Fake Classics
November 29th 2006 06:08
What exactly is a classic? What is the difference between a true classic and made up ones? I can telll if a book is a bad one or good one but how do you determine whether it's a classic or not? And if you read a book that is awful but demonstrably a classic, how do you react to it? Can we disagree that it's not a classic? Here are some classics which I do not think fit the label at all. It's just a random selection.
5: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD BY HARPER LEE: OK. The book is not bad. The story has some punch but is written in a flat style. Some of my friends have said that the movie is infinitely better but I haven't seen the movie. But as a standalone, the book is just boring.
4: CATCHER IN THE RYE BY J.D.SALINGER: Now this one is not only a not-classic but one of the worst books I ever had the misfortune to read. And I don't get it. Neither what the novel is or why it should garner so much adulation.
3: ULYSSES BY JAMES JOYCE: This novel reguarly tops the best novels of the century polls. It's not just a classic. It is supposed to be one of the finest achievements of modern literature if not the finest. The long and pondering wordfest which happens in a day and takes place in Dublin. It's not that it is badly written. It is well-written in parts but Joyce is in so love with his own style that he does not make any concessions for the reader. But, even if you put all the effort into it you are not sure what you have got at the end. There are hundreds of wonderful book out there. I don't want to scratch it out of the Classics list yet, only wish to see it removed from the No.1 position.
2: MADAME BOVARY BY GUASTAVE FALUBERT: If Ulyssses is supposed the greatest book of the twentieth century, this is supposed to be the greatest book of the nineteenth. I personally think the initial reaction to the book was from the vulgraity trial it had to meet and once the victimhood had been conferred on it, it was elevated from the drab to the heavenly. It is supposed to have initiated realism into art scene but reading now the story is cloying and overly sentimental. It is also written badly. Not in the same league of Stendhal and Hugo. If there is a revision of criticism that yanks down something from a lofty pedestal, Madame Bovary is the first one to desrve it.
1: WAR AND PEACE BY LEO TOLSTOY: I have come across people calling it the greatest book in world literature. Is it? The war scenes are good. But when Tolstoy goes on and on about upperclass vagaries, one longs to say, SHUT UP! An excess of self-indulgence mars what could have been a good novel.
5: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD BY HARPER LEE: OK. The book is not bad. The story has some punch but is written in a flat style. Some of my friends have said that the movie is infinitely better but I haven't seen the movie. But as a standalone, the book is just boring.
4: CATCHER IN THE RYE BY J.D.SALINGER: Now this one is not only a not-classic but one of the worst books I ever had the misfortune to read. And I don't get it. Neither what the novel is or why it should garner so much adulation.
3: ULYSSES BY JAMES JOYCE: This novel reguarly tops the best novels of the century polls. It's not just a classic. It is supposed to be one of the finest achievements of modern literature if not the finest. The long and pondering wordfest which happens in a day and takes place in Dublin. It's not that it is badly written. It is well-written in parts but Joyce is in so love with his own style that he does not make any concessions for the reader. But, even if you put all the effort into it you are not sure what you have got at the end. There are hundreds of wonderful book out there. I don't want to scratch it out of the Classics list yet, only wish to see it removed from the No.1 position.
2: MADAME BOVARY BY GUASTAVE FALUBERT: If Ulyssses is supposed the greatest book of the twentieth century, this is supposed to be the greatest book of the nineteenth. I personally think the initial reaction to the book was from the vulgraity trial it had to meet and once the victimhood had been conferred on it, it was elevated from the drab to the heavenly. It is supposed to have initiated realism into art scene but reading now the story is cloying and overly sentimental. It is also written badly. Not in the same league of Stendhal and Hugo. If there is a revision of criticism that yanks down something from a lofty pedestal, Madame Bovary is the first one to desrve it.
1: WAR AND PEACE BY LEO TOLSTOY: I have come across people calling it the greatest book in world literature. Is it? The war scenes are good. But when Tolstoy goes on and on about upperclass vagaries, one longs to say, SHUT UP! An excess of self-indulgence mars what could have been a good novel.
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Comment by Cibbuano
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Comment by nagster
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I haven't been able to understand why Catcher in the Rye gets so much adulation.