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Terrible, well renowned novelists
Inlander:
--- Quote from: Zombiedude on 21 Aug 2009, 16:45 ---I never really noticed any christian undertones in Narnia when I read it as a kid. Really
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Of course you didn't. I didn't either, and I'm willing to bet that 90% of the kids who read it or had it read to them by their parents didn't. The problem with the "Narnia as Christian propaganda" argument is that it only works if the child reading the Narnia books is familiar with the Bible in the first place (and I'm not talking about children and not adults because they're children's books and most people read them first when they're children). If you don't know anything about Christianity or the Bible then the Narnia series is just a bunch of stories about a talking Lion and a bunch of kids who turn out to be Princes and Princesses in a fantasy land with an evil witch and fauns and dwarves and stuff. Let's not forget, kids tend to take things pretty much at face value and of their own accord they don't generally seek out deeper meanings or moral lessons in stories.
TheMooseOfDeath:
--- Quote from: Surgoshan on 21 Aug 2009, 16:00 ---
--- Quote from: TheMooseOfDeath on 21 Aug 2009, 13:01 ---To be fair to Austen, I've only read P&P once, but am currently re-reading it (now that I'm older and, hopefully, a little wiser). But again, 19th century prose still drives me nuts.
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Why would you say that a house burned down when one can tearfully confess that a magnificent edifice was woefully, wholly, and tragically consumed in an holocaustic conflagration?
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Hey, I'm still trying, aren't I? I just might love it the second time around. That's what happened to me with Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises
--- Quote from: AanAllein on 21 Aug 2009, 21:15 ---
--- 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?
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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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Making modern "translations" of older English texts is a generally good, though I would have some qualms with it. It would certainly help younger generations to read classic texts and thus more likely keep those stories in public memory, but at the same time original texts do have their charm and use words in ways that would only be restricted in their original meaning and usage if "translated" (I'm mostly thinking of The Canterbury Tales). Then again, that's why we have "abridged" and "unabridged" versions of texts.
But I definitely agree about translations from other languages. I have two translations of The Brothers Karamazov, with one that is horribly bland and the other I can zip through, thoroughly enjoying it while also soaking in the deeper meanings. Also, there's definitely a much different feel between long-form poems that are translated into verse and prose versions.
onewheelwizzard:
--- Quote from: jimbunny on 21 Aug 2009, 20:52 ---Actually...
I blame television, and Heart of Darkness is amazing.
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Blame TV for what? I've never actually owned one, nor has my family.
jimbunny:
Sorry, that shouldn't have been one sentence. And I was being a little flippant (I should have said, "I blame television and bad English teachers.")
I had to read Heart of Darkness my third year of college, and I found it probably the most powerful book I read all that year. There are some stunning passages in there, not to mention the moral dilemmas surrounding imperialism and the narrator as an individual. Plus, it's a pretty fucking concise book for being so popularly hated. I mean, I can understand being bored by Milton, George Eliot, even Mark Twain - but if you can't make it through Heart of Darkness, I'm not sure you can fairly call it boredom that's keeping you back.
a pack of wolves:
--- Quote from: AanAllein on 21 Aug 2009, 21:15 ---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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Problem is, all you could ever produce would be simplified versions. It's not comparable to texts written in Old or Middle English where you have to translate as you go because so many words have changed or fallen out of usage entirely. You might find the prose style unappealing in novels from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but the language is perfectly comprehensible for the most part, so why change it? True, some people might prefer a different pacing but you can say that about any novel and you couldn't simply make them faster paced because there are plenty of contemporary novels that move slowly.
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