Well, if a society is at the point where they've already got the entire reproductive process from conception to birth taking place on an assembly line, I'd say they're probably entitled to take a little break from innovation!
Still, if I'm going to lose my individuality and independent thought, it might as well be in an environment of luxury and pleasure.
I've sometimes wondered to what extent Huxley's viewpoint in that novel was the result of being the artistic black sheep in a family of renowned scientific utilitarians.
And I'd like to see a film version of BNW that portrays the World State not as futuristic relative to the time of the film(which in the 1979 version looked like The Jetsons), but as Huxley is supposed to have envisioned it at the time of writing, ie. an effed-up version of the Roaring 20s: assembly-lines as Henry Ford might actually have built them, promiscuous flappers with birth-control belts etc.
Decades ago, I read Percy Greg's Across The Zodiac, which is historically important as one of the earliest science-fiction novels. The protagonist goes to Mars in a vessel powered by "apergy" (and christened The Astronaut) and has conflicts with the human-like Martians. What I remember most is the misogyny and racism, which felt over-the-top even by Victorian standards (Wikipedia confirms that Greg was "violently reactionary").
Sounds reminiscent of those Steampunk/Babbage-Card alternate histories.
I think Dieselpunk would be closer to the relevant time-period for Huxley's vision. Not that I'm an expert on either genre.
In 1998, there was another TV version of BNW, with Leonard Nimoy as Mustapha Mond. All references to Our Ford were omitted(probably because that would just be incomprehensible to most viewers at the time), and the sex orgies were made to look like 90s kids out clubbing.
One thing I did like about that version was that the savages were portrayed basically like a more rustic version of contemporary American suburbanites, thus reminding viewers that the people of the World State would them in utter contempt.
Ah, yes--Dieselpunk sounds more appropriate (hadn't heard of that specific term).
More "wouldn't have read", but a friend once wanted to co-create a musical version of The Prisoner of Zenda and asked me to read it. I read that and its sequel Rubert of Hentzau. The improbabilities didn't bother me much, but sheer highfalutin-ness of Rudolph Rassendyll set my teeth on edge.
I read, "Forever Amber," at 14 or 15. Found it in the family library. It was a historical romance. I remember being turned on by all of the sexiness. I think it might be interesting to read again. I think I will look it up and see how a read at 80 compares.
My mother told me that Forever Amber was the book that her friends were passing around secretly (and hiding from their parents) when she was in high school (class of 1948). So I read it. 25 years later it didn’t seem that hot…
My mother told me that Forever Amber was the book that her friends were passing around secretly (and hiding from their parents) when she was in high school (class of 1948).
The book like that which all the girls seemed to be reading in the early 80s was "Forever", minus the "Amber", by Judy Blume. Except they weren't reading it secretly, they were reading it during free-time in the classroom, and discussing its salacious contents with anyone who would listen.
My mother told me that Forever Amber was the book that her friends were passing around secretly (and hiding from their parents) when she was in high school (class of 1948).
The book like that which all the girls seemed to be reading in the early 80s was "Forever", minus the "Amber", by Judy Blume. Except they weren't reading it secretly, they were reading it during free-time in the classroom, and discussing its salacious contents with anyone who would listen.
And into the mid-90s. I still struggle to remain unamused by anyone named 'Ralph'...
My mother told me that Forever Amber was the book that her friends were passing around secretly (and hiding from their parents) when she was in high school (class of 1948).
The book like that which all the girls seemed to be reading in the early 80s was "Forever", minus the "Amber", by Judy Blume. Except they weren't reading it secretly, they were reading it during free-time in the classroom, and discussing its salacious contents with anyone who would listen.
And into the mid-90s. I still struggle to remain unamused by anyone named 'Ralph'...
Yeah, I was gonna try to work that allusion in, but couldn't find a non-cumbersome way of doing it.
(For the uninitiated, the reason "Ralph" is funny is probably the reason you're thinking of, but if you're still drawing a blank, the book's wikipedia article has the explanation.)
My mother told me that Forever Amber was the book that her friends were passing around secretly (and hiding from their parents) when she was in high school (class of 1948).
The book like that which all the girls seemed to be reading in the early 80s was "Forever", minus the "Amber", by Judy Blume. Except they weren't reading it secretly, they were reading it during free-time in the classroom, and discussing its salacious contents with anyone who would listen.
In the late '50s it was Peyton Place, in the late '60s it was Candy. But those were theoretically for adults--it wasn't until the '80s that books actually written for teens could be scandalous.
My mother told me that Forever Amber was the book that her friends were passing around secretly (and hiding from their parents) when she was in high school (class of 1948).
The book like that which all the girls seemed to be reading in the early 80s was "Forever", minus the "Amber", by Judy Blume. Except they weren't reading it secretly, they were reading it during free-time in the classroom, and discussing its salacious contents with anyone who would listen.
In the late '50s it was Peyton Place, in the late '60s it was Candy. But those were theoretically for adults--it wasn't until the '80s that books actually written for teens could be scandalous.
I've never read Candy, but am not a huge fan of Terry Southern generally, as I find his humour really ham-fisted. Candy was supposedly a naughty parody of Candide, which, if true, would be kinda silly, since Candide was already naughty to begin with.
(Sorta like a few years back Mad Magazine ran a parody of The Gnashlycrumb Tinies, about school shootings. It woulda worked better if they had parodied something that's sweet and sentimental, eg. Care Bears, and then overlaid morbid subject matter onto that.)
And just for the record, but Forever came out in 1975, not the 1980s. I used to make the same mistake, since I read Judy Blume's children's books in the mid-70s, and when I found out about Forever and Wifey in the 80s, I assumed they were recent releases. In fact, she wrote those books in between her children's books.
Apparently the residents (not mum, she's a bit beyond being able to read), are quite keen on 'sexy' books.
My mum, who would be 102 if she were alive today, made it clear that "that side of things" between her and my dad were always very good, but she didn't go for sex in books and definitely didn't like anything poorly written. Like @Piglet I thought 50 Shades was terribly badly written. I did leaf through all the sequels as our daughter was decluttering them, and was amused to find the ending of the last one is immensely traditional.
... When I was a teen there was a row of books in the bookcase that I supposedly wasn’t allowed to read!
I bet you did though ...
I grew up in a house with brothers 10 and 12 years older than me; I read a lot of things I wasn't supposed to. Lady Chatterley's Lover, which always fell open at the interesting bits, pretty much completed my sex education but left me with a few odd ideas about the uses of flowers.
I wrote a Masters thesis on Lawrence. There's more than a few flowers written in that floral text
In my teens I was in bed with flu or something of the kind around the time we had been reading Jane Austen at school. My mother brought a copy of Emma from the library to pass the time. I was bored out of my head, never finished it and haven't touched Jane Austen since. I had thought Pride and Prejudice not bad, Persuasion a bit soapy, but Emma... If boring had been an Olympic event, Jane would have been a cert for the gold on account of that one.
Tolkien knew some people wouldn't like his stuff. He mentions it in the Foreward to LoTR. He said he similarly disliked their writing, or the kind of writing they preferred.
Nothing has changed much in the 70 odd years since he wrote that.
VONNEGUT FANS, READ THE FOLLOWING AT YOUR OWN RISK
I dislike books by Kurt Vonnegut, from which I get the impression of an undergraduate heartily congratulating himself on his iconoclasm and cleverness. "Darwin had the insight to realize that a corpse is an improvement" sounds like something you'd say to shock your parents when your home for Christmas after your first semester at college.
Caveat:
I have only read Slaughterhouse Five, which I thought was okay. I started on Cat's Cradle(or maybe it was Player Piano), and after a few pages thought that it was more of the same, and that I had figured out his schtick.
I also skimmed a book of his interviews, among which was one where he seemed to consider it worthwhile to make the observation that authority figures are often full of BS.
NOW THAT BEING SAID...
I quite like the movies that I've seen based on his novels, especially Slaughterhouse Five and Mother Night(Breakfast Of Champions, not so much). I think Vonnegut is maybe one of those writers who should've just gone straight to screenplays, since his sophomoric observations are the sort that you can abide in a visual experience, but not so much on the printed page.
I read a quite from Vonnegut a few years back, cited when they were opening a museum dedicated to him in his hometown. Something along the lines of "What people like about my work is rooted in Indianapolis, what they don't like, is also rooted in Indianapolis." So maybe that's my problem? Indianapolis has always struck me(subjectively speaking, of course) as the least interesting of American big cities. (And yes, I am from Edmonton, and would not recommend it as a travel destination.)
(I do appreciate that Vonnegut witnessed the bombing of Dresden, and felt compelled to write about it.)
he similarly disliked their writing, or the kind of writing they preferred.
That line is about the only thing from Tolkien that I can remember, and I think you've rendered it almost word-for-word, except I think maybe he put "apparently" or "evidently" before "prefer".
Tolkien knew some people wouldn't like his stuff. He mentions it in the Foreward to LoTR. He said he similarly disliked their writing, or the kind of writing they preferred.
Nothing has changed much in the 70 odd years since he wrote that.
How the holy heck would Tolkein know what kind of writing I prefer?
Jeepers, he's some kind of prophet now is he?
It's not so much his writing I object to - although I find it turgid in the extreme - as the almost Messianic and blasphemous adulation he receives from his benighted fans.
That and all the ****ing elves.
More seriously, I wouldn't have that much of an issue with Tolkein abd LoTR if his fans didn't make out that he crapped gold ingots and farted incense out of his arse.
Before someone calls me to Hell, I hasten to add that I am posting hyperbolically as is my wont and that I more than happy to accept Tolkein's place in the canon of that kind of fantasy fiction and that he was a master of creating fully orbed fantasy worlds with their own backstory and mythology.
My late wife was a fan and so are my daughters and some of my best friends ...
I mean Tolkien is getting on for the better part of a century old now - it’s not unlike reading the original text of The Waterbabies. Hugely influential, but of its time.
I mean Tolkien is getting on for the better part of a century old now - it’s not unlike reading the original text of The Waterbabies. Hugely influential, but of its time.
Now The Waterbabies. That terrified me as a child. I think it was the creepy illustrations as much as anything.
To be fair there's not a great deal, ancient or modern that I regret reading. I didn't enjoy The Hobbit or LoTR but don't regret reading them.
I've heard that people who've read Proust often regret doing so but I have yet to risk that.
More seriously, I wouldn't have that much of an issue with Tolkein abd LoTR if his fans didn't make out that he crapped gold ingots and farted incense out of his arse.
That business about incense reminds me of something I read about Tolkien recently, maybe in a review of a biography:
After Vatican II switched the mass to the vernacular, Tolkien would make a point of singing and reciting in Latin, in a voice deliberately loud enough to drown out everyone else.
That business about incense reminds me of something I read about Tolkien recently, maybe in a review of a biography:
After Vatican II switched the mass to the vernacular, Tolkien would make a point of singing and reciting in Latin, in a voice deliberately loud enough to drown out everyone else.
IOW Grade-A Dickwad.
That sounds like an exaggeration of how I’ve always heard that story. As I recall, it was his son (perhaps the one who was a Catholic priest) or grandson who reported that, but I don’t recall any mention of drowning others out. He was a daily Mass-goer, and the story as I recall it gave more a sense of curmudgeonly don than obnoxious jerk.
I’ll see if I can find it.
ETA: Found it faster than anticipated. The story was told by his grandson Simon:
I vividly remember going to church with him in Bournemouth. He was a devout Roman Catholic and it was soon after the Church had changed the liturgy from Latin to English. My Grandfather obviously didn't agree with this and made all the responses very loudly in Latin while the rest of the congregation answered in English. I found the whole experience quite excruciating, but My Grandfather was oblivious. He simply had to do what he believed to be right…"
So it does say “loudly” (and embarrassingly for his grandson) but doesn’t say so loud as drown out others.
That business about incense reminds me of something I read about Tolkien recently, maybe in a review of a biography:
After Vatican II switched the mass to the vernacular, Tolkien would make a point of singing and reciting in Latin, in a voice deliberately loud enough to drown out everyone else.
IOW Grade-A Dickwad.
That sounds like an exaggeration of how I’ve always heard that story. As I recall, it was his son (perhaps the one who was a Catholic priest) or grandson who reported that, but I don’t recall any mention of drowning others out. He was a daily Mass-goer, and the story as I recall it gave more a sense of curmudgeonly don than obnoxious jerk.
I’ll see if I can find it.
ETA: Found it faster than anticipated. The story was told by his grandson Simon:
I vividly remember going to church with him in Bournemouth. He was a devout Roman Catholic and it was soon after the Church had changed the liturgy from Latin to English. My Grandfather obviously didn't agree with this and made all the responses very loudly in Latin while the rest of the congregation answered in English. I found the whole experience quite excruciating, but My Grandfather was oblivious. He simply had to do what he believed to be right…"
So it does say “loudly” (and embarrassingly for his grandson) but doesn’t say so loud as drown out others.
Well, if everyone else is responding at, let's say, a moderate volume, and I deliberately respond "very loudly", I am, at the very least, making it difficult for the people nearest me to hear the liturgically proper response. And I am definitely making myself the centre of attention at what is supposed to be a ceremony focused on the worship of God.
So, while he might not have been technically drowning other people out, I am still going to stick more-or-less with my Grade-A Dickwad characterization. Had Tolkien simply wished to recite the mass in the language he was comfortable with, he could have done so in a way that wouldn't have been so disruptive to everyone else.
I've heard that people who've read Proust often regret doing so but I have yet to risk that.
My favourite quote on that front is from Anatole France: Life is short and Monsieur Proust is very long.
I could say that of many that would have me burned as a heretic - Dickens, Austen, Brontës, Hardy, Trollop...
Tolkien. It's not as if he wrote concisely. I'm sure he could had he tried.
At least you don't get elves in the others.
For the record, I wouldn't burn you for heresy for finding all of those over long on occasion - and very mixed too.
Not everything they wrote was brilliant but some of it was.
I own up to difficulties with Dickens ('Just get on with it!') and Austen I admire rather than like. I enjoyed 'Jane Eyre' and Anne Bronte is readable and mildly diverting - which is more than can be said for 'Wuthering Heights' (I'll be burned for heresy).
Hardy could be a miserable git and by and large I prefer his poetry to his novels - and I tend to read more poetry and biography, history and theology rather than novels these days for some reason.
Trollope goes on a bit, but he can be entertaining.
It's interesting that you've only listed 19th century authors. How about contemporary ones?
That business about incense reminds me of something I read about Tolkien recently, maybe in a review of a biography:
After Vatican II switched the mass to the vernacular, Tolkien would make a point of singing and reciting in Latin, in a voice deliberately loud enough to drown out everyone else.
IOW Grade-A Dickwad.
That sounds like an exaggeration of how I’ve always heard that story. As I recall, it was his son (perhaps the one who was a Catholic priest) or grandson who reported that, but I don’t recall any mention of drowning others out. He was a daily Mass-goer, and the story as I recall it gave more a sense of curmudgeonly don than obnoxious jerk.
I’ll see if I can find it.
ETA: Found it faster than anticipated. The story was told by his grandson Simon:
I vividly remember going to church with him in Bournemouth. He was a devout Roman Catholic and it was soon after the Church had changed the liturgy from Latin to English. My Grandfather obviously didn't agree with this and made all the responses very loudly in Latin while the rest of the congregation answered in English. I found the whole experience quite excruciating, but My Grandfather was oblivious. He simply had to do what he believed to be right…"
So it does say “loudly” (and embarrassingly for his grandson) but doesn’t say so loud as drown out others.
Well, if everyone else is responding at, let's say, a moderate volume, and I deliberately respond "very loudly", I am, at the very least, making it difficult for the people nearest me to hear the liturgically proper response. And I am definitely making myself the centre of attention at what is supposed to be a ceremony focused on the worship of God.
So, while he might not have been technically drowning other people out, I am still going to stick more-or-less with my Grade-A Dickwad characterization. Had Tolkien simply wished to recite the mass in the language he was comfortable with, he could have done so in a way that wouldn't have been so disruptive to everyone else.
(Thanks for finding the quote, by the way.)
I don’t know. I tend to reserve a Grade-A Dickwad label for stuff worse than this seems to be, and for a general way of being rather than just a single example of behavior.
FWIW, Simon Tolkien was born in 1959, so he would have been a little older than 10 when the Mass began to be celebrated in English, if I’m remembering the timeline correctly. (Also he says it was in Bournemouth, and Tolkien moved there for his wife’s sake around 1967, and then from there back to Oxford when his wife died in 1971.) Given how he says “I found the whole experience quite excruciating, but My Grandfather was oblivious,” I wonder whether Tolkien was really as loud as might be assumed, or whether the volume was amplified in the mind of an easily-embarrassed-by-adults-around-him pre-adolescent grandchild. I dunno.
For what it’s worth, Simon Tolkien’s full remembrance of his grandfather, from which the quote is taken, can be read here. It perhaps provides a little more context. Immediately after what I quoted above, he writes:
He simply had to do what he believed to be right. He inherited his religion from his mother, who was ostracised by her family following her conversion and then died in poverty when My Grandfather was just 12.
Aside from the one church story, one doesn’t get the idea at all of a Grade-A Dickwad from what his grandson wrote. Quite the opposite.
I've heard that people who've read Proust often regret doing so but I have yet to risk that.
My favourite quote on that front is from Anatole France: Life is short and Monsieur Proust is very long.
I could say that of many that would have me burned as a heretic - Dickens, Austen, Brontës, Hardy, Trollop...
Not Austen for us (we admire her greatly, but definitely the others in your little list. Often think that were Dickens alive today, he'd be working in an advertising agency writing first drafts.
As an aside, in my articled clerking days, another such victim was one Anthony Trollope, great-grandson (perhaps great-great) of the author. He pronounced the second "o" as short.
I've heard that people who've read Proust often regret doing so but I have yet to risk that.
My favourite quote on that front is from Anatole France: Life is short and Monsieur Proust is very long.
I could say that of many that would have me burned as a heretic - Dickens, Austen, Brontës, Hardy, Trollop...
Not Austen for us (we admire her greatly, but definitely the others in your little list. Often think that were Dickens alive today, he'd be working in an advertising agency writing first drafts.
Was your "Trollop" deliberate?
Nope. Just don't like the writing enough to remember the spelling.
The thing about Tolkien is I find his writing clear. A lot of the writers I dislike I get to the end of a page and think "WTF did all that verbiage mean?". Dickens showed he could do it with A Christmas Carol but most of the rest of his stuff seems impenetrable.
GG asked about more modern authors - I read very little fiction because very few authors are writing the sort of thing that appeals to me. I prefer the short story form (why this is unpopular I do not understand); I read and reread Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected as a child and have also been through my Edgar Allen Poe collection multiple times. Asimov's short stories are great but I got lost half way through the first Foundation novel - I was expected to infer far too much from dialogue. Possibly it's my ASD at play but I find that very hard to do, and I don't naturally even attempt it because it's a concept I find very alien and have to make a conscious effort at.
To the derision of many I liked the Harry Potter series; the plot was set out clearly and the bits that were obscure were the bits you weren't meant to know yet. Simplistic possibly but at least I knew what was going on. Many of the characters were a bit one dimensional but that doesn't bother me as I'm really not very interested in all the touchy-feely interpersonal stuff and character development and so on. That might be another reason why I'm not a great fan of novels. I've been reading the novels of a friend of ours because he's a friend and he asked me who his favourite character was. Despite having read the books I actually couldn't name more than about three out of the twenty odd main characters. I was only vaguely aware they had story arcs and certainly couldn't have told anyone what those story arcs were. I'm interested in the events rather than the people.
Fantasy post-Tolkien I can't get on with. His world was believable; the ones that read like someone novelised an ongoing D&D campaign not so much. This is why you get these endless series of them, each series (way longer than the LoTR) ending as a set up for the next. I inevitably lost interest halfway through the second series of these - David Eddings, Katherine Kerr etc.
Proust is far too long. I have got someway into his Magnum Opus, but - as per the quote above - life is too short really.
Books do tend to reflect the age they were written in. The Waterbabies I found incredibly peculiar and disturbing, in a way that it probably wouldn't have been originally. Tolkien was an Oxford don in the middle of last century, and so reflects that time and place.
OK, just to throw more petrol on the fire: I did have to read a Shakespeare play at school - Julius Caesar. I had no idea what was going on. I didn't realise he had been killed until the second time through. Not a fan of reading the bard.
OK, just to throw more petrol on the fire: I did have to read a Shakespeare play at school - Julius Caesar. I had no idea what was going on. I didn't realise he had been killed until the second time through. Not a fan of reading the bard.
I like Shakespeare, but I NEVER understand his plays in live performance unless I know the plot beforehand. I saw King Lear in high-school, and it might as well have been in a foreign language.
OK, just to throw more petrol on the fire: I did have to read a Shakespeare play at school - Julius Caesar. I had no idea what was going on. I didn't realise he had been killed until the second time through. Not a fan of reading the bard.
As someone who's taught Julius Caesar for many years, I have to say this seems like a major failure on your teacher's part, rather than yours or Shakespeare's.
OK, just to throw more petrol on the fire: I did have to read a Shakespeare play at school - Julius Caesar. I had no idea what was going on. I didn't realise he had been killed until the second time through. Not a fan of reading the bard.
I like Shakespeare, but I NEVER understand his plays in live performance unless I know the plot beforehand.
I’m the other way around. I always had a hard time following Shakespeare when reading his plays, but when I’d see it (competently) performed it made much more sense to me.
I have a lot of sympathy with KarlLB's thing about short stories. Dickens wrote some great ones. 'The Signalman' for instance.
For some reason, the short story is bigger in Iteland and, I understand, the US, rather than the UK. No idea why that is.
Not sure who I'd recommend to KarlLB and it's certainly not my place to do so. Graham Greene perhaps?
If psychological insight and characterisation isn't our thing then most novels aren't going to do it for us.
The Bernard Cornwell novels might appeal for those who like plot and action but aren't bothered about character development. Mind you, all his plots and all his characters are the same only set in different periods.
I have to say I am puzzled as to how Tolkein is any clearer stylistically than any of the other authors we've considered here.
And no, I don't consider him a 'Dick-wad' either.
If it's sci-fi then Ray Bradbury and John Wyndham are pretty good.
[I prefer the short story form (why this is unpopular I do not understand).
well, a lot of people don't like reading - and slightly counter-intuitively this leads them to want to invest in something 800 pages long with the author's name embossed on the cover in gold in the paperback edition.
The short story last had a real flowering in the UK during WW2, when paper rationing and bored servicemen with one eye on a post-war career were trying their hand. if you can get hold of any copies of Horizon magazine from the time (ed. Cyril Connolly) then it's quite brilliant.
On the other side you've got authors ducking it because short stories are harder to write than novels.
If you like short stories, the absolute master was Julian Maclaren Ross.
Kipling, Mansfield, Lawrence, Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, Spark, and Penelope Fitzgerald are all supposed to be great English short story writers, although with the exception of Kipling and perhaps O'Connor and Spark, they all tend to the psychological.
OK, just to throw more petrol on the fire: I did have to read a Shakespeare play at school - Julius Caesar. I had no idea what was going on. I didn't realise he had been killed until the second time through. Not a fan of reading the bard.
I like Shakespeare, but I NEVER understand his plays in live performance unless I know the plot beforehand.
I’m the other way around. I always had a hard time following Shakespeare when reading his plays, but when I’d see it (competently) performed it made much more sense to me.
Inteteresting. I've only ever read Shakespeare under academic tutelage, so I usually had at least a rough idea of what was supposed to be going on.
But A Midsummer Nights Dream, which I have formally studied at least three times(summer arts camp, high school English, university), I still find somewhat hard to follow on stage and screen. Though I think there's a theory that Shakespeare made the play deliberately confusing(eg. the female lovers having similiar names) in order to capture the chaotic spirit of the story.
Comments
Well, if a society is at the point where they've already got the entire reproductive process from conception to birth taking place on an assembly line, I'd say they're probably entitled to take a little break from innovation!
I've sometimes wondered to what extent Huxley's viewpoint in that novel was the result of being the artistic black sheep in a family of renowned scientific utilitarians.
And I'd like to see a film version of BNW that portrays the World State not as futuristic relative to the time of the film(which in the 1979 version looked like The Jetsons), but as Huxley is supposed to have envisioned it at the time of writing, ie. an effed-up version of the Roaring 20s: assembly-lines as Henry Ford might actually have built them, promiscuous flappers with birth-control belts etc.
I think Dieselpunk would be closer to the relevant time-period for Huxley's vision. Not that I'm an expert on either genre.
In 1998, there was another TV version of BNW, with Leonard Nimoy as Mustapha Mond. All references to Our Ford were omitted(probably because that would just be incomprehensible to most viewers at the time), and the sex orgies were made to look like 90s kids out clubbing.
One thing I did like about that version was that the savages were portrayed basically like a more rustic version of contemporary American suburbanites, thus reminding viewers that the people of the World State would them in utter contempt.
More "wouldn't have read", but a friend once wanted to co-create a musical version of The Prisoner of Zenda and asked me to read it. I read that and its sequel Rubert of Hentzau. The improbabilities didn't bother me much, but sheer highfalutin-ness of Rudolph Rassendyll set my teeth on edge.
The book like that which all the girls seemed to be reading in the early 80s was "Forever", minus the "Amber", by Judy Blume. Except they weren't reading it secretly, they were reading it during free-time in the classroom, and discussing its salacious contents with anyone who would listen.
972 pages! No wonder "forever" is in the title! That's how long it takes to read it!
Yeah, I was gonna try to work that allusion in, but couldn't find a non-cumbersome way of doing it.
(For the uninitiated, the reason "Ralph" is funny is probably the reason you're thinking of, but if you're still drawing a blank, the book's wikipedia article has the explanation.)
In the late '50s it was Peyton Place, in the late '60s it was Candy. But those were theoretically for adults--it wasn't until the '80s that books actually written for teens could be scandalous.
I've never read Candy, but am not a huge fan of Terry Southern generally, as I find his humour really ham-fisted. Candy was supposedly a naughty parody of Candide, which, if true, would be kinda silly, since Candide was already naughty to begin with.
(Sorta like a few years back Mad Magazine ran a parody of The Gnashlycrumb Tinies, about school shootings. It woulda worked better if they had parodied something that's sweet and sentimental, eg. Care Bears, and then overlaid morbid subject matter onto that.)
And just for the record, but Forever came out in 1975, not the 1980s. I used to make the same mistake, since I read Judy Blume's children's books in the mid-70s, and when I found out about Forever and Wifey in the 80s, I assumed they were recent releases. In fact, she wrote those books in between her children's books.
I wrote a Masters thesis on Lawrence. There's more than a few flowers written in that floral text
Anything by Tolkein.
I'll get me coat ...
(What happened to the Devil emoji?)
I know you are trying to wind people up, but as a JRRT-Groupie, that is fine by me. He is not for everyone. And this sounds like you at least tried.
Rather than seeing some cheap derivative Swords and Sorcery film and deciding that it must be rubbish.
Of his genre, he is a must read.
Tolkien knew some people wouldn't like his stuff. He mentions it in the Foreward to LoTR. He said he similarly disliked their writing, or the kind of writing they preferred.
Nothing has changed much in the 70 odd years since he wrote that.
I dislike books by Kurt Vonnegut, from which I get the impression of an undergraduate heartily congratulating himself on his iconoclasm and cleverness. "Darwin had the insight to realize that a corpse is an improvement" sounds like something you'd say to shock your parents when your home for Christmas after your first semester at college.
Caveat:
I have only read Slaughterhouse Five, which I thought was okay. I started on Cat's Cradle(or maybe it was Player Piano), and after a few pages thought that it was more of the same, and that I had figured out his schtick.
I also skimmed a book of his interviews, among which was one where he seemed to consider it worthwhile to make the observation that authority figures are often full of BS.
NOW THAT BEING SAID...
I quite like the movies that I've seen based on his novels, especially Slaughterhouse Five and Mother Night(Breakfast Of Champions, not so much). I think Vonnegut is maybe one of those writers who should've just gone straight to screenplays, since his sophomoric observations are the sort that you can abide in a visual experience, but not so much on the printed page.
I read a quite from Vonnegut a few years back, cited when they were opening a museum dedicated to him in his hometown. Something along the lines of "What people like about my work is rooted in Indianapolis, what they don't like, is also rooted in Indianapolis." So maybe that's my problem? Indianapolis has always struck me(subjectively speaking, of course) as the least interesting of American big cities. (And yes, I am from Edmonton, and would not recommend it as a travel destination.)
(I do appreciate that Vonnegut witnessed the bombing of Dresden, and felt compelled to write about it.)
That line is about the only thing from Tolkien that I can remember, and I think you've rendered it almost word-for-word, except I think maybe he put "apparently" or "evidently" before "prefer".
How the holy heck would Tolkein know what kind of writing I prefer?
Jeepers, he's some kind of prophet now is he?
It's not so much his writing I object to - although I find it turgid in the extreme - as the almost Messianic and blasphemous adulation he receives from his benighted fans.
That and all the ****ing elves.
More seriously, I wouldn't have that much of an issue with Tolkein abd LoTR if his fans didn't make out that he crapped gold ingots and farted incense out of his arse.
My late wife was a fan and so are my daughters and some of my best friends ...
That for others to judge.
Now The Waterbabies. That terrified me as a child. I think it was the creepy illustrations as much as anything.
To be fair there's not a great deal, ancient or modern that I regret reading. I didn't enjoy The Hobbit or LoTR but don't regret reading them.
I've heard that people who've read Proust often regret doing so but I have yet to risk that.
That business about incense reminds me of something I read about Tolkien recently, maybe in a review of a biography:
After Vatican II switched the mass to the vernacular, Tolkien would make a point of singing and reciting in Latin, in a voice deliberately loud enough to drown out everyone else.
IOW Grade-A Dickwad.
I’ll see if I can find it.
ETA: Found it faster than anticipated. The story was told by his grandson Simon:
So it does say “loudly” (and embarrassingly for his grandson) but doesn’t say so loud as drown out others.
My favourite quote on that front is from Anatole France: Life is short and Monsieur Proust is very long.
I could say that of many that would have me burned as a heretic - Dickens, Austen, Brontës, Hardy, Trollop...
Well, if everyone else is responding at, let's say, a moderate volume, and I deliberately respond "very loudly", I am, at the very least, making it difficult for the people nearest me to hear the liturgically proper response. And I am definitely making myself the centre of attention at what is supposed to be a ceremony focused on the worship of God.
So, while he might not have been technically drowning other people out, I am still going to stick more-or-less with my Grade-A Dickwad characterization. Had Tolkien simply wished to recite the mass in the language he was comfortable with, he could have done so in a way that wouldn't have been so disruptive to everyone else.
(Thanks for finding the quote, by the way.)
Tolkien. It's not as if he wrote concisely. I'm sure he could had he tried.
At least you don't get elves in the others.
For the record, I wouldn't burn you for heresy for finding all of those over long on occasion - and very mixed too.
Not everything they wrote was brilliant but some of it was.
I own up to difficulties with Dickens ('Just get on with it!') and Austen I admire rather than like. I enjoyed 'Jane Eyre' and Anne Bronte is readable and mildly diverting - which is more than can be said for 'Wuthering Heights' (I'll be burned for heresy).
Hardy could be a miserable git and by and large I prefer his poetry to his novels - and I tend to read more poetry and biography, history and theology rather than novels these days for some reason.
Trollope goes on a bit, but he can be entertaining.
It's interesting that you've only listed 19th century authors. How about contemporary ones?
FWIW, Simon Tolkien was born in 1959, so he would have been a little older than 10 when the Mass began to be celebrated in English, if I’m remembering the timeline correctly. (Also he says it was in Bournemouth, and Tolkien moved there for his wife’s sake around 1967, and then from there back to Oxford when his wife died in 1971.) Given how he says “I found the whole experience quite excruciating, but My Grandfather was oblivious,” I wonder whether Tolkien was really as loud as might be assumed, or whether the volume was amplified in the mind of an easily-embarrassed-by-adults-around-him pre-adolescent grandchild. I dunno.
For what it’s worth, Simon Tolkien’s full remembrance of his grandfather, from which the quote is taken, can be read here. It perhaps provides a little more context. Immediately after what I quoted above, he writes: Aside from the one church story, one doesn’t get the idea at all of a Grade-A Dickwad from what his grandson wrote. Quite the opposite.
But as is often the case, YMMV.
Not Austen for us (we admire her greatly, but definitely the others in your little list. Often think that were Dickens alive today, he'd be working in an advertising agency writing first drafts.
Was your "Trollop" deliberate?
Nope. Just don't like the writing enough to remember the spelling.
The thing about Tolkien is I find his writing clear. A lot of the writers I dislike I get to the end of a page and think "WTF did all that verbiage mean?". Dickens showed he could do it with A Christmas Carol but most of the rest of his stuff seems impenetrable.
GG asked about more modern authors - I read very little fiction because very few authors are writing the sort of thing that appeals to me. I prefer the short story form (why this is unpopular I do not understand); I read and reread Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected as a child and have also been through my Edgar Allen Poe collection multiple times. Asimov's short stories are great but I got lost half way through the first Foundation novel - I was expected to infer far too much from dialogue. Possibly it's my ASD at play but I find that very hard to do, and I don't naturally even attempt it because it's a concept I find very alien and have to make a conscious effort at.
To the derision of many I liked the Harry Potter series; the plot was set out clearly and the bits that were obscure were the bits you weren't meant to know yet. Simplistic possibly but at least I knew what was going on. Many of the characters were a bit one dimensional but that doesn't bother me as I'm really not very interested in all the touchy-feely interpersonal stuff and character development and so on. That might be another reason why I'm not a great fan of novels. I've been reading the novels of a friend of ours because he's a friend and he asked me who his favourite character was. Despite having read the books I actually couldn't name more than about three out of the twenty odd main characters. I was only vaguely aware they had story arcs and certainly couldn't have told anyone what those story arcs were. I'm interested in the events rather than the people.
Fantasy post-Tolkien I can't get on with. His world was believable; the ones that read like someone novelised an ongoing D&D campaign not so much. This is why you get these endless series of them, each series (way longer than the LoTR) ending as a set up for the next. I inevitably lost interest halfway through the second series of these - David Eddings, Katherine Kerr etc.
Books do tend to reflect the age they were written in. The Waterbabies I found incredibly peculiar and disturbing, in a way that it probably wouldn't have been originally. Tolkien was an Oxford don in the middle of last century, and so reflects that time and place.
OK, just to throw more petrol on the fire: I did have to read a Shakespeare play at school - Julius Caesar. I had no idea what was going on. I didn't realise he had been killed until the second time through. Not a fan of reading the bard.
I like Shakespeare, but I NEVER understand his plays in live performance unless I know the plot beforehand. I saw King Lear in high-school, and it might as well have been in a foreign language.
As someone who's taught Julius Caesar for many years, I have to say this seems like a major failure on your teacher's part, rather than yours or Shakespeare's.
I have a lot of sympathy with KarlLB's thing about short stories. Dickens wrote some great ones. 'The Signalman' for instance.
For some reason, the short story is bigger in Iteland and, I understand, the US, rather than the UK. No idea why that is.
Not sure who I'd recommend to KarlLB and it's certainly not my place to do so. Graham Greene perhaps?
If psychological insight and characterisation isn't our thing then most novels aren't going to do it for us.
The Bernard Cornwell novels might appeal for those who like plot and action but aren't bothered about character development. Mind you, all his plots and all his characters are the same only set in different periods.
I have to say I am puzzled as to how Tolkein is any clearer stylistically than any of the other authors we've considered here.
And no, I don't consider him a 'Dick-wad' either.
If it's sci-fi then Ray Bradbury and John Wyndham are pretty good.
well, a lot of people don't like reading - and slightly counter-intuitively this leads them to want to invest in something 800 pages long with the author's name embossed on the cover in gold in the paperback edition.
The short story last had a real flowering in the UK during WW2, when paper rationing and bored servicemen with one eye on a post-war career were trying their hand. if you can get hold of any copies of Horizon magazine from the time (ed. Cyril Connolly) then it's quite brilliant.
On the other side you've got authors ducking it because short stories are harder to write than novels.
If you like short stories, the absolute master was Julian Maclaren Ross.
Back on thread, I've battled with Mervyn Peake and never got anywhere.
Inteteresting. I've only ever read Shakespeare under academic tutelage, so I usually had at least a rough idea of what was supposed to be going on.
But A Midsummer Nights Dream, which I have formally studied at least three times(summer arts camp, high school English, university), I still find somewhat hard to follow on stage and screen. Though I think there's a theory that Shakespeare made the play deliberately confusing(eg. the female lovers having similiar names) in order to capture the chaotic spirit of the story.