Most overhyped classic masterpiece?

[doreenjoy]

Moby Dick.

[Andybaby]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Ah, but it's different when a group chooses to use the pejorative term themselves, in an attempt to reclaim it.
A number of gay groups have called themselves "queer".
A feminist theatre company has called itself "Monstrous Regiment".

So, while a stratum of American youth use the term, I don't think that it would be polite if I used it.

Similarly, only Irish people have carte blanche to tell Irish jokes etc.

Well I guess my New York Attitude has many things to do with it. But there are no taboo words in the general vocabulary. no taboo subjects, many people can feel one way or the other, but most people agree as long as you are not a racist/sexist/otherist you can talk about any subject with impunity, most people who are racists/sexists usually keep their mouth shut.

Also as a member of the UK I don't see how you can feel Americas shame in the subject, and hope you don't, like I said, try to walk on egg shells around certain people. It is possible to respectfully talk about a subject and not feel any shame.

Anyway, Back onto the topic, my Girlfriend in College was Assigned Jane Eyre today in school and I had to bring up this topic (I read it in high school)

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm fortunate in living only an hour's drive away from the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-on-Avon, so I've seen a lot of really good performances. Saw David Tennant in "Hamlet" earlier in the year; that was just superb.

David Tennant, as in the 'Tenth Doctor' in Doctor Who David Tennant? Greatest Doctor ever, IMHO, eclipsing even Tom Baker.

The Tennant Hamlet is planned for film: http://www.david-tennant.com/2009/id131.html

(David Tennant as Hamlet? Patrick Stewart as Claudius? *That* I want to see...)

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

David Tennant, as in the 'Tenth Doctor' in Doctor Who David Tennant? Greatest Doctor ever, IMHO, eclipsing even Tom Baker.

The Tennant Hamlet is planned for film: http://www.david-tennant.com/2009/id131.html

(David Tennant as Hamlet? Patrick Stewart as Claudius? *That* I want to see...)

Let me see, a ticket to London cost how much...

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

I had to study a play by Molière every single year for 6 years. And then one day, I saw a performance (a good one for a change). It was a revelation.

I almost had the reverse experience with Marlow, especially Faustus - I loved that play when I read it. Then I went to see what I had been assured was a brilliant performance of it and, well, I'm surprised I didn't get thrown out what with laughing in inappropriate places and audibly groaning in others.

[docinabox]

Don Quixote---I'm sure it was a scream back in its day, but it just doesn't hold up well today.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon tried a few times to read that one, found I had better things to do

Doc

[evenstr]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

The folks in Queer Nation deliberately use the term "queer" often in order to rob it of its ability to shock, hurt, and dismay. Perhaps there are some who feel this strategy will work for the N-word as well. For my part, however, having been raised in the 1950s segregated (and anti-gay) South, I find both terms offensive, no matter who uses them. I think it's best to let such words die on the vine. That being said, I do realize that it's wrong to hold people who lived in different eras to today's standards. There's no way I could enjoy old radio shows, silent movies, and old books if I were to automatically banish them from my life's experience because they did not meet my 21st century ethical standards.

Going to a very diverse school, I hear all sorts of things in the hallway. It almost gets to the point where (unfortunately) you're jaded. I'll never forget the day when we were studying the Civil Rights Movement and the teacher brought in a black woman who worked in our school who had grown up during the Movement. She said it disturbed and ashamed her when she heard black teens use the n-word so lightly. I knew the word was bad, but my only experience in it being used in a derogatory way was through literature. It was a very eye-opening experience for me.

Back to the original topic. I haven't had too much experience with the great classics yet. Most I've read, I've loved. The two that come to mind that I hated were Heart of Darkness (read over this past summer, actually) and Of Mice and Men. I will never understand people who love these works.

[nomesque]

My Brilliant Career, by Miles Franklin (Aussie classic). I had an almost overwhelming urge to slit my wrists and end this cruel existence by the time I finished it. Holy dooly. If you like depressing reads, give it a try!

[jenieliser]

David Copperfield. Rolling eyes...I could not get into that book at all! I think it's just Dickens-I have yet to finish any book by him, except Great Expectations. I loved that one!

[GeneS]

Hmmm. Read Moby Dick and loved it. I'm sure there are others, such as "Remembrance of Things Past" or "Ulysses" that should be on my list but my all-time trudge through the entirety of Les Miserables (took me almost 20 years) takes the prize for me. 1200 pages of political/social commentary and 5 pages of story.

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by GeneS

Hmmm. Read Moby Dick and loved it. I'm sure there are others, such as "Remembrance of Things Past" or "Ulysses" that should be on my list but my all-time trudge through the entirety of Les Miserables (took me almost 20 years) takes the prize for me. 1200 pages of political/social commentary and 5 pages of story.

Uh-huh. Well, I did like the story, but I found the commentary a bit... ermm... sleep-inducing. Did your edition have the classic chapter-without-a-single-plot-reference? The one that rabbits on about a particular aspect of a particular battle that was completely irrelevant to the story, except that it happened in the same war in which the story was based? GAH!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by docinabox

...

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon tried a few times to read that one, found I had better things to do

...

Yeah, I tried to read that thing once...

[zelda_pinwheel]

it's interesting to see so many different reactions to the same books. like florenceart i adored pride and prejudice and laughed through the whole book (to be fair, i read it quite recently, as an adult). i've loved all the austen books i've read so far, and i plan to read all of them. and although i've (still !) not finished it, i'm reading moby dick (intermittently) and loving it (it's another one which is making me laugh quite often so far, and also making me want to write out entire passages of it in my book o'citations). i fully intend to finish it, but that book is LONG. plus, i started it on my telephone before i got a liseuse and that's really not a good medium for that book, it needs a bigger screen so the text can really spread out and get comfortable.

i read part of paradise lost for school and i liked it very well also (although i admit i sympathised far more with satan than any of the other characters. what can i say, i tend to question authority myself. ). and i started don quixote many years ago but stopped partway through ; i was enjoying the book, but i had a "pocket" (ha !) edition which was probably thicker than it was tall, and printed far too small. if only i'd known about ebooks then... (this was probably about 12 years ago or so). i plan try it again, digitally. i also love molière and racine (i read Phèdre just a few years ago and found it riveting).

however... i had to read "La vie de Marianne" by Marivaux for school and i wanted to hurl the damned book against the wall i hated it so much. marianne was the heroine of the book and she was an inane, simpering idiot who was constantly flinging her wrist to her forehead and falling down in a swoon in shock at the cruel games of fate and the sheer overwhelmingness of life in general, and i just wanted to give her a good slap ! arg ! even now just thinking about it i'm irritated. i must have a particularly low tolerance for melodrama (well... and simpering, inane girls whose only characteristic seems to be their "innocent virtue" ). the edition i had contained also "le paysan parvenu" but i would sooner have set myself on fire than try to read that one.

i also started jane eyre recently but didn't get very far, i just found it far too depressing (although i did like the film very much). i might try it again some time.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by Ned

How about Salman Rushdie?
I waded through a few pages of Midnight's Children and all that came across was Rushdie shouting "Look at me, how clever I am" - I couldn't get past that to what he was actually on about.
...

(Asked empathetically) But you agree he is indeed "clever"? I have started The Satanic Verses a few times, and I'm always very impressed by his writing, and yet I peter out in interest and put it aside after about 50 pages. I've never really grasped why, since, as I say, his writing is for me quite extraordinary. Perhaps it's an over-cleverness that's exhausting me.

I was going to recommend you try something else by him, but the book I have been told to read first, to get past my "reader's block", was, I think, Midnight's Children. It may have been Grimus though...maybe we should both give that one a go, hey?

And Ulysses - yes, very clever, but I can't see for the life of me how anybody could enjoy it.

I not long read A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man. I found it quite dull. Saying that, I've opened Ulysses a time or two (as it used to be on my smartphone of the time) while waiting for something, and enjoyed the hell out of the small bits I've read. It's one on my TBR pile/list. I think I'll skip Finnegans Wake though...at least, not without professionally-guided "group therapy".

I just tried Moby Dick last week for the first time and lost interest in the first few pages. Think I'll stick to the film.

Which "film"? I've a liking for Patrick Stewart, and I've always wanted to see him in Ahab's skin, but have yet to do so.

And finally Dickens - the problem I have with him, apart from his over the top sentimentality - is that he's clearly writing in instalments at so much per word and everything gets dragged on and on and on.
...

My dad loved Dickens, but he's never something I much liked (or ever completed a single work of). He's one I'm prepared to approach again though, awareness that I've changed a lot since those many years ago (hell, I've changed my reading preferences just in the last couple of years).

Originally Posted by nomesque

My Brilliant Career, by Miles Franklin (Aussie classic). I had an almost overwhelming urge to slit my wrists and end this cruel existence by the time I finished it. Holy dooly. If you like depressing reads, give it a try!

I don't mind depressing reads (Primo Levi's If This Is A Man, will always be on my bookshelves, though it's no picnic to read), but I've never read My Brilliant Career. Perhaps you don't mean that particular kind of "depressing" though. At school, we hit some Aussie poets, but rarely Aussie novelists (An Imaginary Life by David Malouf, was about the extent, and thankfully I enjoyed it). I'm surprised, looking back, that we didn't get near My Brilliant Career.

Cheers,
Marc

[Timoleon]

Originally Posted by ahi

Also, Lord of the Flies.

- Ahi

Lord of the Flies was dreadful!