Unsucking the Classics

[sartorias]

Which assigned stinkers and snores of days of yore have you reread that turned out to be pretty good?

Do you think kids should be exposed to the classics? And if so, how?

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Comments

[pameladean]

I thought The Scarlet Letter was awesome. It was extremely clear to me that Pearl was a changeling. I even wrote a paper about that, which was given an A I think out of pure confusion plus a recognition that I had certainly read the book and was quoting passages from it and picking out recurring imagery, which I guess I mistook for an actual fantastical plot. I've been scared to reread it, actually, in case it didn't hold up.

I really loved The Catcher in the Rye. It seems very problematic nowadays, but I just liked the way Salinger went about telling a story. I like his other stories much better -- though they also have serious flaws -- but there was enough of it in Catcher to, well, catch me.

My main example of your actual question was in fact Jane Austen. I did like both Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey, but I took them very seriously indeed. I was astonished to encounter them again in college, after less than ten years but a great deal of growing up, and find that, as you mention, they were very very funny.

P.

[sartorias]

That sounds like an interesting reading of Hawthorne! That's also interesting that you liked Salinger!

[pameladean]

I always feel I shouldn't like Salinger. But it's his narrative voice and the rhythms of his sentences. I didn't care if Holden was whiny. I was quite whiny myself the first time I read the book, and also his world and worldview were so wildly divergent from any experience of mine that it was a lot like reading science fiction about a whiny alien.

P.

[sartorias]

That makes sense. You are sensitive to words in a way that alas I am completely unable to grasp, being completely wired to image/aural. (That is, I don't hear rhythms of prose, I hear the dialogue in distinct voices. If I know the author, I hear the narrator in their voice, I don't hear word cadences. Wish I did--I'm sure it would improve my prose immensely.

Edited to add (it's so hot I forgot my point) anyway, when I first read it, Holden whined in the voice of a kid at school I really loathed, who was a whiny, mean bully; the narrative voice triggered the kid. I forget who I heard on the second read--I think it was Jerry Lewis.

[pameladean]

I wonder if there's any way for you to learn to hear the rhythms of the prose, or for me to develop your amazing (if sometimes obstructive, as my fondness for rhythm is also sometimes obstructive) visualizing abilities.

It's very interesting to me that you can hear dialog fine, in a voice, but it doesn't work for narration. If you don't mind my asking -- and please feel free to wait til it's not so horribly hot if that's easier -- how does first-person narration fit into this?

If I'd heard Holden in Jerry Lewis's voice I'd have had problems with the book too; never mind hearing it in a disliked schoolmate's voice! Yeesh.

P.

[sartorias]

I hear first person narration in a voice. It can be a bland voice, and if there are grammar or spelling errors, it's exactly like scratches on an LP when we were young: tosses me right out of the story. And I don't always hear the writer's voice even if I know the writer, unless the narrative voice talks like that person. (When my daughter said she couldn't read any of my stories because she heard mom reading, them, I knew exactly what she meant

[pameladean]

Well, kindergarten's where you start, but I do get a sense of the scope and difficulty of the problem.

I'm not much better off with visualizing things. I do lots of very basic sketches -- I can't draw at all really -- so I don't contradict myself in a way that will annoy and confuse readers; and mostly I have to write the words and then read the paragraphs I just wrote and let them do the visualizing work for me, as if somebody else had written them. Then I can build on that. It takes forever.

P.

[sartorias]

Yeah, it takes me a zillion drafts to get barely adequate prose.

[pameladean]

Agh, never mind, you already answered my question about first-person; it's like dialog, you hear it in a voice, but that's different from the rhythm of the prose, is that right?

We are all so weird in such different ways.

P.

[sartorias]

Yep--I hear the emotional coloration in a voice. Sometimes the prose triggers a specific voice, or at least a type of voice.

[whswhs]

That sort of thing makes me think of Northrop Frye. The Anatomy of Criticism talks about how there are overtly fantastic elements in myth, legend, and romance, and then when you get to "realistic" (mimetic) fiction, you have story elements that do the same thing dramatically, but that offer mundane explanations for what's happening. I believe some of his examples came from Hawthorne, in fact.