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Terrible, well renowned novelists
JD:
I never really noticed any christian undertones in Narnia when I read it as a kid. Really
onewheelwizzard:
I'm going to go ahead and take a dump on Joseph Conrad real quick, because Heart of Darkness straight up put me to sleep within 5 pages, no matter where in the book I tried to read it from. I haven't read anything else by him but goddamn is that book overrated.
I don't know what it was about it, maybe I'll revisit it sometime and find out that he's actually worth reading for some reason, but seriously, that book sucked ass.
Dimmukane:
I know his name came up already, but R.A. Salvatore. A descriptive phrase of his: 'tooth-filled maw.' This is equivalent to 'mouth mouth.'
jimbunny:
Actually...
I blame television, and Heart of Darkness is amazing.
AanAllein:
--- Quote from: TheMooseOfDeath on 21 Aug 2009, 00:54 ---I've found that I really, really hate most of 19th century literature (with most exceptions coming from about the last quarter of the century and some American authors). This mostly stems from the fact that they often write in 5 pages what could be written in a few paragraphs.
Also, I think it's just a language thing. I can zip through just about any contemporary novel, but I always trudge through any work from Dickens or Bronte, etc., books that were, in their day, usually read in about a week or less. That sort of verse was just normal for its contemporary readers, just like how Nick Hornby takes me a week to read, or a 2-hour Shakespearean play would have been crystal-clear to its Elizabethan audience.
Or maybe I'm just trying to find a good excuse to hate Pride & Prejudice. Seriously, Elizabeth Bennet has to be the first Mary Sue in literature AMIRITE?
--- End quote ---
I am generally in agreement with what you're saying here - often, it can be worth fighting through the prose (for example, it took me forever to attack Tale of Two Cities, but I'm glad I did), but sometimes it's really hard to justify it when they take 2 pages to talk about anything.
This sounds kind of blasphemous to anyone at all interested in literature, but what they really need are "translations" of older English novels. I'm not talking simplified Cliff-notes sorta thing here, but rather an attempt to modernize the language while maintaining the strengths of the novels in question. I say this because some of my favourite novels are by Russian novelists - and yet I have no doubt that they would have similar flaws to the aforementioned English novels if I was to learn Russian and read the original manuscript. Translation forces the language, pacing etc to be updated while maintaining what makes the prose work.
Just a thought. Can't really ever see it happening though - purists would vomit at the thought, and everyone else would probably just prefer really dumbed-down versions.
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