Disrespecting a "classic"

[Dangit2019]

So, about a week ago, my English class finished reading Our Town by Thorton Wilder. I was first intrigued by the play as I usually am by required reading books, and like the other books I gave it a shot.

It sucked. Please note this is coming from somebody who has loved every book that a teacher has put before him. I just want to clarify a few reasons why so I can get this out of my system. Also, this is going into spoiler territory (not like you should care).

Spoiler: rant incoming

The book has no conflict. That's the first thing you need to know. There is literally no turns of the plot, nay, any plot until the 3rd act. Now, I'll give the play credit for focusing a lot on characterization, but when that's all that's happening for 2/3rds of your book, then you're doing it wrong.

The big allegory/twist/pretentiousness-ball of the play is that the first 2 acts show normal life in childhood and adulthood respectively, and the 3rd act turns around and shows the harsh reality of death to prove a lesson about living life to its fullest and appreciating every day and not taking things for zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Now, while I will say that this turn in the story is pretty novel, I just feel like it can't excuse the rest of the play being senseless build-up. Not to mention a twist that gets extremely cheesy in its delivery.

Emily Webb: Goodbye world! Goodbye Grover's Corners [the town], Mama and Papa... Goodbye to the clocks ticking, and my butternut tree...

You get the idea.

Maybe I wouldn't be so mad at the book if the author wasn't so damned pleased with how genius he was.

Emilyo any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?

Stage Manager: No. The saints and poets, maybe ? they do some

Oh fuck you.

You see, it's one of those "classics" which are only considered so because they're old, and have a criticism proof flame shield of saying "you just didn't get it" or "you don't appreciate life like he did" to anyone like me who points to this as a bunch of crap. Don't get me wrong, people should live life to its fullest; but using that universally condoned lesson to block out any sense of critical writing isn't acceptable, at least not in my standards

tldr: What "classic"/required reading books do you hate, and (in detail) why? Please don't just say it sucked and walk away.

 

[Playful Pony]

Well I was practically forced to read the LOTR book -"there is actually several books, but..." shut the hell up fantasy-nerd friends, I'm talking here!-, and to me it was a 1000 page brick of boredom. No, I didn't finish it. I did read nearly 400 pages, so dont say I didn't try!

This was after having watched the first movie. A few of my friends had long been into the LOTR universe, long before any rumors of a Peter Jackson movie circulated. I had never taken interest, I much prefer space ships, lasers and aliens. However, I very much enjoyed the first movie and found myself interested in learning a bit more about that mystical world. One of my friends recommended I read the Bible *ahem*, I mean the big block of paper that is the LOTR book. There I would find all the information I could possibly desire!

By the Gods, how the damn thing dragged on... I tend to like a bit of detail, but there is a limit to how accurately I want the situation described... The-thing-with-the-Elves-in-the-place took forever, I had completely lost interest by that point but soldiered on for another hundred pages or whatever before finally giving up. At this point I was accused of having a short attention span, my brain having been 'programmed' by stupid ADHD sci-fi such as Stargate SG-1 and the much hated (among that group of friends anyway) Star Wars universe, one of my personal favorites... I'd rather be stupid and programmed than bored out of my mind! Perhaps it's a good book... It wasn't for me!

 

[Shadowstar38]

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.

 

[Genocidicles]

Brighton Rock.

We got a list of books written before 1940 I think, and we had to read one of them. I picked this one up thinking "Oh it's about old fashioned gangsters! This'll be good!".

What an incredibly boring read.

 

[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.

 

[Playful Pony]

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.

Heheh, my favorite of the Star Wars movies is Episode 1. I love the droids, I enjoyed the plot despite people telling me it's shallow, stupid and whatever... About the 'mediclorians', I just ignore it, the same way I do most other stupid things showing up in Star Wars, and there is a LOT of that! I'm not going to let anyone ruin my enjoyment of that universe though, and the easiest way is to just pretend parts of it never happened!

I do NOT like the crybaby Anakin in Episode 2 and 3 though... I don't know if it's the actor, or how they make THE Darth Vader look like a little *****... I just don't like it, and it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It's unfortunate, cause I wanted something really neat, but instead we got some barely average movies with nuggets of awesome wrapped in a blanket of emo. I can't help but feel like there must have been a batter way of making Anakin into Vader...

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

I found 'I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings' to be overrated. It wasn't bad by any means, but 'To Kill A Mockingbird' is better in my opinion.

 

[twistedmic]

I wasn't able to get through the fourth chapter of 'Catcher in the Rye'. It was boring and I wanted to beat Holden to death a baseball bat.
I also dislike Stanley Kubrick movies. They are way too long and have severe pacing problems ( way, way slow).

 

[Magic Muffin Man]

First off, Our Town is one of those American classics that I love to death, but it's something that really has to be seen on stage instead of read, because as a book it can be a bit slow going. However, on stage, with a good cast? It can be devastating, in the best way. A shit cast though? Well, let's just say that seeing a high schooler trying to perform the last Emily monologue is like watching a three legged dog trying to run a marathon; the effort is admirable, but they don't have the necessary tools to complete the task and it'll just end up looking very silly and very, very sad.

As for me, Catcher in the Rye is just awful, and I mean bad. Holden's an ass, his story is one of pretension and boredom, and the only time I really perked up reading it was when he was beaten up by a pimp. That was cool.

 

[Lionsfan]

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

I'm still in shock.

You shouldn't be that surprised. The effects and scenery are great, but the story and how it's paced has made the film age pretty badly

Well I was practically forced to read the LOTR book -"there is actually several books, but..." shut the hell up fantasy-nerd friends, I'm talking here!-, and to me it was a 1000 page brick of boredom. No, I didn't finish it. I did read nearly 400 pages, so dont say I didn't try!

This was after having watched the first movie. A few of my friends had long been into the LOTR universe, long before any rumors of a Peter Jackson movie circulated. I had never taken interest, I much prefer space ships, lasers and aliens. However, I very much enjoyed the first movie and found myself interested in learning a bit more about that mystical world. One of my friends recommended I read the Bible *ahem*, I mean the big block of paper that is the LOTR book. There I would find all the information I could possibly desire!

By the Gods, how the damn thing dragged on... I tend to like a bit of detail, but there is a limit to how accurately I want the situation described... The-thing-with-the-Elves-in-the-place took forever, I had completely lost interest by that point but soldiered on for another hundred pages or whatever before finally giving up. At this point I was accused of having a short attention span, my brain having been 'programmed' by stupid ADHD sci-fi such as Stargate SG-1 and the much hated (among that group of friends anyway) Star Wars universe, one of my personal favorites... I'd rather be stupid and programmed than bored out of my mind! Perhaps it's a good book... It wasn't for me!

Council of Elrond chapter.......ugh I'm having boredom nightmares just thinking about it

 

[Tanis]

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

Wuthering Height?
Boring, stupid, poorly written, crap that has loads and loads of mindless run on sentences that go around no to where but just keep going until you're forced to flip the page and it does this why trying to so 'posh' and 'shocking because OMG LUVEZ' bullshit.

Srsly? Screw that book.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

Great Expectations. I just wanted Pip to kill himself, it was like it started at shitty and ended at shitty, there was no progress for the characters, and if there was, then it was just so fucking boring I don't remember it. I even wrote that in my final paper. Also, Death of a Salesman. I saw nothing of value in that book and remember no details about it.

And this is coming from someone who read the Count of Monte Cristo and loved every one of those 1400+ pages.

 

[Lunar Templar]

i to this day, still hate Akira.

though i would wanted to throttle a DJ for 'scratching' during a John Mellencamp song, Jack and Diane, i think.

 

[clayschuldt]

I did not enjoy "A Wrinkle in Time". It was lazy Science-Ficiton at best.
I really didn't enjoy Citizen Kane either. It was so depressing, and it went on forever.

 

[Soviet Steve]

Blade ru-

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

I'm still in shock.

Economics is an interest of mine and I'm going into banking. As such the nonsensical economic aspect which necessitated the whole morally awkward scenario completely unravelled the film for me in the first minutes.

 

[Saviordd1]

Jane Eyre
*Shudders*
It is so FUCKING DULL, the plot is meh, the characters are ALL grating and the writing is fucking stale.

GAHHHHHHH

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

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!

 

[Womplord]

Honestly I find a lot of classics to be overrated and people reading them pretentious, especially the stuff that you study in English. Pride and prejudice is a good example, it was basically the old version of 50 Shades of grey, I don't see how it's any more intellectual. Just a dumb romance novel, it isn't even well written.

There are some good classics however, like 1984 and Gene Wolf books which are really worth their status. I guess some books are classics because they were the first to do something, while others are because they are deep and amazing examples of their genre.

 

[Alssadar]

I disliked "The Heart of Darkness," by Joseph Konrad. The book that inspired Apocalypse Now and Spec Ops: The Line.
It's a good book, don't get me wrong, and it was and interesting way of storytelling. But the way it is presented, through the narration style as a past tense story annoyed me--as much as I want to like the book, I simply couldn't get enthralled with it.

I also didn't like the Turn of the Screw, despite what people say about its wonderful depiction of narrative. I guess just dislike frilly 19th century governesses with little to no personality (as was the cultural norms of the time--but that's a whole other argument.)