The Catcher in the Rye
discussion
The Most Overrated Books
Funny how this old place ain't the same.
Edward, Ulysses journey isn't stupid- have you read it? Tedious in parts maybe, but stupid?
Edward wrote: "Karen wrote: "Edward, Ulysses journey isn't stupid- have you read it? Tedious in parts maybe, but stupid?"Banal and pointless? I suppose that at the bottom line this is akin to the many opinions..."
No, I think every word Joyce wrote was intentional. Whether or not it is all understandable is another discussion. I enjoyed some of it very much but would never pretend that I got it all. A lot of it eluded me.
Sebastian wrote: "Nothing happens? Yes, quite right, literally nothing and I mean nothing is happening in the outer world. I am not being sarcastic here. Time is expressed in a new way, and for much of the novel we are in somebody's mind, be it Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, Molly etc. "You present a good case here for tackling 'Ulysses,' which I still hope to do. Thanks, Sebastian.
Edward wrote: "Karen wrote: "Edward wrote: "Karen wrote: "Edward, Ulysses journey isn't stupid- have you read it? Tedious in parts maybe, but stupid?"Banal and pointless? I suppose that at the bottom line this..."
I understand Edward, I really do. There is too much time for other great books- like Faulkner.
Edward wrote: "Intentional and understandable granted. How about meaningful?"Faulkner is meaningful Edward, and not over rated. We have to stay on topic.
Edward wrote: "Karen wrote: "Edward wrote: "Intentional and understandable granted. How about meaningful?"Faulkner is meaningful Edward, and not over rated. We have to stay on topic."
I want to. I've never rea..."
The topic is the most over-rated books.
Perhaps we could move on to the most over-rated composers. I propose:Wagner
Liszt
Rachmaninoff
Michael wrote: "Perhaps we could move on to the most over-rated Classical composers. I propose:Wagner
Liszt
Rachmaninoff"
Well at least you didn't mention Beethoven!! Franz Liszt was important though- he was like the first rock star.
Sure, he was a great performer, but a mediocre composer. Even his friend, Chopin, was dismissive of his talent.
I always thought the Beats were overrated. Ditto for Hunter S. Thompson. Today's list of overrated titles....
On the Road
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
A Clockwork Orange
Please please please, pretty please someone make a case for why my initial impression of these as drug addled bizarre messes is all wrong,
Michael wrote: "Sure, he was a great performer, but a mediocre composer. Even his friend, Chopin, was dismissive of his talent."Yes- that's what a rock star is. And he and Chopin remained friends? Interesting.
Edward wrote: "Karen wrote: "Edward wrote: "Intentional and understandable granted. How about meaningful?"Faulkner is meaningful Edward, and not over rated. We have to stay on topic."
I was asking about Joyce."
Oh, I think Joyce's Ulysses was meaningful in that it contained a unique mastery of language and as a novel it was revolutionary- influenced everyone who ever wrote a great novel after him. All you have to do is a search Edward; there is so much written about Joyce and his influence- he wrote a book about a Jew in a positive light, in 1905 Ireland. You don't have to like the book, there is a difference-you can certainly respect it.
The turn of the 20th century was just...huge is too small a descriptor...groundbreaking, not sufficient...it was mind-blowingly, overwhelmingly experimental and revolutionary across the art world...and the whole world, really. There were political movements, social movements, art movements, cultural movements, everything was moving and shaking and dancing and painting and writing in tornadoes of expression and pushing boundaries. It is a fascinating time to dive in and explore whether it is art or music or literature or politics or philosophy. Every idea had a "manifesto" attached to it. Pretty amazing. This is an article that doesn't even scratch the surface, but gives a brief launching point for further exploration:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/book...
Mochaspresso wrote: "I always thought the Beats were overrated. Ditto for Hunter S. Thompson. Today's list of overrated titles....
On the Road
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
[book:A Clockw..."
I'm with you Mochaspresso - those authors do not speak to me. But, I appreciate the "art"...so I'm not sure rating it really applies, over or under.
Leslie wrote: "The turn of the 20th century was just...huge is too small a descriptor...groundbreaking, not sufficient...it was mind-blowingly, overwhelmingly experimental and revolutionary across the art world....."Love your enthusiasm, thanks for the link! It is sad to look back to times then, and realize that now is nothing like that, I feel like I missed something. We could have a discussion as to why that is- it would be a lengthy one I'm sure.
Leslie wrote: "The turn of the 20th century was just...huge is too small a descriptor...groundbreaking, not sufficient...it was mind-blowingly, overwhelmingly experimental and revolutionary across the art world....."Thanks, Leslie. Conrad and Hardy were my first favorite classics. I don't think of Hardy as Victorian though. He was at odds with Victorian values (in Jude especially, but Tess as well), and always too sympathetic toward poor women to be called Victorian.
It all starts with the camera and communism :)
Two articles on "The Most Difficult Books" http://www.themillions.com/2009/10/in...
1621: The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
1667: Paradise Lost by John Milton
1704: A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
1747-8: Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
1759-67: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
1851: Moby Dick by Herman Melville
1922-62: The Cantos by Ezra Pound
1927: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
1964: The Sonnets by Ted Berrigan
1969: The Dream Songs by John Berryman
1969: Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
1974: Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...
Edward wrote: "Karen wrote: "Edward wrote: "Karen wrote: "Edward wrote: "Intentional and understandable granted. How about meaningful?"Faulkner is meaningful Edward, and not over rated. We have to stay on topic..."
Well, I wouldn't lump Ullysses in with Naked Lunch.
Karen wrote: "Well, I wouldn't lump Ullysses in with Naked Lunch."Well that totally shoots down my Casual Friday plan! ;)
I agree...how could The Catcher in the Rye, The Stranger and The Great Gatsby and Ulysses be on the same list as Twilight?
Leslie wrote: "The turn of the 20th century was just...huge is too small a descriptor...groundbreaking, not sufficient...it was mind-blowingly, overwhelmingly experimental and revolutionary across the art world....."Yes, whether we are talking about literature, painting, or music, these are not particularly exciting times.
I like what I like. You like what you like. We may not agree. We talk 10 yrs. later. The list has changed. I like what I like. You like what you like. We may not agree, again. Writers are different. Readers are different. Seems pretty simple and clear to me.
This will no doubt sound odd coming from a fan, but I think the Harry Potter books are highly over-rated. The first three are great, but from there the quality slid ever downward.
Elizabeth wrote: "This will no doubt sound odd coming from a fan, but I think the Harry Potter books are highly over-rated. The first three are great, but from there the quality slid ever downward."Do you think she really had much to do with writing anything after hollywood got involved?
That's a new thought! Of course she wrote the books, but the movies might have put a lot of pressure on her. The publishers apparently wanted a book every couple of years so they were pushed out with a minimum (if any!)of editing. And it shows!
G.T. wrote: "I like what I like. You like what you like. We may not agree. We talk 10 yrs. later. The list has changed. I like what I like. You like what you like. We may not agree, again. Writers are differ..."In this thread the subject is a list of books people have continued to read and admire over a long period of time. It's not a bestseller list that changes with trends in what is popular, but a list based on qualities that continue to resonate enough for many people to consider them important reading. So the question is, what are those qualities? We may disagree in what we like, but that doesn't make those qualities arbitrary.
Leslie wrote: "Karen wrote: "Well, I wouldn't lump Ullysses in with Naked Lunch."Well that totally shoots down my Casual Friday plan! ;)"
Lol !!! Good one.
Here's one of the zillions of ways to consider books that consistently make it into debates about whether they are momentous works of art or overrated. Think about the effect they had and have on writers and the world of writing fiction in general (despite the effect they have on individual readers).The perhaps apocryphal (definitely false) quote that is often misattributed to Brian Eno fits here: "The Velvet Underground's first album only sold a few thousand copies, but everyone who bought one formed a band."
I'm stuck (yet again) in my attempt to finish Ulysses, but I can't quite bring myself to reject the novel as "stupid".
I also cannot dismiss Naked Lunch ... although I find to be powerful in sections and weak in others. Inconsistent.
A young J.G. Ballard was, I'm assuming, inspired to find his voice by his discovery of Burroughs' writings. Joyce inspired how many writers from the modernist era and beyond Joyce? George Saunders would not be the writer he is today were it not for how powerfully Kurt Vonnegut Jr's writing connected with him. I think it's worth looking at books from this perspective, too.
Writing fiction (or literature, if you prefer) and poetry (I'm compelled to add) is a long, fascinating to many, convoluted and tortured history of men and women stricken with "the midnight disease" (thank you, Michael Chabon).
I have vituperatively tongue lashed (keyboard lashed?) my fair share of writers whose work doesn't work for me in this forum. Trying to drag Cormac McCarthy's works down into the mud of literary pretension revealed for all the world to see was one of my favorite blood sport pastimes for awhile there. But in the moments where I think I am most myself, I'm more sanguine and mellow about almost anyone who has the courage and peculiar mental twist to work long and hard alone at something that essentially no one really has to do (and no one else is inherently obligated to give a fuck about).
I think I'm repeating themes (maybe actual passages verbatim for all I know) that I've expressed before in goodreads posts. But at times (like today) it feels small and mean to me to dismiss almost any book as stupid and meaningless with such alacrity. These books do not exist except in interaction with a reader. So when we find a book to be wonderful or to be hogwash, it's not anything inherent in the book itself but in the dance that we had and have with it.
Of course, it is differences of opinions (and tastes) that make going to the race track such a grand day out. So I'll balance the rant above with the notion that clear articulations of how a book failed to interact in a valuable or pleasurable way to any one of us as readers is one of the reasons so many of us go on and on (as I do) in this forum.
But a quote that has always stayed with me as a core truth is e.e. cumming quote from Rilke in his Harvard lectures:
"Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing to be so little reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them."
One of the operative words in that quote is "art." I personally think that when SOME successful or aspiring writers of genre sit down at their keyboards (or with pen and paper), they are practicing craft. There is nothing wrong with craft. But it falls short of this mysterious (or at least complicated) thing we call art. What produces and what results from craft is different than what motivates a human to attempt art and what happens to a human who beholds it.
That is all for now.
Mark wrote: "Here's one of the zillions of ways to consider books that consistently make it into debates about whether they are momentous works of art or overrated. Think about the effect they had and have on w..."10-10-10!!
Mark wrote: "Here's one of the zillions of ways to consider books that consistently make it into debates about whether they are momentous works of art or overrated. Think about the effect they had and have on w..."Good one, Mark. Thanks for the reminder about influences. A novel can be uneven and still exert a powerful influence/inspiration for later novelists. Love the Rilke quote. That's beautiful enough to brain-engrave.
"Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing to be so little reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them."
"One of the operative words in that quote is "art." "
Yep.
Kallie wrote: "Good one, Mark."Thanks very much for saying so, Kallie.
It's odd, I've leafed through may different translations of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet (purchased one or two) and I often find something along the lines of the line that cummings quoted in the lecture (which I have in book form), but it's never turned quite as elegantly as the way cummings presented it. I wish I could find which translation he was using (or I wonder if he translated it from the German himself ... I suspect he might have mastered more than one language, but don't really know).
The quote has been engraved in my brain since I encountered it many a year ago.
Edward wrote: "The one I had most difficulty with was not on the list. Some robber baron did; "How to Win Friends and Influence People." The suggestion of "winning friends" and "influencing" seems German in the former and worthy of disinterest in the latter. .."That was deep Edward! Here are:
Twelve Things This Book Will Do For You
This section was included in the original 1936 edition as a single page list, which preceded the main content of the book, showing a prospective reader what to expect from it. The 1981 edition omits points 6 to 8 and 11.
Get you out of a mental rut, give you new thoughts, new visions, new ambitions.
Enable you to make friends quickly and easily.
Increase your popularity.
Help you to win people to your way of thinking.
Increase your influence, your prestige, your ability to get things done.
Enable you to win new clients, new customers.
Increase your earning power.
Make you a better salesman, a better executive.
Help you to handle complaints, avoid arguments, keep your human contacts smooth and pleasant.
Make you a better speaker, a more entertaining conversationalist.
Make the principles of psychology easy for you to apply in your daily contacts.
Help you to arouse enthusiasm among your associates.
The book has six major sections. The core principles of each section are quoted below.
One thing it doesn't promise to do is make you MORE HONEST.
Reminds me of the first movie that Little $hirley Temple was in: STAND UP AND CHEER. You probably remember how the president created the Dept of Optimism:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pshgQ69r3D0
Optimism must have been the dope they were trying to feed the people then. Listen to the whole video because right at the last is a children's song that the teacher is teaching the kids to sing. "We will fight for the Emperor for we are the Roman soldiers."
http://m.thenation.com/article/175744...
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critic...
Both during and after his terms, and continuing today, there has been much criticism of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Critics have questioned not only his policies and positions, but also the general consolidation of power that occurred due to his responses to the crises of the Depression and World War II. Also controversial was the unprecedented length of his tenure as President.
By the middle of his second term, much criticism of Roosevelt centered on fears that he was heading toward a dictatorship, by attempting to seize control of the Supreme Court in the Court-packing incident of 1937, attempting to eliminate dissent within the Democratic party in the South during the 1938 elections, and by breaking the tradition established by George Washington of not seeking a third term when he again ran for re-election in 1940. As two historians explain, "In 1940, with the two-term issue as a weapon, anti-New Dealers... argued that the time had come to disarm the 'dictator' and to dismantle the machinery."[1] These criticisms largely ended after the Attack on Pearl Harbor.
Did you see my last comment on the Lexington The Catcher in the Rye reading group? I have decided that when Holden gets the ax (with the allusion to Holden being General Motors Holding Company or a reference to HOLDEN the car that GM bought the factory and rights to make and turned the factory into a factory to make things for a war in the 30's when there was no war being talked about, just being prepared for.) Well the AX is fascism. When you look at the symbols of Fascism it is interesting that the EAGLE has got the AX. Since Holden's mother country is America she has been nervous since Allie(s) died and now he has to tell her that he got the AX. Page 107.
No I didn't see that comment on the Lexington reading group. Oh, would you care to tell us about it?
Karen wrote: "No I didn't see that comment on the Lexington reading group. Oh, would you care to tell us about it?"Here is a link:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
There was a lot in that one post and one might need to read the others to understand the context. I know that Edward has been following our discussion but since it was the last day I wasn't sure he saw my comment.
We have become some sort of dysfunctional family. Perhaps it is time to disperse.
Mark wrote: "But a quote that has always stayed with me as a core truth is e.e. cumming quote from Rilke in his Harvard lectures: "Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing to be so little reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them."..."
Beautiful!
When I read that I thought of The Velveteen Rabbit. I heard a woman speak about William Faulkner's book As I Lay Dying in this kind of "knowing" and "loving" this book.
Michael wrote: "We have become some sort of dysfunctional family. Perhaps it is time to disperse."Ya think?
Michael wrote: "We have become some sort of dysfunctional family. Perhaps it is time to disperse."I'm sorry if I have contributed to this dysfunction in my most recent post.
This thread is like the Hotel California: you can check out anytime you like but you cannever leave.
S.W. wrote: "This thread is like the Hotel California: you can check out anytime you like but you cannever leave."That is true also, with a bit of Hotel New Hampshire.
This thread started with Salinger, but we are now deep into Kafka.
Michael wrote: "This thread started with Salinger, but we are now deep into Kafka."I've never read Kafka but feel as though I should.
Or are we now in deep Dada?
Renee wrote: "Or are we now in deep Dada?"I did a Dada piece for an art history class...I should try to dig it up. I also used my boy dog for a very fun art nouveau poster. "Tailor Nouveau" it was called.
Renee wrote: "Or are we now in deep Dada?"Oh, Mama!
Michael wrote: "Renee wrote: "Or are we now in deep Dada?"Oh, Mama!"
Oh Baby Mama, Dada.
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The density, length, nothingness and stupid non-story of Ulysses is only exceeded by that of its sequel. Joyce sa..."
Length? Most definitely plays a part in it, I mean close to 800 pages and only one day? I'd deduct something is at work there.
Stupidity and nonsense? Such as? I did anticipated that the book is really hard to get into but now you're basically emulating the fox from Aesop's fable. Surely on the surface having Bloom being turned into a woman because of his femininity might be odd at first, especially when the author says that Bello penetrates Poldy's vulva elbow-deep. I could go on for there are lots of this paradoxes but there isn't the need for it.
Nothing happens? Yes, quite right, literally nothing and I mean nothing is happening in the outer world. I am not being sarcastic here. Time is expressed in a new way, and for much of the novel we are in somebody's mind, be it Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, Molly etc.