The Worst Great Literary Work You'Ve Ever Read

[vandermolen]

Given the murderous fanaticism displayed by the Parisian mob during the French Revolution even in its early stages, I think she's not an invention at all.

Good point!

[Karl Henning]

I remember that the blurb on the back of the book said that the central character 'faced a frightening and unjust trial'.

Illiterate blurb ....

[Florestan]

I remember that the blurb on the back of the book said that the central character 'faced a frightening and unjust trial'

Defund the justice! 

[Cato]

Some critics, clearly not sharing this interpretation, have criticized Camus for not giving names to any of the Arabs, like that's a gotcha! for Camus' racism, but I think he can't do that because for Meursault they all have one generic name.

Precisely!  And that should be obvious to anyone, but...when you are hunting for a "gotcha"...

Of course, keep in mind: some critics are morons! 

[Cato]

Above I mentioned that some critics are morons.

Some might think I am a moron for not liking To Kill a Mockingbird or The Catcher in the Rye, which have been extremely over-rated, despite being de rigueur in many American high schools and universities because they check most of the boxes (e.g. Unreconstructed Southern racism, narrow-minded small-towns for Mockingbird, criticism of "phoniness" in mid-20th century American and sexual confusion for Rye, to mention a few).

e.g.  https://newrepublic.com/article/118703/original-review-jd-salinger-catcher-rye-insufferable

And for Mockingbird:

I once enraged an audience of very nice book-lovers at the Cheltenham literary festival by suggesting that Mockingbird was just the teensiest bit overrated. There are many reasons for this assessment, not least the feeling that Atticus Finch's famous moral rectitude is, in point of fact, disturbingly flexible. ...

(Harper) Lee's hero is a virtuous, middle-class white man, full of noblesse oblige to the black people he defends (who revere him for it), but who doesn't bat an eyelid at the common knowledge that the illiterate, white-trash Mayella Ewell is regularly raped and beaten by her father. Not only does this fact not discernibly trouble Atticus's conscience, he appears to consider Mayella untrustworthy because she has been repeatedly raped by her father. The novel concurs: Mayella is lying, and it's part of her unsavoury character that she keeps getting raped by her father, which has apparently made her sex-starved for any other man (huh?), which is why she entraps poor Tom Robinson. Ultimately the Ewells are irredeemable, and the novel leaves them to their dirty, nasty, backwoods fate. I'm not a big fan of novels driven by moral teachings to begin with, but if I'm going to read a moralistic novel I'd like its moral system to be a bit more robust than that.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/feb/06/to-kill-mockingbird-harper-lee-overrated-sequel-go-set-watchman

[Florestan]

Above I mentioned that some critics are morons.

You are in a select company.

It we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespear [sic!]. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may only study his commentators.

[Karl Henning]

The Catcher in the Rye

Happy to say I dodged that bullet in school. I subsequently read it out of curiosity, and realized just how happily I had missed the experience in school.

[BWV 1080]

Happy to say I dodged that bullet in school. I subsequently read it out of curiosity, and realized just how happily I had missed the experience in school.

Happy to say I never read it in school, nor got curious later

[BWV 1080]

A book I read 30 years ago with only cringe memories

[Cato]

A book I read 30 years ago with only cringe memories

Yes, I recall the fuss about "TOM ROBBINS" back then, another literary mouse who was lionized by the Illiterati of The Establishment.

[SimonNZ]

Someone gave me Robbins' Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas and I loved it - really funny and really clever. But then I tried to repeat the experience but couldn't with four or five of his other books which I started and then quickly put aside in disappointment.

[Cato]

Happy to say I dodged that bullet in school. I subsequently read it out of curiosity, and realized just how happily I had missed the experience in school.

Suffice it to say that, at my all-boys Catholic high school, there were various levels, although they were based more on Mathematics scores than language prowess, which levels we did not notice at first, and which were never discussed or indicated.

However, the levels became slowly clear as time went on.  The lower levels were given e.g. Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea), John Knowles (A Separate Peace), William Golding (Lord of the Flies) et al. with either Romeo and Juliet or The Merchant of Venice for their exposure to Shakespeare.

Those above average in Mathematics (Sic!) were given Macbeth, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Coriolanus, King Lear etc. with the command to choose two Shakespeare plays to read and analyze on our own (I chose Titus Andronicus and The Tempest). 

I recall reading Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim ), Dickens ( A Tale of Two Cities), Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov), Tolstoy's Hadji Murad,  Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters, Ibsen's An Enemy of the People  (a great favorite of ours for various reasons in the 1960's).

For American Literature there were Sinclair Lewis (Elmer Gantry), Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie, Sherwood Anderson (Winesburg, Ohio), Thornton Wilder (Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth), and a few others.

No, To Kill a Mockingbird was not in the curriculum, but the works of a much better American writer, a great writer, namely Flannery O'Connor, were included, and we thought her works were exquisitely subversive: the short-story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge and the short, darkly comic novel Wise Blood enthused us greatly!

The latter novel features a strange character (a man) named "Hazel Motes," who intends to start a new religion:

"The Church Without Jesus Christ, where the blind don't see, and the lame don't walk, and the dead stay that way!"    One of the funniest lines ever written! *

Anyway, some of the classes read Catcher in the Rye (it was generally hated), and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, both also generally hated as over-rated.

Mrs. Cato at her small-town Catholic high school had a similar curriculum: she read several plays by Shakespeare, Melville's Moby Dick, and several novels by Dickens (Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities).

Dare I say that today - even in many Catholic high schools - the curriculum in English has been gutted of such books?

* On my own, through a magazine which had published a riotously funny short story of his, I discovered the hilarious short stories of S.J. Perelman, whose works should have been required reading, even if only for their excellent style and vocabulary, but sadly were and have been ignored.  My recommendation - and the discovery that he had written scripts for The Marx Brothers - led to a "Perelman cult" being established at my high school. 

[Brian]

The latter novel features a strange character (a man) named "Hazel Motes," who intends to start a new religion:

"The Church Without Jesus Christ, where the blind don't see, and the lame don't walk, and the dead stay that way!"    One of the funniest lines ever written!

As an aside, one of my favorite comic novels of all time is also about a strange character who starts a new religion. Though in this case he is a hapless, amiable fool who accidentally starts a cult. The novel is Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis, surely the best work of fiction to ever include a chapter set in the Texas Senate committee hearings.

[Cato]

As an aside, one of my favorite comic novels of all time is also about a strange character who starts a new religion. Though in this case he is a hapless, amiable fool who accidentally starts a cult. The novel is Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis, surely the best work of fiction to ever include a chapter set in the Texas Senate committee hearings.

Thanks for the recommendation! 

[JBS]

In my junior year of college I took a course in 20th century British literature from a visiting professor.

The last assigned book was


Apparently it was hugely popular and highly esteemed in Ireland at the time (late 1970s). For us American kids, it was incomprehensible and impossible to get into. Not one of us liked it. In fact not one of us could get ourselves to finish it.
A few years ago, I read a synopsis of the plot, and remained as uncomprehending as before.

Really, Finnegan's Wake is easier to read...

[JBS]

I remember reading Grapes of Wrath as a teenager, and being highly impressed by it. But it remains the only Steinbeck book I've ever read.

[Jo498]

I remember reading Grapes of Wrath as a teenager, and being highly impressed by it. But it remains the only Steinbeck book I've ever read.

We read "Of Mice and Men" in school (English as foreign language), I eventually read Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row in my 20s. I liked all of them. They are not earth shatteringly great but unpretentious good reads. I never got around to "East of Eden".

The problem with books like "Catcher in the Rye" is that they seem to age really fast. They might give a great picture of postwar/early 50s US but for me the book felt obsolete and ages away as a teenager in ca. 1990 West Germany. Because teachers and curricula are always a generation or so behind, they pride themselves on having "contemporary/modern stuff" but forget that it was contemporary when they were students (or not even then).

Sure, the point of great literature should be to treat situations, conflicts, characters that are sufficiently "general" to make one interested, even if historically (or otherwise) remote. I have not (and I am not going to) re-read Salinger after >30 years but he failed for me in this department.

It's probably not accidental that until recently the term "Classics" referred only to Really Old Stuff, i.e. mostly history and epic poetry in Latin and Greek. Of course, many teenagers were bored stiff by this as well but at least they learned something on a very general level, not semi-Freudian glimpses into 1950 teenage psychology that were obsolete already 20 years later. I probably learned more about power and politics in Latin class than in history, although there were also some tired clichés (like the freedom loving Athenians saving Europe from Asian Autocracy )

"Wise Blood" is quite dark and disturbing; I read this not long ago as an adult in my 40s (and O'connor short stories maybe 10 years before that), it would probably have been too puzzling for me as a teenager (and maybe also too difficult in a foreign language).

[Brian]

In my junior year of college I took a course in 20th century British literature from a visiting professor.

For us American kids, it was incomprehensible and impossible to get into. Not one of us liked it. In fact not one of us could get ourselves to finish it.

I had an American Literature After 1980 class in college. We all disliked Don DeLillo's Underworld so much - including the professor, who hadn't read it in a few years! - that after two classes he said, "Should we give up and move on to the next one?"

[DavidW]

We read "Of Mice and Men" in school (English as foreign language), I eventually read Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row in my 20s. I liked all of them. They are not earth shatteringly great but unpretentious good reads. I never got around to "East of Eden".

I love Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.  I want to someday get to Cannery Row.  I really like Steinbeck's down to Earth style and well written characters.

[DavidW]

I had an American Literature After 1980 class in college. We all disliked Don DeLillo's Underworld so much - including the professor, who hadn't read it in a few years! - that after two classes he said, "Should we give up and move on to the next one?"

I guess he should have chosen White Noise instead, which is popular in junior English here.