The Worst Great Literary Work You'Ve Ever Read

[Florestan]

By which I mean, what literary work which is unanimously considered a masterpiece do you personally find not so great at all?

My first and foremost example is The Sorrows of Young Werther. A laughably mawkish piece of shit, yet one which led astray a whole generation, with echoes as far as Brahms and Massenet. How and why Goethe of all people should have written such crap is beyond me.

Your turn.

[Karl Henning]

By which I mean, what literary work which is unanimously considered a masterpiece do you personally find not so great at all?

My first and foremost example is The Sorrows of Young Werther. A laughably mawkish piece of shit, yet one which led astray a whole generation, with echoes as far as Brahms and Massenet. How and why Goethe of all people should have written such crap is beyond me.

Your turn.

Fun thread. @Cato got here first, in spirit, but Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, wherein there is even less than meets the eye.

[Florestan]

Also Plato's Republic strikes me as a typical case of emperor's new clothes.

To begin with, the title is grossly mistranslated. Firstly, republic is a Latin word, not a Greek one. Secondly, what kind of a republic is that, where there are no elections whatsoever?

[DavidW]

James Fenimoore Cooper (any of his novels).  Mark Twain can say it better than myself:

https://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/HNS/Indians/offense.html

[Karl Henning]

James Fenimoore Cooper (any of his novels).  Mark Twain can say it better than myself:

https://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/HNS/Indians/offense.html

That Twain essay is a stone-cold classic!

[Jo498]

Also Plato's Republic strikes me as a typical case of emperor's new clothes.

To begin with, the title is grossly mistranslated. Firstly, republic is a Latin word, not a Greek one. Secondly, what kind of a republic is that, where there are no elections whatsoever?

Now that's silly. The bad translation is not Plato's fault, it was called "politeia" (the State). And while it's understandable, it is a bit of a misunderstanding that it is mainly about an ideal state (that is horribly totalitarian, incl. abolishment of family, eugenics, strict regulation of the arts and music etc.). It's about the soul (and a bunch of other things), the state is "only" the macrocosmic analogue for this. But clearly, Plato put to much into one book, it should have been two or three.

[Ganondorf]

If those books count which one couldn't actually finish then War and Peace. Although I did greatly enjoy Anna Karenina.

[Cato]

Fun thread. @Cato got here first, in spirit, but Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, wherein there is even less than meets the eye.

Amen, and thank you!   

[Jo498]

Most famous book I got stuck at about half:
Anna Karenina (I got bored by the Kitty/Levin stuff).
I read War and Peace, Resurrection and most of the shorter Tolstoi novellas, so it was neither the sheer length nor the style. And I plan to re-read it eventually.
I also could not finish Moby Dick in English but I had read a translation many years earlier already as a teenager (however, I am not completely sure if that translation might have been slightly abridged).

Reasonably famous books I found boring:
- Farewell to Arms (whereas I liked Old Man... and also Whom the bell tolls) I was probably too young for the strange love story (or I had expected a book with more war action)
- Catcher in the Rye (obligatory reading in my high school English (as a foreign language) class. This seemed totally dated in the late 1980s, Caulfield's world of ca. 1950 US had nothing to do with me and his plight as an estranged teenager didn't travel well.

Two books I never finished because I lost them/got stolen while travelling
Joyce: Portrait of the artist...
Styron: Sophie's Choice

[BWV 1080]

Cormac McCarthy - The Passenger

One big paranoid schizophrenic steaming shaggy dog turd of a book

[DavidW]

Most famous book I got stuck at about half:
Anna Karenina (I got bored by the Kitty/Levin stuff).
I read War and Peace, Resurrection and most of the shorter Tolstoi novellas, so it was neither the sheer length nor the style. And I plan to re-read it eventually.

I was in that boat but then a few years ago I snagged the Bartlett translation which opened the door for me:


What was absolutely wild was that for most of the history of the school I work at, Anna K was always assigned to seniors.  What a hard read for a high school student!

[SimonNZ]

Thoreau's Walden: muddled and poorly argued from one sentence to the next. There are plenty of things I've given up on because I haven't found the right pathway into them: this isn't that. This is "why is this considered a classic?".

A famous/infamous article from the New Yorker that puts the case better than I can and had me nodding some years back all the way through:

The Moral Judgments of Henry David Thoreau
Why, given its fabrications, inconsistencies, and myopia, do we continue to cherish "Walden"?

[LKB]

Fun thread. @Cato got here first, in spirit, but Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, wherein there is even less than meets the eye.

Interesting. The Old Man and the Sea and Islands in the Stream comprise the only Hemingway l can tolerate...

[LKB]

OT:

Everything by Shakespeare. 

[vers la flamme]

I'll catch hell for this I know, but every time I try to read Heart of Darkness I'm bored to tears before I make it through the first third. I'll try again someday... I have yet to get much out of my attempts to read The Sound and the Fury, too, though I really love others of Faulkner's works.

In both cases, I'm sure the problem is with me and not the books. I'm not sure I've read any "great" literature that I found to be straight-up bad. However there was one book I had to read in high school that I thought was just awful: A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I'm not sure if that's considered a "great literary work", but I didn't like it at all.

Edit: On the topic of high school assigned reading, I also did not like The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne at all either.

[LKB]

I'll catch hell for this I know, but every time I try to read Heart of Darkness I'm bored to tears before I make it through the first third. I'll try again someday... I have yet to get much out of my attempts to read The Sound and the Fury, too, though I really love others of Faulkner's works.

In both cases, I'm sure the problem is with me and not the books. I'm not sure I've read any "great" literature that I found to be straight-up bad. However there was one book I had to read in high school that I thought was just awful: A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I'm not sure if that's considered a "great literary work", but I didn't like it at all.

Edit: On the topic of high school assigned reading, I also did not like The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne at all either.

I couldn't hack Heart of Darkness either. I just watch Apocalypse Now instead. 

[SimonNZ]

OT:

Everything by Shakespeare. 

Is it Shakespeare you dislike or the traumatic memory of bad high school teachers?

(It occurs to me I could ask that question of many present and future nominations here.)

[LKB]

Is it Shakespeare you dislike or the traumatic memory of bad high school teachers?

(It occurs to me I could ask that question of many present and future nominations here.)

My teachers were excellent, and never foisted the Bard upon us.

While his facility with the English language may be peerless, his penchant for using fifteen words when five will do gets old, quickly.

[Florestan]

The bad translation is not Plato's fault, it was called "politeia" (the State).

True.

And while it's understandable, it is a bit of a misunderstanding that it is mainly about an ideal state (that is horribly totalitarian, incl. abolishment of family, eugenics, strict regulation of the arts and music etc.). It's about the soul (and a bunch of other things), the state is "only" the macrocosmic analogue for this. But clearly, Plato put to much into one book, it should have been two or three.

Whatever it is about, I never made it past page 20. It's all words, words, words, it's all words about words, and it's all about how clever and witty and full of wisdom Socrates is and how all other characters are dimwits who can do no other and no better than to agree with everything he says. I very much doubt that the real Socrates would have liked, or approved of, how Plato presented him and I dread to think that this verbiage is widely regarded as the foundation of philosophy.

[Florestan]

I'll catch hell for this I know, but every time I try to read Heart of Darkness I'm bored to tears before I make it through the first third. I'll try again someday... I have yet to get much out of my attempts to read The Sound and the Fury, too, though I really love others of Faulkner's works.

In both cases, I'm sure the problem is with me and not the books. I'm not sure I've read any "great" literature that I found to be straight-up bad. However there was one book I had to read in high school that I thought was just awful: A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I'm not sure if that's considered a "great literary work", but I didn't like it at all.

Edit: On the topic of high school assigned reading, I also did not like The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne at all either.

Conrad is one of my favorite English writers but Heart of Darkness is not a favorite of mine. Lord Jim, Nostromo and Gaspar Ruiz are.

I've read The Scarlet Letter but besides that a woman named Hester Pryne was burnt at stake I remember nothing, not even why they burnt her.