|
|
Post by jean on Sept 1, 2009 7:24:58 GMT
I don't think it's your preferences that irritate, so much as the lack of nuance of your attempts at criticism.
|
|
|
|
Post by housesparrow on Sept 1, 2009 7:32:13 GMT
The few Trollope novels I've read - the Barchester ones - have been highly entertaining. His portrayal of women is interesting for a writer of that time; in one book the heroine ended up refusing to marry at all, much to the dismay of readers. His political works are probably more challenging; you have reminded me to try some.
Someone mentioned Elizabeth Bowen; one of her books featured in a local WEA course called "Reading the 1930s" If I tell you that Virginia Woolf's "The Years" was the jolliest of the lot, you will get some idea of the timbre of the selection. Jean Rhys "Good Morning Midnight" in particular left us all somewhat depressed.
|
|
|
|
Post by Patrick on Sept 1, 2009 11:23:25 GMT
I also used to know an old bloke who swapped his vs and ws (this was in the 90s)(1990s). He was Irish, but had been in the army for years and then came to London to live with his mother. Then she died and his flat went to buggery. Never had to look after himself before. (It is OK not to like Dickens, though, or anybody else. I find him a bit hard going myself.)[/color] It's absolutely o.k. to dislike any author - so long as you've read his books, or, at least, the ones you're critical of. I haven't read every book by Dickens; I've started a couple and given up, but I love Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and Nicholas Nickleby.[/quote] I'm sure I've said before - but staying with my Granny in the early eighties, I took a cycle ride out up to Cliffe on the Isle of Grain and where the prison ships were kept when it was Marshland. My Gran had a lovely old house up there when I was smaller. I stopped off at the church at Cliffe and it could only have been the one that Dickens based for Pip's meeting in the Churchyard, Sooooo atmospheric and eerie. That and the chillingly sad sight of a tens of tiny little lozenge shaped gravestones, marking the burial of any number of Victorian children. |
|
|
|
Post by Patrick on Sept 1, 2009 11:37:23 GMT
I have a book that was my great-grandfather's (would that be correct? yes, I think so) and Dickens was a contemporary author at the time -- this book is called Confessions and it's a Parlour Game where people fill in a sort of questionnaire 'My favourite flower is...' 'My hero is...' etc. Almost all the entries for favourite author say Dickens. Wow, he must have been like a breath of fresh air back then, everyone seemed to read him. Which I had something of my Great Grandfathers.  I have got a works of Shakespeare that belonged to a Grand Aunt when she was younger - but unfortunately both the front cover and first few flyleaves have been lost so you can no longer see the 1909 date that was at the front. Something else that my Gran used to have (bastard solicitor grrrrr) and was supposed to be for me was an early 1900s part work published not long after Victoria's death. (Did anyone else notice we didn't exactly go overboard in remembering the 100the anniversary of that a few years ago?) "In one hundred years, I'll be forgotten - Do you know what? I think that's rotten!" (c) me, sometime ago. Only one of our greatest monarchs too! They could have given us an extra Bank Holiday in her name.... Victoria Day! That'd be nice. Or are we so PC these days we don't celebrater her anymore because of The "Empire Conquering" thing |
|
|
|
Post by everso on Sept 1, 2009 12:09:19 GMT
Is it? They're all equally tedious. In your humble opinion I assume.  |
|
sinistral
Lovely, Happy & Gorgeous!
[N4:#####]
Posts: 291
|
Post by sinistral on Sept 1, 2009 12:13:26 GMT
I don't think it's your preferences that irritate, so much as the lack of nuance of your attempts at criticism. That,and the complete and utter panning of things unread. I've never read any Hemingway......perhaps I should start trashing his work from the comfort of my own ignorance! |
|
|
|
Post by everso on Sept 1, 2009 12:25:56 GMT
I don't think it's your preferences that irritate, so much as the lack of nuance of your attempts at criticism. That,and the complete and utter panning of things unread. I've never read any Hemingway......perhaps I should start trashing his work from the comfort of my own ignorance! Well, I've read it and, frankly, I thought it was pants. When I say 'it', sorry I meant "The Old Man and the Sea". I wouldn't give an opinion on any others of his works  |
|
|
|
Post by Patrick on Sept 1, 2009 12:31:43 GMT
I've read Hemingway. With his books, you get the feeling that you have walked into a room where people are halfway through a conversation, and when you finish the book you feel like you have walked out of the room before they've finished that conversation! If you know what I mean. There seem to be quite a few American writers who are rather good at that.  |
|
|
|
Post by everso on Sept 1, 2009 12:41:02 GMT
Did anyone read "A Catcher in the Rye"? I was forced to read it at school and I hated it. I was only 15 at the time, so maybe it would be different if I read it now.
|
|
|
|
Post by aubrey on Sept 1, 2009 16:28:43 GMT
I've never read it, but I think that 15 is probably the age you should read it.
I'm not sure I would like Lovecraft now if I hadn't read him at 15; I do read him now, but probably only because I already like him.
I should have read EE Smith at that age, and lots of other pulpy things that I really can't get along with now. But I did read a lot of other stuff - stuff that is actually better - New Worlds type of stuff - so I can't say the time was wasted.
|
|
|
|
Post by everso on Sept 1, 2009 18:12:52 GMT
I've never read it, but I think that 15 is probably the age you should read it. Yes, I understand that it's an adolescent's book. I found it a bit boring. |
|
|
|
Post by aubrey on Sept 1, 2009 21:03:05 GMT
He is a bit of a whiny git.
Flaty - Pip's rejection of Magwich is seen as a failing - by him, by Dickens, and by the reader: you're supposed to think he's acting badly. He tries to make up for it later.The fault with that book was the happy ending - Estella finally coming round to him. That might have been forced on him.
He does have failings - sentimentality (which was recognised at the time) over-emphasis, repetition - that sort of thing (oh, and his choice of names, which Conan Doyle didn't care for either). But he is an amazingly vivid writer, and very physical - and sometimes pretty dam' funny.
|
|
|
|
Post by Flatypus on Sept 2, 2009 4:33:32 GMT
Yea, roughly what I said. I don't like Dickens. and I've given my reasons why. Jean in her inimitable inversion of all things pops up to say I have no right to 'criticise' Dickens by explaining what I dislike about his mawkish meandering. Why not? Is he the only author exempt from personal likes and dislikes? If so why? Why should Dickens be exempt from personal preference like no other writer? I'm damned sure that there are many other writers whom people have not read because they have seen or heard of adaptations or by repute and making the effort to read would only confirm their prejudices.
I submit that there are many authors whose works people know enough about to reject even though they have never read them. Who has read 'Mein Kampf'? Who needs to? Who has read 'Das Kapital'? (hardly any 'Marxist' I'm sure!). How many who pronounce on Islam have read the Qur'an?
So what is so bloody special about Dickens? Sinistral has a point, that she has never read Hemingway. But she is familiar with the way Hemingway is presented, especially with the American Patriot overtones. Hemingway was a journalist, not a novelist. He represents to me, all I would strive against to be a writer, a recorder of bare facts with no depth of character psychology. Writing for a newspaper I was told to take him as example, when I take Hemingway as the 'example' of what to avoid if I ever want to read it. I might read for myself to check what is said of him or what he really wrote compared to adaptations. Probably, on the basis of stock Nazi films 'Is Paris burning' and 'Night of the Generals' I might never have read HH Kirst. But I read his 'Gunner Asch' series long before those novels were filmed.
On the other hand, the covers and blurb put me off reading Sven Hassel and so do adaptations with Dickens. Would I find some great treasure there? I've never read Hassel so I don't know. I see no need to. I have looked at Dickens and found it not worth the effort, the adaptations were only improvement on stuff of no interest to me written in a style I can't handle about a world I want nothing to do with that offends me in everything I feel. So what's the Big Deal about Dickens compared to Thackeray or Trollope? Better still, RL Stevenson. The dramatised 'Jekyll and Hyde' bears no comparison to the text - nor for that matter does 'Frankenstein'.
So what's the Big Deal? How about I start lamming into your 'ignorance' and 'prejudice' because you have not read Kirst or Balzac or Brecht or Wilde or you do not like Hemingway's style or prefer Sheridan to Fielding? Why is my preference the only one to be criticised? What is so bloody special about Dickens?
Incidentally, I dislike (or at least can't be bothered with) Lovecraft and his predecessor Poe because I read them at 15 and at 15 they get to you. Not when you are grown up. Maybe Dickens the same.
|
|
|
|
Post by Flatypus on Sept 2, 2009 4:50:45 GMT
The few Trollope novels I've read - the Barchester ones - have been highly entertaining. His portrayal of women is interesting for a writer of that time; in one book the heroine ended up refusing to marry at all, much to the dismay of readers. His political works are probably more challenging; you have reminded me to try some. I don't believe for a moment that his portrayal of women is 'interesting for the time'. It is simply not what modern feminists want to pretend was of that time. It's true that the culture was closing in from former freedom then just as much of the Bible-ranting USA is trying to rescind former freedoms, but you can see in Jane Austen when a teenager elopes with her lover, their concern is to get her back before he leaves her pregnant and alone, not Victorian get the hence from the door thou hast shamed (or its feminist equivalent of apostasy from virginal independence by submission to Patriarchal dominance). The Victorians had valid reasons to distance themselves from abuses in what we would see as third world cities. It is their Edwardian successors and their modern 'feminist' successors who continue to portray ancient ascetic horror of equality between the sexes as reduction of the sexless female to submissive equality with the perceived 'animal' male. |
|
|
|
Post by Flatypus on Sept 2, 2009 5:01:30 GMT
He does have failings - sentimentality (which was recognised at the time) over-emphasis, repetition - that sort of thing (oh, and his choice of names, which Conan Doyle didn't care for either). But he is an amazingly vivid writer, and very physical - and sometimes pretty dam' funny. Dead right: I said so. That is why he dramatises so easily. Dickens loved the Music-hall and the Melodrama and acted and wrote amateur dramatics in them. He evidently realised that the new magazine medium would get his message across to far more than could attend a theatre and good luck to him. That does not mean I have to care about what he wrote any more than I do 'Coronation Street' or 'East Enders'. Nobody gives a damn if you don't care for Thackeray or Disraeli, so why Dickens any different? To me, he writes in an overblown way about a boring dead world I have no relation to and would avoid at all costs. Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas strike me as about the same: their over-dramatised tedium bores me too and I don not believe real people behave like that. I put a link to Royal Hunt of the Sun up last night. Can you imagine Dickens writing anything so profound? |
|
|
|
Post by housesparrow on Sept 2, 2009 6:09:12 GMT
The few Trollope novels I've read - the Barchester ones - have been highly entertaining. His portrayal of women is interesting for a writer of that time; in one book the heroine ended up refusing to marry at all, much to the dismay of readers. His political works are probably more challenging; you have reminded me to try some. It's true that the culture was closing in from former freedom then just as much of the Bible-ranting USA is trying to rescind former freedoms, but you can see in Jane Austen when a teenager elopes with her lover, their concern is to get her back before he leaves her pregnant and alone, not Victorian get the hence from the door thou hast shamed (or its feminist equivalent of apostasy from virginal independence by submission to Patriarchal dominance). The Victorians had valid reasons to distance themselves from abuses in what we would see as third world cities. It is their Edwardian successors and their modern 'feminist' successors who continue to portray ancient ascetic horror of equality between the sexes as reduction of the sexless female to submissive equality with the perceived 'animal' male. I was talking about literature of that time, Flatypus, or at least the novels I've read! Not being a social historian, I've no idea whether these reflected current views of how women should think or behave. |
|
|
|
Post by Flatypus on Sept 2, 2009 6:30:51 GMT
Neither have I, so if his portrayal does not fit what we imagine were contemporary views, then I'd go with his writing and those like him and change what we imagine.
|
|
|
|
Post by jean on Sept 2, 2009 8:16:40 GMT
Yea, roughly what I said. Not even remotely roughly what you said, Flatypus. Aubrey distinguishes between what Dickens does badly and what he does supremely well. You wrote a few posts back that the novels are all equally tedious. That is not literary criticism of a very high order. Criticise Dickens by all means - nobody here has said he's above criticism. But try to be a bit better informed (and a bit better tempered) about it - and don't pass off your preferences as statements of fact. |
|
|
|
Post by jean on Sept 2, 2009 8:30:23 GMT
...you can see in Jane Austen when a teenager elopes with her lover, their concern is to get her back before he leaves her pregnant and alone, not Victorian get the hence from the door thou hast shamed (or its feminist equivalent of apostasy from virginal independence by submission to Patriarchal dominance). , certainly - and to force him to marry her however disastrous the marriage might be. Your tub-thumping leads you to ignore the subtleties, as usual. (How is it possible to have a thread largely about nineteenth-century fiction without a mention of George Eliot?) |
|
sinistral
Lovely, Happy & Gorgeous!
[N4:#####]
Posts: 291
|
Post by sinistral on Sept 2, 2009 8:50:39 GMT
Yea, roughly what I said. I don't like Dickens. and I've given my reasons why. Jean in her inimitable inversion of all things pops up to say I have no right to 'criticise' Dickens by explaining what I dislike about his mawkish meandering. Why not? Is he the only author exempt from personal likes and dislikes? If so why? Why should Dickens be exempt from personal preference like no other writer? I'm damned sure that there are many other writers whom people have not read because they have seen or heard of adaptations or by repute and making the effort to read would only confirm their prejudices. I submit that there are many authors whose works people know enough about to reject even though they have never read them. Who has read 'Mein Kampf'? Who needs to? Who has read 'Das Kapital'? (hardly any 'Marxist' I'm sure!). How many who pronounce on Islam have read the Qur'an? So what is so bloody special about Dickens? Sinistral has a point, that she has never read Hemingway. But she is familiar with the way Hemingway is presented, especially with the American Patriot overtones. Hemingway was a journalist, not a novelist. He represents to me, all I would strive against to be a writer, a recorder of bare facts with no depth of character psychology. Writing for a newspaper I was told to take him as example, when I take Hemingway as the 'example' of what to avoid if I ever want to read it. I might read for myself to check what is said of him or what he really wrote compared to adaptations. Probably, on the basis of stock Nazi films 'Is Paris burning' and 'Night of the Generals' I might never have read HH Kirst. But I read his 'Gunner Asch' series long before those novels were filmed. On the other hand, the covers and blurb put me off reading Sven Hassel and so do adaptations with Dickens. Would I find some great treasure there? I've never read Hassel so I don't know. I see no need to. I have looked at Dickens and found it not worth the effort, the adaptations were only improvement on stuff of no interest to me written in a style I can't handle about a world I want nothing to do with that offends me in everything I feel. So what's the Big Deal about Dickens compared to Thackeray or Trollope? Better still, RL Stevenson. The dramatised 'Jekyll and Hyde' bears no comparison to the text - nor for that matter does 'Frankenstein'. So what's the Big Deal? How about I start lamming into your 'ignorance' and 'prejudice' because you have not read Kirst or Balzac or Brecht or Wilde or you do not like Hemingway's style or prefer Sheridan to Fielding? Why is my preference the only one to be criticised? What is so bloody special about Dickens? Incidentally, I dislike (or at least can't be bothered with) Lovecraft and his predecessor Poe because I read them at 15 and at 15 they get to you. Not when you are grown up. Maybe Dickens the same. Hell's bells.....what a long winded way to entirely miss my point. I have never read Hemingway......I don't want to read Hemingway.....I never intend to read Hemingway..... So far,so good. Now,having said all that I am not going to start yarning on forever about what is wrong with his writing style or the content of his books. I know nowt about his works....so I stay quiet. It really is that simple. (But I know he loved cats,so in my book that's one up to Hemingway the man) |
|
