(no subject)
So I promised you all a little explanation of that poll I posted awhile back, and then never got around to it. Nothing is getting done at work this afternoon, so here I am.
As I mentioned, I've been doing this literature course. It's been pretty interesting, reading stuff I've either never read before or not in 20 years or so, thinking about it, and listening to what this professor has to say about them. The course is in 3 parts: drama, poetry, fiction. For the most part, I've been doing not just the main reading, but all the non-lit-crit recommended reading as well, which mostly means other works by the same author, but sometimes works by related authors. And in each section, there's one author in the first half of the 20th century that I. Just. Can't. Take. For drama, it was Beckett. For poetry, Wallace Stevens. And for fiction, Faulkner. I tried, and I managed to read the required reading for all three. But I didn't feel like I got anything out of reading them, and even the lectures didn't get me thinking there was anything ... there.
Which got me thinking about how for most Great Writers (capital G capital W), there are people who love them, people who don't love them but can see what's valuable in their work, and people who can't stand them. The only "great" fiction writers I know of for which I fall into that last category are Faulkner and Hemingway. I'm indifferent to Austen and the Brontes, and love Melville, Tolstoy, Dickens, Fitzgerald. I've never read any Joyce, but suspect I wouldn't like it if I did.
So I wondered if the rest of you would be able to say yes or no on various authors, without further explication, on they hypothesis that if you did, it would be something along those lines: "no" for the ones that you just don't get, "yes" for the ones that you enjoy, either way as you see fit for the ones in between.
So was that how you answered?
As I mentioned, I've been doing this literature course. It's been pretty interesting, reading stuff I've either never read before or not in 20 years or so, thinking about it, and listening to what this professor has to say about them. The course is in 3 parts: drama, poetry, fiction. For the most part, I've been doing not just the main reading, but all the non-lit-crit recommended reading as well, which mostly means other works by the same author, but sometimes works by related authors. And in each section, there's one author in the first half of the 20th century that I. Just. Can't. Take. For drama, it was Beckett. For poetry, Wallace Stevens. And for fiction, Faulkner. I tried, and I managed to read the required reading for all three. But I didn't feel like I got anything out of reading them, and even the lectures didn't get me thinking there was anything ... there.
Which got me thinking about how for most Great Writers (capital G capital W), there are people who love them, people who don't love them but can see what's valuable in their work, and people who can't stand them. The only "great" fiction writers I know of for which I fall into that last category are Faulkner and Hemingway. I'm indifferent to Austen and the Brontes, and love Melville, Tolstoy, Dickens, Fitzgerald. I've never read any Joyce, but suspect I wouldn't like it if I did.
So I wondered if the rest of you would be able to say yes or no on various authors, without further explication, on they hypothesis that if you did, it would be something along those lines: "no" for the ones that you just don't get, "yes" for the ones that you enjoy, either way as you see fit for the ones in between.
So was that how you answered?