Great Literature

[Brant Gaede]

Phil, you project so much fragility it makes me want to stay away. But if you were so you'd have been gone from the Internet years ago. The genteel model of intellectual give and take might work on R of R which I last visited ... I don't remember. The place bores me and I can't stand Rowlands who has had me under moderation going on four years now, for quoting contemporary Barbara Branden or something like that. Something he now lets others do btw.

In any case I can't adapt myself to your way of doing things and I'll try to hold back my comments as they do nothing for you, me or anybody else. The basic problem is your essentially ARI orientation which was NBI's before it blew up. That's what I meant about decades' old.

--Brant

[ginny]

Brant, you said the same as I did but so much more politely. I shouldn't have sunk to the point of rudeness. Thanks for the lesson. Guess I'm not always the lady mother raised.

[Brant Gaede]

Well, ginny, the problem is the objectivity of the situation. Your comments were too strong for that context. In any case you should be addressing Phil, not me.

--Brant

[jeffrey smith]

Subject: benevolence in assessing people

Or they're trying to learn more and interact on the subject and that's what feedback helps with. People who wanted to appear as authorities or experts in literature would be unlikely to write a long series of posts on slow, foot-dragging awakening - how dumb they were for decades, how insensitive to Shakespeare, and how they are only in an early stage of exploring in many ways.

Tends to puncture the idea of my being an expert, or having long mastered everything.

To be honest, Phil, I thought you were looking for parallelisms, not responses to specific points in your own posts.

Beyond that, I generally adhere to the rule that 'if you have nothing to say, say nothing'.

Of course, this doesn't keep me from saying something that turns out to be nothing when I think I'm saying something that is something

[jriggenbach]

Subject: benevolence in assessing people

Or they're trying to learn more and interact on the subject and that's what feedback helps with. People who wanted to appear as authorities or experts in literature would be unlikely to write a long series of posts on slow, foot-dragging awakening - how dumb they were for decades, how insensitive to Shakespeare, and how they are only in an early stage of exploring in many ways.

Tends to puncture the idea of my being an expert, or having long mastered everything.

Subject: self-awareness and self-pity

I wonder if someone who is "trying to learn more [about a subject] and interact on the subject" is likely to conduct himself in such a way that his readers (as Brant puts it) "get the impression [he is] demanding some people here conform to a teacher/student paradigm with [him] as the teacher. The teacher talks up a topic and asks for class participation and feedback."

Tends to puncture the idea of that individual's being a humble, mistreated seeker after knowledge, acutely aware of his need for greater understanding, and victimized by the malevolence of his readers.

JR

[Philip Coates]

Lattimore and Fitzgerald Revisited ==>

I wrote a long, detailed side-by-side comparison between the translations of the opening of the Iliad by both men [Post #30] and came down strongly on the side of Fitzgerald.

I may have been too influenced by how much I loved F's translation of The Odyssey, one of the three or four greatest and most powerful books I've ever read. One of the greatest works of world literature!!

But well-along now and after 160 pages the last week or so, I'm finding F's Iliad, while it still has many virtues and much force, to be a bit repetitious and not as poetic as his translation of the other. It's just not as strongly, soaringly expressed as Th Odyssey. Is it Homer or is it Bobby Fitz? Part of it could be that the Iliad itself (even though generally considered by the critics the greater of the two works of Homer) is not actually as good a story as The Odyssey. Could be an issue of which was his first translation and which his second.

But, shamefacedly , I'm now switching horses midstream to the Lattimore Iliad. As for all those arguments I made in favor of Fitzgerald? I'm not about to pull as Roseanne Roseaneadana....not yet. Each time I come to an important or eloquent passage, I will probably compare them side by side.

Edited September 21, 2009 by Philip Coates

[jeffrey smith]

Lattimore and Fitzgerald Revisited ==>

I wrote a long, detailed side-by-side comparison between the translations of the opening of the Iliad by both men [Post #30] and came down strongly on the side of Fitzgerald.

I may have been too influenced by how much I loved F's translation of The Odyssey, one of the three or four greatest and most powerful books I've ever read. One of the greatest works of world literature!!

But well-along now and after 160 pages the last week or so, I'm finding F's Iliad, while it still has many virtues and much force, to be a bit repetitious and not as poetic as his translation of the other. It's just not as strongly, soaringly expressed as Th Odyssey. Is it Homer or is it Bobby Fitz? Part of it could be that the Iliad itself (even though generally considered by the critics the greater of the two works of Homer) is not actually as good a story as The Odyssey. Could be an issue of which was his first translation and which his second.

But, shamefacedly , I'm now switching horses midstream to the Lattimore Iliad. As for all those arguments I made in favor of Fitzgerald? I'm not about to pull as Roseanne Roseaneadana....not yet. Each time I come to an important or eloquent passage, I will probably compare them side by side.

It may be Homer. There's a difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey that Lattimore himself talked about in his preface to the Odyssey, both of tone and dramatic structure. And it may be that Fitzgerald's style works better with one work than with the other. Also, I seem to remember that Homer used the stock phrases more frequently in the Iliad than in the Odyssey, which would account for the repetitiousness you're encountering.

Jeff S

[Philip Coates]

> It may be Homer. There's a difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey..both of tone and dramatic structure...I seem to remember that Homer used the stock phrases more frequently in the Iliad than in the Odyssey, which would account for the repetitiousness you're encountering. [Jeffrey]

Maybe on your last point; he uses the 'epithets' constantly in both. But the major repetitiousness so far is the story itself. In the Odyssey, Odysseus has a wide-ranging, very rich variety of adventures with one-eyed creatures, Sirens, suitors, his family, Athena, other kings, the ghosts of his mother and dead heroes, and so on. In the Iliad, it's more Hector fights someone, Paris fights someone, Diomedes fights someone, Patroclus... then the two armies go back and forth, the gods quarrel. And then the whole thing repeats, as the same war ebbs and flows. How many times do you need to read about somebody getting a spear in his chest, just to the right of the nipple or just to the left of the nipple? The repetition or range of character types? Too many of them who could be the same person - fierce, fighting man with the strength of a bull, wanting to show courage and slay his enemies.

I've sometimes read 'paired' novels or other pieces (by the same author) and the critics consider one of them "great" literature and the other "children's" literature or not as good, not as deathless or ageless in some way. It's freakishly odd how often I find that the critics get it exactly backwards in my view, praising the lesser work to the skies while belittling the other(unless I'm missing something - in a few cases I'd need to reread, but in some cases the superiority of the -less- favored book seems not that hard to perceive upon a close, objective reading):

The critics -strongly- prefer the Iliad over the Odyssey, Huckleberry Finn over Tom Sawyer*, Shakespeare's darker plays over the lighter ones or the one's with happier endings, one of Poe's more 'lame' short stories over an overlooked but far superior one...

I often wonder if the reason for the critical consensus is ideological 'correctness' rather than purely literary. Iliad = anti war or a 'realistic' recital of the folly and disasters of war. HH = anti-racist. Darker plays = resonates with the critic's 'metaphysics' or sense of life, sense of what is realistic. Or "revealing of the timeless human condition", is an impressive phrase critics and intellectuals like to use.

I can't be sure yet if the Odyssey is clearly superior to / significantly greater literature than the Iliad. I think both are good literature (there are other aspects to consider than 'repetitiousness'). I'll take some time to think about this in a few weeks.... but it's looking that way.

*that's a whole other discussion....there's a whole second layer to TS.

Edited September 21, 2009 by Philip Coates

[jriggenbach]

In the Odyssey, Odysseus has a wide-ranging, very rich variety of adventures with one-eyed creatures, Sirens, suitors, his family, Athena, other kings, the ghosts of his mother and dead heroes, and so on. In the Iliad, it's more Hector fights someone, Paris fights someone, Diomedes fights someone, Patroclus... then the two armies go back and forth, the gods quarrel. And then the whole thing repeats, as the same war ebbs and flows. How many times do you need to read about somebody getting a spear in his chest, just to the right of the nipple or just to the left of the nipple? The repetition or range of character types? Too many of them who could be the same person - fierce, fighting man with the strength of a bull, wanting to show courage and slay his enemies.

Precisely. This was my feeling when I read both the Iliad and the Odyssey in college. It was sufficient to cause me to lend considerable weight to theories that the two works were not even in fact by the same author.

I've sometimes read 'paired' novels or other pieces (by the same author) and the critics consider one of them "great" literature and the other "children's" literature or not as good, not as deathless or ageless in some way. It's freakishly odd how often I find that the critics get it exactly backwards in my view, praising the lesser work to the skies while belittling the other(unless I'm missing something - in a few cases I'd need to reread, but in some cases the superiority of the -less- favored book seems not that hard to perceive upon a close, objective reading):

The critics -strongly- prefer the Iliad over the Odyssey . . .

I don't know who these unnamed, unquoted "critics" are, and I have certainly never received the impression that the conventional wisdom among academics strongly and clearly favors the Iliad.

Huckleberry Finn over Tom Sawyer, Shakespeare's darker plays over the lighter ones or the one's with happier endings, one of Poe's more 'lame' short stories over an overlooked but far superior one...

It's true that most literature professors (which appears to be what Phil means by the phrase "the critics") prefer Huckleberry Finn to Tom Sawyer and Shakespeare's tragedies to his comedies. I agree with them. Since no specific Poe stories are named, the last item in this list is impossible to respond to. My own view is that Poe's verse and his critical writing are much more important than any of his fiction - which, with a tiny handful of exceptions, is of primarily historical interest.

I can't be sure yet if the Odyssey is clearly superior to / significantly greater literature than the Iliad.

I long ago concluded that it is. I think you're on to something here.

JR

[Brant Gaede]

I greatly enjoyed Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." Heh.

--Brant

[Philip Coates]

> I don't know who these unnamed, unquoted "critics" are, and I have certainly never received the impression that the conventional wisdom among academics strongly and clearly favors the Iliad. [Jeff]

In rereading my statement, I overstated that part. I haven't researched how widespread this is and my context is limited, so I should have said something like "When I myself have heard or seen a discussion assessing Homer's two works..."

> It was sufficient to cause me to lend considerable weight to theories that the two works were not even in fact by the same author.

Lattimore discusses this and he points out that certain passages/phrasings are repeated almost verbatim between I and O. Unique original things. Not just the epithets (rosy-fingered dawn and the like), which could have been "in the air" or cultural conventions. He says, "When we come to language, rhythm, metrical phrasing, the overmastering impression is one of unity." But that leaves open several possibilities besides one man only. L. mentions, for example, the possibility that there was a much older man and younger apprentice "perhaps a nephew or son-in-law gong by the same name" who took over more and more of the work.

> It's true that most literature professors (which appears to be what Phil means by the phrase "the critics") prefer Huckleberry Finn to Tom Sawyer and Shakespeare's tragedies to his comedies. I agree with them.

I would probably have to hold off on that discussion. On Shakespeare, because I would need to read more of the plays in both categories to even try to generalize. On Twain, because even though I've taught both books and have -much- to say, all the details would have to be revisited. Fascinating subject, though.

>Since no specific Poe stories are named, the last item in this list is impossible to respond to. My own view is that Poe's verse and his critical writing are much more important than any of his fiction - which, with a tiny handful of exceptions, is of primarily historical interest.

> I greatly enjoyed Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado."

I find value and enjoyment in both Poe's short stories (Pit and the Pendulum, The Gold Bug, Hop Frog, Tell-Tale Heart, etc.) and his poetry (Annabel Lee, The Raven, Ulalume, etc.) I don't recall reading his critical writing. I plan to do so at some point. On Poe, I spent class time once comparing Amontillado to Tell-Tale Heart (some parallelism) Hop Frog (not much parallelism) in detail...but that will have to go into abeyance. I recall liking Murders in the Rue Morgue as a child, but will have to re-read it.

. . . Actually, I LOVE to reread things like all of these and re-think this sort of thing through. This Literature thread (and to a lesser extent the more geeky Linguistics thread) are probably the topics I've most enjoyed on Oist boards in years....get so sick of repet. epistopoliticoeconomic stuffaroni.

Edited September 22, 2009 by Philip Coates

[jeffrey smith]

> It may be Homer. There's a difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey..both of tone and dramatic structure...I seem to remember that Homer used the stock phrases more frequently in the Iliad than in the Odyssey, which would account for the repetitiousness you're encountering. [Jeffrey]

Maybe on your last point; he uses the 'epithets' constantly in both. But the major repetitiousness so far is the story itself. In the Odyssey, Odysseus has a wide-ranging, very rich variety of adventures with one-eyed creatures, Sirens, suitors, his family, Athena, other kings, the ghosts of his mother and dead heroes, and so on. In the Iliad, it's more Hector fights someone, Paris fights someone, Diomedes fights someone, Patroclus... then the two armies go back and forth, the gods quarrel. And then the whole thing repeats, as the same war ebbs and flows. How many times do you need to read about somebody getting a spear in his chest, just to the right of the nipple or just to the left of the nipple? The repetition or range of character types? Too many of them who could be the same person - fierce, fighting man with the strength of a bull, wanting to show courage and slay his enemies.

I've sometimes read 'paired' novels or other pieces (by the same author) and the critics consider one of them "great" literature and the other "children's" literature or not as good, not as deathless or ageless in some way. It's freakishly odd how often I find that the critics get it exactly backwards in my view, praising the lesser work to the skies while belittling the other(unless I'm missing something - in a few cases I'd need to reread, but in some cases the superiority of the -less- favored book seems not that hard to perceive upon a close, objective reading):

The critics -strongly- prefer the Iliad over the Odyssey, Huckleberry Finn over Tom Sawyer*, Shakespeare's darker plays over the lighter ones or the one's with happier endings, one of Poe's more 'lame' short stories over an overlooked but far superior one...

I often wonder if the reason for the critical consensus is ideological 'correctness' rather than purely literary. Iliad = anti war or a 'realistic' recital of the folly and disasters of war. HH = anti-racist. Darker plays = resonates with the critic's 'metaphysics' or sense of life, sense of what is realistic. Or "revealing of the timeless human condition", is an impressive phrase critics and intellectuals like to use.

I can't be sure yet if the Odyssey is clearly superior to / significantly greater literature than the Iliad. I think both are good literature (there are other aspects to consider than 'repetitiousness'). I'll take some time to think about this in a few weeks.... but it's looking that way.

*that's a whole other discussion....there's a whole second layer to TS.

If the critical consensus is ideological in origin, then I think we have to blame it on Aristotle. Refer to the Poetics: he says comedy depicts us as worse than we are, and tragedy as better or nobler than we are. So therefore "darker" works reflect the nobler side of man, while "comic" works reflect the worse side, or else are too much fluff. I'm sure for some critics, your idea about the critic's sense of life is accurate; but it may also be the critic responding to the heroic/romantic (as Rand understood those terms) and therefore actually responding from a positive sense of life.

Of course, there was the 18th century's answer to the problem, which was to rewrite the tragedies so they ended on a happy note.

One reason I like Shakespeare's "romances" is that they tend to hold the dark and the light side of life together in a sort of creative tension (Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, Tempest).

I don't think I've read Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer since I was a kid, so I better not go into specifics, but I think HF is more overtly serious than TS, although I understand what you mean about TS' second layer.

It's also been a long time since I read Poe, but I don't think any writer would need to be ashamed of writing any of his short stories.

For the sake of that which killed the cat: have you ever read Heliodorus (Aethiopica) or any of the other Hellenistic novels, or Ariosto, or the Faerie Queene? Straight forward epics they are not (and Heliodorus doesn't even pretend to be an epic), but they're fairly sophisticated in terms of both narrative and characterization.

Same also applies to the novels of Anne Radcliffe (well, at least in terms of narrative--sometimes the characterization gets sacrificed on the altar of sentimentality).

[anonrobt]

> It may be Homer. There's a difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey..both of tone and dramatic structure...I seem to remember that Homer used the stock phrases more frequently in the Iliad than in the Odyssey, which would account for the repetitiousness you're encountering. [Jeffrey]

Maybe on your last point; he uses the 'epithets' constantly in both. But the major repetitiousness so far is the story itself. In the Odyssey, Odysseus has a wide-ranging, very rich variety of adventures with one-eyed creatures, Sirens, suitors, his family, Athena, other kings, the ghosts of his mother and dead heroes, and so on. In the Iliad, it's more Hector fights someone, Paris fights someone, Diomedes fights someone, Patroclus... then the two armies go back and forth, the gods quarrel. And then the whole thing repeats, as the same war ebbs and flows. How many times do you need to read about somebody getting a spear in his chest, just to the right of the nipple or just to the left of the nipple? The repetition or range of character types? Too many of them who could be the same person - fierce, fighting man with the strength of a bull, wanting to show courage and slay his enemies.

I've sometimes read 'paired' novels or other pieces (by the same author) and the critics consider one of them "great" literature and the other "children's" literature or not as good, not as deathless or ageless in some way. It's freakishly odd how often I find that the critics get it exactly backwards in my view, praising the lesser work to the skies while belittling the other(unless I'm missing something - in a few cases I'd need to reread, but in some cases the superiority of the -less- favored book seems not that hard to perceive upon a close, objective reading):

The critics -strongly- prefer the Iliad over the Odyssey, Huckleberry Finn over Tom Sawyer*, Shakespeare's darker plays over the lighter ones or the one's with happier endings, one of Poe's more 'lame' short stories over an overlooked but far superior one...

I often wonder if the reason for the critical consensus is ideological 'correctness' rather than purely literary. Iliad = anti war or a 'realistic' recital of the folly and disasters of war. HH = anti-racist. Darker plays = resonates with the critic's 'metaphysics' or sense of life, sense of what is realistic. Or "revealing of the timeless human condition", is an impressive phrase critics and intellectuals like to use.

I can't be sure yet if the Odyssey is clearly superior to / significantly greater literature than the Iliad. I think both are good literature (there are other aspects to consider than 'repetitiousness'). I'll take some time to think about this in a few weeks.... but it's looking that way.

*that's a whole other discussion....there's a whole second layer to TS.

If the critical consensus is ideological in origin, then I think we have to blame it on Aristotle. Refer to the Poetics: he says comedy depicts us as worse than we are, and tragedy as better or nobler than we are. So therefore "darker" works reflect the nobler side of man, while "comic" works reflect the worse side, or else are too much fluff. I'm sure for some critics, your idea about the critic's sense of life is accurate; but it may also be the critic responding to the heroic/romantic (as Rand understood those terms) and therefore actually responding from a positive sense of life.

Of course, there was the 18th century's answer to the problem, which was to rewrite the tragedies so they ended on a happy note.

One reason I like Shakespeare's "romances" is that they tend to hold the dark and the light side of life together in a sort of creative tension (Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, Tempest).

I don't think I've read Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer since I was a kid, so I better not go into specifics, but I think HF is more overtly serious than TS, although I understand what you mean about TS' second layer.

It's also been a long time since I read Poe, but I don't think any writer would need to be ashamed of writing any of his short stories.

For the sake of that which killed the cat: have you ever read Heliodorus (Aethiopica) or any of the other Hellenistic novels, or Ariosto, or the Faerie Queene? Straight forward epics they are not (and Heliodorus doesn't even pretend to be an epic), but they're fairly sophisticated in terms of both narrative and characterization.

Same also applies to the novels of Anne Radcliffe (well, at least in terms of narrative--sometimes the characterization gets sacrificed on the altar of sentimentality).

One reason for Aristotle's view as such on comedy and tragedy is that comedy then tended to be sarcasm, poking fun at the foibles of the politicians, etc [eg. Aristophenes, for instance]...

[Xray]

I greatly enjoyed Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." Heh.

--Brant

That's a chilling tale, but despite it all, I would have liked to try at once how Amontillado tastes like.

Never got around to it though.

The "Tell Tale Heart" made an unforgettable impressionon me too, during my "Poe-phase" in my late teens.

[Brant Gaede]

I greatly enjoyed Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." Heh.

--Brant

That's a chilling tale, but despite it all, I would have liked to try at once how Amontillado tastes like.

Never got around to it though.

Good news! I've got some! Let me know when you get to Tucson.

--Brant

not a pit and pendulum-type guy

free one-way ticket from Germany to Arizona, go get your passport

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Serious Amateur not an Expert

> have you ever read Heliodorus (Aethiopica) or any of the other Hellenistic novels, or Ariosto, or the Faerie Queene?

Jeffrey, no I haven't. Is there one that you would recommend as a great story plus very well written?

I don't want to give the impression that I'm an expert on literature. Or that I've read all the 'classics'. Even though I've taught literature at several different levels in several schools, I've taught other subjects as well. And I am still catching up in many literary genres. I started out reading widely, then there was a gap where I read non-fiction heavily - history, philosophy, science, psychology, etc., etc. And in 'gap fiction', not so much novels at first, -- more poetry, plays, literary movies. Some short fiction. And now, over the last decade or more, I've returned to my 'literary' roots with a vengeance.

At this point, I'm even willing to tackle some of the writers who have in the past scared me off...e.g., Joyce's Dubliners. Often, the 'hyped' writers are bad and often they are good. Can't rely on critics; can't rely on Rand.

[ Warning: cliches and aphoristic puns alert ]

You Can't Tell a Book by its Coverage

The Proof of the Pudding is in the Reading

(I had a taste of Thomas Hardy in h.s., though. Just to check I browsed summaries, commentary, analysis. Don't think I'll be going back to him. Unless someone shows me a brilliant, scintillating, incisive passage or three..)

Being a generalist rather than a specialist (in lit.) in my interests and knowledge has helped with appreciating literature as well as movies, light fiction, poetry. I am likely to bring areas where I'm widely read - psychology, history, sociology, etc. - to bear in reading fiction, but not a lifetime's worth of continuous reading of novels.

When I read something like Jane Eyre or Tom Sawyer or the Odyssey, I read very slowly and mark up the margins heavily and try to leave the book having pretty thoroughly 'chewed over' whatever it has to offer. That's my mental style: slow, not in a big hurry.

Edited September 22, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Philip Coates]

> The "Tell Tale Heart" made an unforgettable impression on me too, during my "Poe-phase" in my late teens. [Xray]

I'm not saying you're doing this, but it just occurred to me that sometimes people (including especially critics) read a great piece of literature in their teen (or sometimes even childhood) curriculum or years and they think that it means it was only of value for that level, it's passe or simplistic now. They don't seiously revisit and belittle them as 'not serious literature'. As "children's literature."

But often there's more than one layer to it. This was one of my major new insights when I had to teach canonical literature to younger students (as well as h.s. later on) and reread certain things myself.

TTH and other of Poe's short pieces, Mark Twain's fiction, Kipling's stories for the kiddies, The Wind in the Willows (I just read it for the first time this year, after having loved the Disney movie and the cartoon character, Mr. Toad with his dazzlement at the motor car), -- and much more -- can be appreciated by adults who will find new connections, new insights that they couldn't have gotten previously.

I've taught all of those except WITW.

Edited September 22, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Xray]

I greatly enjoyed Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." Heh.

--Brant

That's a chilling tale, but despite it all, I would have liked to try at once how Amontillado tastes like.

Never got around to it though.

Good news! I've got some! Let me know when you get to Tucson.

--Brant

not a pit and pendulum-type guy

free one-way ticket from Germany to Arizona, go get your passport

Got the message.

I think I'll decline the offer.

But kidding aside: what always confused me a bit was the phrase "He cannot distinguish Amontillado from Sherry". But isn't Amontillado actually a type of Sherry?

Edited September 22, 2009 by Xray

[jeffrey smith]

Subject: Serious Amateur not an Expert

> have you ever read Heliodorus (Aethiopica) or any of the other Hellenistic novels, or Ariosto, or the Faerie Queene?

Jeffrey, no I haven't. Is there one that you would recommend as a great story plus very well written?

I don't want to give the impression that I'm an expert on literature. Or that I've read all the 'classics'. Even though I've taught literature at several different levels in several schools, I've taught other subjects as well. And I am still catching up in many literary genres. I started out reading widely, then there was a gap where I read non-fiction heavily - history, philosophy, science, psychology, etc., etc. And in 'gap fiction', not so much novels at first, -- more poetry, plays, literary movies. Some short fiction. And now, over the last decade or more, I've returned to my 'literary' roots with a vengeance.

At this point, I'm even willing to tackle some of the writers who have in the past scared me off...e.g., Joyce's Dubliners. Often, the 'hyped' writers are bad and often they are good. Can't rely on critics; can't rely on Rand.

[ Warning: cliches and aphoristic puns alert ]

You Can't Tell a Book by its Coverage

The Proof of the Pudding is in the Reading

(I had a taste of Thomas Hardy in h.s., though. Just to check I browsed summaries, commentary, analysis. Don't think I'll be going back to him. Unless someone shows me a brilliant, scintillating, incisive passage or three..)

Being a generalist rather than a specialist (in lit.) in my interests and knowledge has helped with appreciating literature as well as movies, light fiction, poetry. I am likely to bring areas where I'm widely read - psychology, history, sociology, etc. - to bear in reading fiction, but not a lifetime's worth of continuous reading of novels.

When I read something like Jane Eyre or Tom Sawyer or the Odyssey, I read very slowly and mark up the margins heavily and try to leave the book having pretty thoroughly 'chewed over' whatever it has to offer. That's my mental style: slow, not in a big hurry.

Not sure what to tell you about the Aethiopica: I suspect it's the sort of thing that will either bore you or exhilarate you. It's the longest and greatest of the Greek novels that have come down to us: it's also got an overly involved plot that's narrated in a sort of convoluted way--you start out with one set of characters and what goes on with them, then in the middle they're abandoned temporarily while you catch up with another character whose adventures were previously also abandoned in the middle of the action--and this happens over several threads that are only gradually brought together, so you only get to understand everything as the story nears its end.

I'd say give it a try, but you may not like it. In light of previous discussions, here's a tidbit: the translator of the edition I use (which was published in 1989 as part of an anthology called Collected Ancient Greek Novels, where it's titled An Ethiopian Story) says that for the quotations from Homer which are found in the Aethiopica were taken from "the now standard translations of Richmond Lattimore".

As for Joyce, both Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are worth reading: Dubliners is a fairly dark collection of short stories, full of the malevolent universe, but the last story, The Dead, is one of the finest short stories in the English language. It's kind of like Hardy if Hardy were an Irish Catholic. POTAAAYM is not so dark: call it the story of a young man refusing to believe that the universe is malevolent despite what everyone around him tries to tell him. I thought very highly of them when I read them, but that was back in my teens and twenties. For some reason I've never felt an urge to go back and reread them in later life. (This goes for both Joyce and Hardy.) You should read at least one of Hardy's novels, although I'm not sure which one I'd suggest. For a real treat, get a copy of Finnegan's Wake out of the library (it's not a book that can be really read more than a bit at a time, even if you don't mentally digest it like you do with your reading) just to see what could be done with language.

On somewhat less formidable note, read the Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy Sayers: the best of these are The Nine Tailors, Gaudy Night, and Busman's Honeymoon, but all of them (except the very first one, possibly, Whose Body?) Sayers made Agatha Christie look like a paint by number artist: these are novels which happen to have a mystery plot. And then for mystery as comic novel, there are the Gervase Fen mysteries by Edmund Crispin (pen name of Bruce Montgomery): read The Moving Toyshop (in which not only the corpse disappears, but so does the scene of the crime), Holy Disorders (featuring Poe in a cameo role), and Glimpses of the Moon. He wrote others, but they're not quite so good: nice to read on a plane, but you don't lose anything by not reading them.

And finally, perhaps a bit of stretch: the novels of Charles Williams. They are "Christian novels" in the sense that Christian theology and spirituality pervades them and provides their intellectual underpinning: but they're quite unlike the LaHaye Jenkins stuff or other fiction you might find in your usual "Christian bookstore": you'll be made to think on every page. Even to compare it to the work of C S Lewis, who was one of his friends ("the Inklings") is to do it a disservice. His writing style is a bit mannered, the product of his era in a way, but quite worth the effort of getting used to. The only one I would suggest skipping is Shadows of Ecstasy, which is the novel he wrote first, although it was published after some of the others. He was also, by the way, one of the best literary critics of his age, and his book on Dante, The Figure of Beatrice, is one of the seminal works in Dante criticism (although not always acknowledged).

That should keep you busy for a while

Edited September 23, 2009 by jeffrey smith

[Philip Coates]

> That should keep you busy for a while

AiYiYi! If the stack of books beside my bed gets any taller, I'm going to have to punch a hole in the roof, then see if the house foundations are sagging.

Edited September 23, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Brant Gaede]

I greatly enjoyed Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." Heh.

--Brant

That's a chilling tale, but despite it all, I would have liked to try at once how Amontillado tastes like.

Never got around to it though.

Good news! I've got some! Let me know when you get to Tucson.

--Brant

not a pit and pendulum-type guy

free one-way ticket from Germany to Arizona, go get your passport

Got the message.

I think I'll decline the offer.

But kidding aside: what always confused me a bit was the phrase "He cannot distinguish Amontillado from Sherry". But isn't Amontillado actually a type of Sherry?

The dict. says it's a pale, dry Spanish sherry. So I guess sherry is generally--wet?

--Brant

[jriggenbach]

But isn't Amontillado actually a type of Sherry?

The dict. says it's a pale, dry Spanish sherry. So I guess sherry is generally--wet?

Sherry is generally sweet - sickeningly sweet, to be exact.

JR

[Xray]

> The "Tell Tale Heart" made an unforgettable impression on me too, during my "Poe-phase" in my late teens. [Xray]

I'm not saying you're doing this, but it just occurred to me that sometimes people (including especially critics) read a great piece of literature in their teen (or sometimes even childhood) curriculum or years and they think that it means it was only of value for that level, it's passe or simplistic now. They don't seiously revisit and belittle them as 'not serious literature'. As "children's literature."

But often there's more than one layer to it. This was one of my major new insights when I had to teach canonical literature to younger students (as well as h.s. later on) and reread certain things myself.

TTH and other of Poe's short pieces, Mark Twain's fiction, Kipling's stories for the kiddies, The Wind in the Willows (I just read it for the first time this year, after having loved the Disney movie and the cartoon character, Mr. Toad with his dazzlement at the motor car), -- and much more -- can be appreciated by adults who will find new connections, new insights that they couldn't have gotten previously.

I've taught all of those except WITW.

I can see your point, Phil, but my reference to Poe was not meant to be understood that I regard this as passé and no longer relevant for me as an adult.

I have revisted quite a few works of litetature in recent years, and in sevaral instancees found the difference between how I perceived them back them as opposed to many years later to be quite baffling. Different things than before caught my attention, I focused on other aspects altogether, etc.

For example, I recently reread "Lolita", which had been on our reading list back then and which I "had to" read as an assignment.

But when rereading the novel now, many years later, I was far more able to grasp what a superb narrator Nabokov is, and also came to view the character Humbert Humbert differently.

I also liked the film directed by Kubrick. James Mason is excellent.

AiYiYi! If the stack of books beside my bed gets any taller, I'm going to have to punch a hole in the roof, then see if the house foundations are sagging.

I'm currently drowning in books too. In these internet days of cheap used copies to buy, the temptation is just too great. I think I'll have to put yself on an 'Amazon diet' and work off my many undread (or partly read) books first.

What aggravates matters in my case is that I'm neither a fast nor a very 'economical' reader, but like to take my time with books, and often deliberately reread passages to relish certain phrases again, etc.

But if I keeping going slow here, I'm afraid that book pile is never going to shrink ...

Any tips on tried-out effective speed reading techniques would be much appreciated.

Edited September 23, 2009 by Xray

[Xray]

JR:

Sherry is generally sweet - sickeningly sweet, to be exact.

Then I haven't missed anything in never trying it.

Edited September 23, 2009 by Xray

[Brant Gaede]

Some other time, I'll try to wean Phil away from Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Niven and get him to try some more literarily respectable science fiction writers.

As long as there are a lot of spaceships blasting each other I can put up with "literarily respectable science fiction."

Brant

philistine

the spell checker chokes on "literarily"--it used to choke on "esthetics" so I added it to it