became famous and part of the canon, and/or influenced subsequent writers.) Only one of them did I get so bored with that I had to 'skip' forward and only end up reading half of. And that was the only discussion meeting I missed because I didn't feel I had really "read" the novel. (That book was "The Red and the Black" - and for that reason I don't feel fully qualified to make a pronouncement on it in toto.)

In many cases, it wasn't about sense of life, agree or disagree, or about romanticism vs. naturalism, but about someone who can write well giving a unique and distinctive window on people of a certain type, and time, and place and on the world they live in. (Or convey a mood or a sense of life, or one of several other things a novel can do with particular power.)

There was a tendency in the long novels to be excited early on as the author's writing skill, his universe, his characters are fresh and interesting. But I've found it rare for a long novel not to 'drag'. About halfway through many of them I start writing "repet.","repet." in the margins a lot. The author had painted the characters, conflict, situation and the plot was not going to develop much and now he was just laying on the basically repetitious detail with a trowel.

This was true a tiny bit for Babbitt and (if I recall) Winseburg, Ohio. It was true -a lot- not just for The Red and the Black, but for The Sun Also Rises, The Inferno, Light in August, Love in the Time of Cholera, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. So that's fully true for six of the books I read and partially true for a couple more.

The Stendhal, the Hemingway, and the Faulkner were absolutely the worst in the LWSOB (Long-Winded Son of a Bitch**) regard. Enough to drag some of them way down in terms of overall quality. These writers have big egos, are impressed with their own genius or flair for words and just hate to cut anything it seems.

After several such experiences, with several books I'm at about page 150 or 250 and really enjoying the ride, and I was beginning to keep my fingers crossed "don't just keep repeating this!, "have something fresh and new, a new twist or new characters, please!" I'm particularly keeping my fingers crossed with "The Grapes of Wrath". So far, it is not at all the socialistic tract the conservatives keep saying, the characters and the description and the conflicts are all first-rate. The writing is absolutely brilliant and insightful.

It's a masterpiece!

...So far.

I'm only about a third of the way in. They have just started their long drive to California. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed: "don't screw it up!, "don't screw it up!"

In each case of the preceding twelve books, I was glad I had read the book, had seen and learned a lot, but the lack of cutting, the bloat issue was like the difference between two weeks touring three Italian cities and a month touring six. I knew what the author was about to say before he said it. Fatigue and shell-shock had set in, the metaphors and my feet were getting tired and I was running out of film and fresh underwear.

It seems there is a tipping point, when you get over, say, 400 pages, your themes or characters or story had better be able to bear the weight.

Gulliver's Travels, Jane Eyre don't have that problem, the inability to pull off more than half a novel syndrome. Obviously, neither did Lear and Metamorphosis because they are relatively short(In part, that can sometimes be the plot-driven nature of something. It holds your interest as the conflicts are worked out. In part, it can be the author raising fresh issues or unveiling character in stages.)

Another thing I learned (well, I already knew it, but I had a few more vivid examples) is that, contra Rand, Naturalism is not bad***. It has its place, as does Romanticism.

Surprises: How good Gulliver's Travels is in the parts after the Lilliputians, and how brilliantly, incisively, ironically Sinclair Lewis writes. (I was moved and chilled in h.s. by "It Can't Happen Here", but somehow have never reread that or picked up another of his works.)

Finally, I'm quite sure if I'd read these when I was a teenager my impressions and reactions would be tremendously different from what they are now (with one certain exception: Jane Eyre): Really, really glad I'm reading them at this point in my life.

** this is a technical term in advanced literary criticism that only Ph.D.'s and cognoscenti such as Jeff and Ted and I are aware of. In fact, I'm not so sure about Jeff and Ted :-)

*** that's another whole long topic, requiring many, many examples. Also: the limitations of Naturalism vs. Romanticism as a classification scheme.

Edited March 31, 2011 by Philip Coates

[caroljane]

Subject: Thirteen in Thirteen - Overall Impressions

Being forced to read the thirteen classics I named in thirteen months has been surprisingly interesting and, to answer Ted's question, I would recommend reading -all- of these books for that reason. While some are underrated and some are overrated, none of them was without value or insights whatsoever. Only one of them did I get so bored with that I had to 'skip' forward and only end up reading half of. And that was the only discussion meeting I missed because I didn't feel I had really "read" the novel. (That book was "The Red and the Black".)

In many cases, it wasn't about sense of life, agree or disagree, or about romanticism vs. naturalism, but about someone who can write well giving a unique and distinctive window on people of a certain type, and time, and place and on the world they live in.

There was a tendency in the long novels to be excited early on as the author's writing skill, his universe, his characters are fresh and interesting. But I've found it rare for a long novel not to 'drag'. About halfway through many of them I start writing "repet.","repet." in the margins a lot. The author had painted the characters, conflict, situation and the plot was not going to develop much and now he was just laying on the detail with a trowel.

This was true a tiny bit for Babbitt and (if I recall) Winseburg, Ohio. It was true -a lot- not just for The Red and the Black, but for The Sun Also Rises, The Inferno, Light in August, Love in the Time of Cholera, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. So that's fully true for six of the books I read and partially true for a couple more.

The Stendhal, the Hemingway, and the Faulkner were absolutely the worst in the LWSOB (Long-Winded Son of a Bitch) regard. Enough to drag some of them way down in terms of overall quality. These writers have big egos, are impressed with their own genius or flair for words and just hate to cut anything it seems.

After several such experiences, with several books I'm at about page 150 or 250 and really enjoying the ride, and I was beginning to keep my fingers crossed "don't just keep repeating this!, "have something fresh and new, a new twist or new characters, please!" I'm particularly keeping my fingers crossed with "The Grapes of Wrath". So far, it is not at all the socialistic tract the conservatives keep saying, the characters and the description and the conflicts are all first-rate. The writing is absolutely brilliant and insightful.

It's a masterpiece!

...So far.

I'm only about a third of the way in. They have just started their long drive to California. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed: "don't screw it up!, "don't screw it up!"

In each case, I was glad I had read the book, had seen and learned a lot, but the lack of cutting, the bloat issue was like the difference between two weeks touring three Italian cities and a month touring six. I knew what the author was about to say before he said it.

It seems there is a tipping point, when you get over, say, 400 pages, your themes or characters or story had better be able to bear the weight.

Gulliver's Travels, Jane Eyre don't have that problem, the inability to pull off more than half a novel syndrome. Obviously, neither did Lear and Metamorphosis because they are relatively short(In part, that can sometimes be the plot-driven nature of something. It holds your interest as the conflicts are worked out. In part, it can be the author raising fresh issues or unveiling character in stages.)

Another thing I learned (well, I already knew it, but I had a few more vivid examples) is that, contra Rand, Naturalism is not bad**. It has its place, as does Romanticism.

Surprises: How good Gulliver's Travels is in the parts after the Lilliputians, and how brilliantly, incisively, ironically Sinclair Lewis writes. (I was moved and chilled in h.s. by "It Can't Happen Here", but somehow have never reread that or picked up another of his works.)

Finally, I'm quite sure if I'd read these when I was a teenager my impressions and reactions would be tremendously different from what they are now (with one certain exception: Jane Eyre): Really, really glad I'm reading them at this point in my life.

**that's another whole long topic, requiring many, many examples. Also: the limitations of Naturalism vs. Romanticism as a classification scheme.

Phil, it's great that you enjoyed your readings and I am more than a little surprised that I agree with what you said!(except maybe about the Inferno dragging} You are something of the same kind of reader I am.Now I feel less guilty about forgetting le Rouge et le Noir -- I read Mme Bovary in the same French class and it was unforgettable in French and I went on to read it in English.

Now I know you will like Renault (she's short) and resume nagging about it.

[Philip Coates]

Subject: OverKill (Pun Intended)

> surprised that I agree with what you said!(except maybe about the Inferno dragging}

Daunce, one example of the repetitiousness is that as we moved to each new ring of hell, it seemed each time we met somebody else hanging upside down and having his balls toasted, turns out to be somebody Dante had known in Good Old Florence. Plus the damned soul had time to talk and ask for news: "Whatever happened to old Guisseppe?" "Take a message to Count Fratricidula". Isn't anyone else in hell except people from northern Italy and from Dante's circle of acquaintances? No Chinese? No French? No Egyptians? Small inferno!! ...I mean that's going a bit out of your way to settle old scores in literature. Dante sure knows how to bear a grudge (except I guess I know how that can be from my experiences on OL).

And did we need that many circles...and then subcircles within them? I mean, I enjoy coming up with new and clever ways to torture people for all eternity but...COME ON! Enuff is enuff.

Edited March 31, 2011 by Philip Coates

[caroljane]

Subject: OverKill (Pun Intended)

> surprised that I agree with what you said!(except maybe about the Inferno dragging}

Daunce, one example of the repetitiousness is that as we moved to each new ring of hell, it seemed each time we met somebody else hanging upside down and having his balls toasted, turns out to be somebody Dante had known in Good Old Florence. Plus the damned soul had time to talk and ask for news: "Whatever happened to old Guisseppe?" "Take a message to Count Fratricidula". Isn't anyone else in hell except people from northern Italy and from Dante's circle of acquaintances? No Chinese? No French? No Egyptians? Small inferno!! ...I mean that's going a bit out of your way to settle old scores in literature. Dante sure knows how to bear a grudge (except I guess I know how that can be from my experiences on OL).

And did we need that many circles...and then subcircles within them? I mean, I enjoy coming up with new and clever ways to torture people for all eternity but...COME ON! Enuff is enuff.

lol.OK, it isn't the zippiest read. But hey, the idea of a revenge fantasy on each and every one of your enemies turning out as great art is pretty cool. Also, it's a poem, and probably reading it in the original is more mesmeric (I don't know any Italian).

I do know that the words "I was alone in a dark wood" have recurred to me at the oddest times, every few years, ever since I read it.

[caroljane]

Subject: OverKill (Pun Intended)

> surprised that I agree with what you said!(except maybe about the Inferno dragging}

Daunce, one example of the repetitiousness is that as we moved to each new ring of hell, it seemed each time we met somebody else hanging upside down and having his balls toasted, turns out to be somebody Dante had known in Good Old Florence. Plus the damned soul had time to talk and ask for news: "Whatever happened to old Guisseppe?" "Take a message to Count Fratricidula". Isn't anyone else in hell except people from northern Italy and from Dante's circle of acquaintances? No Chinese? No French? No Egyptians? Small inferno!! ...I mean that's going a bit out of your way to settle old scores in literature. Dante sure knows how to bear a grudge (except I guess I know how that can be from my experiences on OL).

And did we need that many circles...and then subcircles within them? I mean, I enjoy coming up with new and clever ways to torture people for all eternity but...COME ON! Enuff is enuff.

lol.OK, it isn't the zippiest read. But hey, the idea of a revenge fantasy on each and every one of your enemies turning out as great art is pretty cool. Also, it's a poem, and probably reading it in the original is more mesmeric (I don't know any Italian).

I do know that the words "I was alone in a dark wood" have recurred to me at the oddest times, every few years, ever since I read it. Maybe Inferno just wears better in memory in comparison with the Paradiso which we also did. Paradise did seem eternal at times, I admit.

[kiaer.ts]

Phil's complaints about Alighieri are rather superficial. Not only did the man invent the Italian vernacular, he probably knew very few Chinamen. Who, beside Northern Italians, was his intended audience? Had he meant to write for a wider stage he'd've used Latin.

[jriggenbach]

It is perhaps worth noting that Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises isn't even 250 pages in length. And Faulkner's Light in August, though it exceeds 400 pages, does so only by a handful of pages. By the time Phil got to page 400 in the Faulkner, he was virtually through reading. He had fewer than fifty pages ahead of him.

JR

[Philip Coates]

> By the time Phil got to page 400 in the Faulkner, he was virtually through reading. He had fewer than fifty pages ahead of him.

Jeff, no, it's 507 pages.

Edited March 31, 2011 by Philip Coates

[jriggenbach]

> By the time Phil got to page 400 in the Faulkner, he was virtually through reading. He had fewer than fifty pages ahead of him.

Jeff, no, it's 507 pages.

What edition do you have? The Modern Library edition, which has been the standard edition in both hardcover and paperback for generations now, ends on page 444. And just before page 432 there's the magnificent, immensely poetic end of Gail Hightower - one of the high points of the novel. If you'd lost interest by that time, you rather seriously missed the point of the whole thing.

JR