Disrespecting a "classic"

[peruvianskys]

I'll second Playful Pony in saying that the LOTR books sucked reading through. Tolkien was not all that great a writer. Like...sure. Describe stuff, but get to the bloddy point one of these days.

I agree, Tolkien is like a weird ordeal where actually reading it is not fun at all but afterwards it's fun to remember the story itself. But the writing is a huge fucking slog.

 

[Nerexor]

The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce. Because pretentiousness. Everything is overblown and incomprehensible, and is too busy making references to other works of literature to actually competently tell a story. He's the chief offender in the literary circle jerk materials. By this I mean the tendency of certain writers to design their texts to only make sense to people who have read a bunch of other books that qualify as literature according to a bunch of stuffy old white guys. So if you're in the elite club of everyone who suffered through this particular list of mediocre books and remember them very well, then you can actually decode what the author is saying. Instead of, you know, just SAYING IT. Literary Criticism professors love this stuff though, because it's the reason they have a job. And since their job is to decide what counts as high art, they naturally classify the stuff that only they can understand rather than stuff that is actually good.

Leaving the theoretical shortcomings behind, the book is written strangely and is very difficult to follow. The plot is more or less "Boy decides being a repressed Irish Catholic sucks and leaves to be an artist." But there aren't a lot of details given as to why (apparently he saw a girls ankles in a stream, I think? and that gave him sexy thoughts for some reason? It's been a while since I suffered through it and I'm not about to do it again.) and as to his success as an artist or what kind of artist he is or... anything. Dialogue is also hard to decipher as Joyce felt he was too good for quotation marks, making it hard to tell who is talking to whom about what.

This book has always felt to me like looking at a very uncomfortable statue. A master sculptor might be able to point out all kinds of interesting things about its structure, but everyone else is just going to feel sick by looking at it for any length of time. And at the end of the day, it's just a fugly statue, and unless you are very determined to be a master sculptor and figure out how this hideous thing was constructed, stay the hell away from it if you value your sanity.

I don't remember that as a particularly difficult book. I didn't find it that memorable either. But if you think that's difficult/pretentious try reading Finnigan's Wake!

Portrait of the Artist was the only Joyce work I was subjected to in its entirety, its quite possible my beefs also extend to his other works like Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses.

 

[Baldry]

I'll second Playful Pony in saying that the LOTR books sucked reading through. Tolkien was not all that great a writer. Like...sure. Describe stuff, but get to the bloddy point one of these days.

I agree, Tolkien is like a weird ordeal where actually reading it is not fun at all but afterwards it's fun to remember the story itself. But the writing is a huge fucking slog.

I'm with these people. The books are so boring(fellowship, towers and return I mean, haven't had a chance to read the others even though I intend to), I enjoy some bits and I understand it's meant to be world building but Christ is it long.

 

[Xdeser2]

I hate with a fiery passion the idea that just because something is a "classic" that you cant rip on it, critisize it, ETC.

 

[twistedmic]

Most books I was 'forced to read' in HS sucked.

I think that's the main reason why you hated them. If you have to do something, it's unlikely that you'll enjoy doing it. If you do it of your own free will, you're more likely to enjoy that particular activity.

 

[Mark Hardigan]

I'll second Playful Pony in saying that the LOTR books sucked reading through. Tolkien was not all that great a writer. Like...sure. Describe stuff, but get to the bloddy point one of these days.

And sense someone mentioned Star Wars *flame shield activate* I find that the prequels are easier to sit through than the originals. Not sure why that is, there's just something about them that's more enjoyable, Darth Vader and mediclorians be damned.

A word to the wise: when you say that someone is not a good writer, but you don't know the difference between sense and since... well that lowers my opinion of you quite a bit. Dislike a work all you like, call a book bad all you like, but don't call someone a bad writer without being an excellent writer yourself. Otherwise you're just spouting platitudes at best, and showing everyone that you know nothing about what you're speaking of at worst.

I digress. In terms of addressing your opinion, I disagree with it, but can understand where you're coming from. I think that Lord of the Rings is one of those polarizing books. I've talked to many people, and while a few of them said, "Oh, it's okay," the majority of them either thought it was a dull, boring chore, or one of the greatest fantasy novels ever written. It doesn't read like a fantasty book, and I think that's the reason why so may love and hate it. It reads like a history book, which in my opinion lends more credence and believability to the story, but certainly turns a lot of potential readers off.

In terms of Old Town... well I personally don't like it. I find it dry, however I understood what it was trying to accomplish. That -- and not because of its age -- is what makes it a classic. It examined the power and simplicity of small town living. It examines how the living, going about their daily lives, don't truly understand or admire the beauty within the world. I won't go into too much detail, but that's the central message of the story. That's why it's a classic, because it said something, and back when it was written it invoked reaction with its audience.

With that said, however, Our Town is not a bunch of crap. It's a piece of literature. It's very well written. Some people love it, some people like it, some people hate it, and some people -- like me -- could take it or leave it. Trying to assert that it's a piece of crap and only respected because of its age makes you come off as extremely arrogant and pretty much screams, "I know absolutely nothing about the subject that I am talking about." To say that it's a piece of crap because you personally found it dry is to say that everything ever written is a piece of crap, because even the most brilliantly written story in history is going to have its detractors.

With that said, the idea that something needs to be liked or honored or respected because it's a classic is complete crap. It's what breeds the pretentious notion of, "Oh, you didn't get it. You must be some sort of art-hating philistine." Personally, I don't like Citizen Kane. I think it's boring, not very well paced and very plodding in many places. With that said, I think it's one of the most beautifully shot films of all time. Its technical work within it is amazing, even if its story leaves a lot to be desired. And that's the reason why it's a classic. Not because of its plodding, dull story-line, but because it did certain things with cinematography that no film (or very few films) had ever done, or had ever done right. Not because it's a genuinely good film.

TL;DR -- Beauty is in the eye of a beholder. Hold your opinions and don't let others sway you from them, but do not assert that something is crap because you don't like it. If you do that, you're no better than the pretentious people telling you, "You just didn't get it."

 

[ShogunGino]

I found it dreadfully difficult to read Jane Eyre and Upton Sinclare's The Jungle. The first had just a few moments where I thought it was okay, the rest was a lot of dull inner monologue descriptions that went on way too long. The latter, while a solid piece of muckraking history, was definitely NOT written for this generation of people. Enough things have changed so that some of its shocking moments are lost upon us, and the moments of overbearing socialism preaching bored me to tears. Aside from that, it was just one depressing moment after another and another and another and another.

BTW, captcha says "It's Super Delicious". Not the best thing to say when talking about "The Jungle".

Back OT, having studied a lot of film and animation, there are so many things I've seen that have been called "classic" that I either find decent yet overrated, or just not good at all.

I'll just categorized them. *Flames shields up*

Decent yet overrated:
The Princess Bride
Silence of the Lambs
Fiddler on the Roof
A Clockwork Orange
Star Wars: A New Hope
Vertigo
Terminator 2
Scott Pilgrim vs the World (if "modern cult classic" counts)

Really not that good:
Empire Strikes Back (most overrated movie I can think of)
Blade Runner
Tim Burton's Batman films
EDIT: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
The Graduate
The Little Mermaid (because Ariel is terrible)
The Transformers G1 cartoon (this is one of the few things where I feel rage for)
You could put a bunch of American 80's cartoons here as well.

 

[DrunkenMonkey]

I'm going to say Les Miserables, only half way.

The parts where dialogue and action happened and even some monologues like "The Tempest in the Brain" were awesome. On the other hand when Hugo gets into his history and theory groove it becomes a massive slog. You can't skip the history sections because you're afraid the history is going to add depth or references to other characters. You can try to skip the theory parts which is basically just Hugo shedding light on the historical background which is supposed to add to the story, but the Philosophy posed goes so far beyond my head that I feel like an idiot when they are over. Sad part is if I understood the Philosophy applied in his theories I would probably like the book a couple of times more. He seems to be in love with describing famous french architecture which really gets me confused, but I have to put it in context that the work was written at a time when most French architecture wasn't about a century old. So yeah really mixed feelings, and I wouldn't be surprised if people put it down on the first chapter despite the critical acclaim around the book.

 

[L0dest0ne]

I thought The Grapes of Wrath was a pretty overrated book. It had literally zero character development and the way it was presented was dull: the joads went here, the joads did that. Zzzzzzzzz...
Not to mention the incomprehensible language.

 

[Shadowstar38]

A word to the wise: when you say that someone is not a good writer, but you don't know the difference between sense and since... well that lowers my opinion of you quite a bit. Dislike a work all you like, call a book bad all you like, but don't call someone a bad writer without being an excellent writer yourself. Otherwise you're just spouting platitudes at best, and showing everyone that you know nothing about what you're speaking of at worst.

When it really counts, i.e hobby writing and English papers, I take the time to spell check it. I didn't think I'd have to make pulitzer prize material to state an opinion on something and go about my business. So my bad I guess.

 

[Shadowstar38]

The Transformers G1 cartoon (this is one of the few things where I feel rage for)

Why rage? Because it's that bad or because it's that overblown.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

I really don't like The Catcher in the Rye. I probably would have liked it more, and paid enough attention to the text, if the book actually got me to like Holden Caulfield. As far as I'm concerned, it's about a compulsive liar that gets kicked out of school and bums around New York for a while, and nothing more.

I could never get into Caulfield's mindset enough to read between the lines because I never liked him. The book takes a lot of effort to fully understand, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in this case having an unlikeable protagonist inhibited my ability to think like him and truly understand what is going on in his head. Mostly, it's his mental and emotional instability that I don't understand. I'm quite a stable person, which makes it hard to comprehend what makes someone think like Caulfield does.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

I can't remember the name of it beside it being called "Summer (something)" but it was just absolutely depressing.

I only ended up reading the first 50 pages or so and had to stop because it was so depressing. The main character is a fat white kid who body boards. The first 50 pages were all about him calling himself a loser in every possible aspect. I just stopped because I felt slightly suicidal...

 

[The_Echo]

Oh God. I have a lot of these. Literally almost every required-reading I've ever done, I disliked.

Spoiler: The List

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The House on Mango Street
The Stranger
The Giver
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night's Dream
1984
To Kill A Mockingbird
Several Edgar Allen Poe stories, including The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Casque of Amontillado
Things Fall Apart
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
EDIT: Also The Things They Carried. Not bad per se, but couldn't catch my interest.

There are more, but those are the only ones I can remember. It's easier to list the ones I did like. Which are Of Mice and Men, Hamlet and The Great Gatsby. Especially Of Mice and Men, to which I have been known to refer as "my personal Bible."

I feel that there are too many there to go into great detail about why I don't like them. The lazy, blanket statement is that they're all powerfully boring. And that seems to be a common statement when you read these in school. There are plenty of not-boring classics. For example, the Divine Comedy or the Odyssey. Or more modern classics, like A Clockwork Orange or I Am Legend. (Some schools even teach John Green's Looking for Alaska!) I don't know about you guys, but wouldn't it be easier to learn from a book if you actually enjoyed it? Not that I'm completely sure of the educational value of any work of fiction.

I could do a few specifics, though. In the case of Romeo and Juliet, the characters might as well have been brain-dead chimps. Honestly. How can people call it romantic? It's stupid is what it is. Nobody, nobody used their head in that play. When it came to The Stranger, I was actually looking forward to some kind of adventure, having read the blurb on the back of the book. What did I get instead? A drawn-out narrative that overstayed its welcome by page three. The main character is the most stereotypically French man I could possibly think of, and the supposed "climax" is so contrived it can never possibly make sense.

The absolute worst offender on that list is The House on Mango Street. This more than any other book would I recommend you never pick up. It's told in a series of only-vaguely-related vignettes, meaning that there's no real plot going on. This makes it nigh-impossible to care about any of the characters, which really puts a damper on the almost-end of the book, where--SPOILERS--the protagonist and narrator is raped. Not that you would necessarily know, as the description of the event is vague at best. I think the worst part is that I honestly can't see where this novella fits into the educational sphere. I sure as hell didn't learn anything from it. Except that I hate it.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I couldn't make it past the second chapter of The Hobbit. Tolkein's writing is just sort of... long. I've not seen any Lord of the Rings films, though my dad adores them. Maybe I should watch that instead.

 

[Icaruss]

Catcher in the rye to this day i've no fething idea how it no only become popular but a beloved classic escapes.Holden whines and moans more then any other character (or person for that matter) in existence.I feel no empathy or connection to this spoiled, ***** boy, whelp.I will never forgive the florida school system for making me read this overhyped waste of paper..


The orginal Dawn of the dead (Come to think of it pretty much every George A Remero movie expect Night) amateurish acting(did he just cast his friends) Forgettable character who can all be described in three words, often less ("Cool" black guy,Dingus Mcgee,Brain dead,Violent shithead,Cannon Fodder and Bambi)And laughable special effects(Don't give me that its old ,Special effect sucked back then the Thing,Blade runner,Aliens and fething star trek the movie all were made around the same time and all look light years better, I fully understand the budget restraints played a part but my god a face full of pancake make up for each zombie and thats it?Are you shitting me the first time i saw a zombie i giggled,I NEVER GIGGLE).
I watched the remake first and after hearing non stop for fething years about how great this movie was from, old school horror nerds from websites,oddly enough even older family members who aren't big into horror i finally bought i copy i was so dishearted by this movie that it almost put me off zombies.I have never been so let down by a movie



2001 a Space odyssey, my god is this movie boring.Yes it has some profound moments and A SINGLE awesome character(HAL) but its not worth snogging though hours of tedium and shit not happening!It toke me three seperate attempts to watch the whole thing.Kept falling asleep or just wandering of.

 

[Gideon Rogers]

The Winter of our Discontent. My dad made me read when I was fourteen. There was no plot. none. zero. nada. diddly-squat. Now if you would please excuse me, I going to cry in the corner while burning pictures of my dad.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

I don't hate it but I showed Blade Runner to a few people and they disliked it.

I'm still in shock.

I've seen Bladerunner recently and while I don't dislike it I definitely didn't think it should be considered a classic. It was distinctly unmemorable. The only things I recall from it are a pale guy who I know is a robot making a long but barely intelligible monologue in a steel room and close ups of Harrison Ford.

 

[ShogunGino]

The Transformers G1 cartoon (this is one of the few things where I feel rage for)

Why rage? Because it's that bad or because it's that overblown.

That's a bit of a long story. I'll try to sum up. From a quality perspective, the animation continuity is shameful. They make numerous mistakes from mere shot-to-shots that even basic animation students would be disgraced at making. Characters frequently go off-model and have inconsistent abilities (like Optimus's white cargo section) due to the rushed out-sourced nature of the show's production. Yes, this all really gets on my nerves.

From a less technical perspective, I think the dialog is awful. I have an aversion to puns in general, and the 80's had loads of bad puns, and bad puns is how Transformers tried to be funny. There were numerous characters who had flat characterization and were introduced solely to promote a toy, then disappear. I also have a heavy aversion to toy market driven shows.

Starscream sucks. He just does. Never have I seen anyone start a character trend like him (as in, second-in-command who openly tries to overthrow his leader), and be so absolutely shit at it. And his voice makes me want to kill things.

The only things I kind of like in the show are Optimus, Megatron (though I think the fact that he transforms into a gun is just stupid), and Soundwave, because I like strong, silent, EFFICIENT characters. However, these do not outweigh the problems that I have mentioned.

On a more theoretical side, I blame a lot of American 80's cartoons for the long drought of respect for animation in Western countries, because they made animation synonymous with toys, and as I said, I hate toy-based animated shows because so many of them are just terribly constructed, and Transformers, I think, represents everything I think is wrong about how animation studios have ever viewed the medium; the idea that animation doesn't have to be anything more than a cool concept and lots of things to make into toys for children to beg their parents to buy them.

When I hear Transformers fans bitching their little heads off about how they think Michael Bay shat on a legacy, I say the legacy was shit to begin with.

Wow, I guess I didn't just sum it up there. Oh, well.

 

[Loner Jo Jo]

I really don't know why they insist on making kids read plays for school. Plays are not meant to be read, and no matter how hard you try, you are not going to get the same effect. You only do plays and literature in general a disservice by doing this. I know a lot of people who find Shakespeare boring, but I bet you that if they went to see one of his plays, especially his comedies, they would warm up to him.

Anyways, I personally liked Our Town. Mind you, I went to see it, and it's not my favorite, but whatever.

As for other classics I don't like, I'll give the most recent example: Brave New World

Spoiler: Spoilers ahead!

I liked the idea behind it. I love dystopian stories, and to see one where the people living in that society are happy with their lives (if only because of the conditioning they were forced to undergo) was refreshing. Then you meet the protagonist, who you presume is going to be the one to buck the system and give us our conflict in the story. But no! He ends up going to a Native American reservation on a vacation, and meets a kid who is actually European, but raised in that lifestyle. It ends up being so incredibly racist, and unapologetically so.

I understand that the book was written in 1932. There are some instances of racism that I don't bat an eye at because of the time it was written. (For instance, the fact that he referred to black people as Negroes.) But this was just too much for me. They end up calling the kid (who really isn't a kid because he's probably 18 or so) The Savage. He portrays the people living on these reservations as backwards and twisted and evil. I would understand it if it was only for characterization purposes, but it goes beyond that for me at least.

That and the protagonist turns out to not be the protagonist at all. There is a rumor going on about him that something went wrong during his incubation which caused him to be short and odd. (There's no such thing as pregnancy anymore, only test tube babies.) So, he just plans to bring The Savage/John back to London to show off so that he can be hot shit. All his life, he has been rejecting the conditioning forced on him and the practices of the new society, and now he suddenly wants to fit in only to get back at his boss for scolding him? Really? In the end, nothing changes. The protagonist and his best friend, who agrees with him but always fit in better due to his appearance and outward behaviors, are shipped off to some island where all the other people who have rejected conditioning go to. (Or at least, that's what was happening when I stopped reading it. I haven't been able to bring myself to read the last chapter.)

The whole bit about the reservation and John are what get me the most. It is totally unnecessary to prove the point of the novel. It does provide a counterpoint to the dystopian society of the novel, but the reader's life is already the counterpoint. Their society is so dramatically different from our - during 1932 and today. They are taught to be promiscuous, but giggle at the terms mother and father and blush at the thought of pregnancy. They are given drugs by the government to get high on when they are feeling down in order to keep everyone perfectly happy. They are raised in facilities by age groups and classes and given conditioning during their sleep to teach them that they love their life as whatever group they are. Obviously, this is nothing like our life.

I don't know whether the author was trying to show that neither the life of a person on a reservation (or at least, what he imagines their life to be) nor the life of this new society are good - that a middle ground must be achieved. But John is shown to be the hero, so does he like the reservation's attitudes? It's impossible to tell. He does a good job showing that even though everyone is happy in this new system, it is still bad, but it becomes so murky about the old, old, old system. That and John is shown to be the hero by beating women and terrorizing children and causing riots.

In short, if you couldn't tell by now, I really hate that book.

About classics in general, I do think that most of them serve a purpose, if only historically, so that we may better understand other people in other times and places. However, personally, who cares if you don't like something? The way I see it, so long as you gave it a fair chance by reading it or watching it or whatever, then your opinion has validity in relation to yourself.

 

[Zuljeet]

"Madame Bovary" still gives me dry heaves. If Gustave Flaubert were alive today, I'D GIVE HIM WHAT FOR.