Twist on The Modern Library Book Meme

[shadowkat]

After reading the newest book meme, I thought I'd do a little research, provide more information if I could - because I remembered when the Modern Library's notorious list was first released.

When the Modern Library - one of the imprints of Random House - released its list of 100 best or most influential books of the 20th Century along with the list that online voters/readers chose (I was actually one of the voters - although they didn't pick my number one choice which was Ulyssess by James Joyce), there was quite a bit controversary and hoopla over it. Why? The lack of minority fiction represented. The lack of works by non-English writers. The relative lack of women writers. People felt that a whole segment of the population was under-represented. Who were these judges anyway? And why were the majority of writers represented white men?

So, Radcliff Publishing course released their list.
And even more fascinating, the New York Public Library released a list of books and authors which they put on display when the millenium approached.
The best list is the NYPL list which I'm saving for another entry, this one being far too long.

So here? I'm just reproducing the Modern Library List, The Modern Library Reader's Choice List and the Radcliff list along with the one's I read in each list, which is embarrassingly few.



The Modern Library List of 100 chosen by writers and professors and editors of Random House.
The one's I've read are in bold.

1. Ulysses, James Joyce
2. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
4. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (own it, seen both film versions, haven’t read it yet)
5. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
6. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
7. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
8. Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
9. Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
10. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
11. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
12. The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
13. 1984, George Orwell
14. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
15. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
16. An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
17. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
18. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
19. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (own, haven’t read yet)
20. Native Son, Richard Wright
21. Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow
22. Appointment in Samarra, John O' Hara
23. U.S.A. (trilogy), John Dos Passos
24. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
25. A Passage to India, E. M. Forster
26. The Wings of the Dove, Henry James
27. The Ambassadors, Henry James
28. Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. The Studs Lonigan Trilogy, James T. Farrell
30. The good soldier by Ford Madox Ford
31. Animal Farm, George Orwell
32. The Golden Bowl, Henry James
33. Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
34. A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
35. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
36. All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren (own, haven’t read yet)
37. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
38. Howards End, E. M. Forster
39. Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin (own, haven’t read yet)
40. The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
41. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
42. Deliverance, James Dickey
43. A Dance to the Music of Time (series), Anthony Powell
44. Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley
45. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
46. The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
47. Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
48. The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence
49. Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence
50. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
51. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
52. Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth
53. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
54. Light in August, William Faulkner
55. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
56. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett (Own, haven’t read yet)
57. Parade's End, Ford Madox Ford
58. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
59. Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm
60. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
61. Death Comes to the Archbishop, Willa Cather
62. From Here to Eternity, James Jones
63. The Wapshot Chronicles, John Cheever
64. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
65. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
66. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
67. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
68. Main Street, Sinclair Lewis
69. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (own, haven’t read)
70. The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell
71. A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes
72. A House for Ms. Biswas, V. S. Naipaul
73. The Day of the Locust, Nathaniel West
74. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway (own, haven’t read)
75. Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
76. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
77. Finnegans Wake, James Joyce
78. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
79. A Room With a View, E. M. Forster
80. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
81. The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow
82. Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner (Fascinating book, I loved it when I read it. The writing style is reminscent of Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, a southern writer - where the language is key. The characters imperfect. I can't remember much of it, but if you like books that explore a family sort of like Thomas Hardy? You would like this , I think.)
83. A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul
84. The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
85. Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
86. Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow
87. The Old Wives' Tale, Arnold Bennett
88. The Call of the Wild, Jack London
89. Loving, Henry Green
90. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
91. Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell
92. Ironweed, William Kennedy
93. The Magus, John Fowles
94. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
95. Under the Net, Iris Murdoch
96. Sophie's Choice, William Styron
97. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
98. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
99. The Ginger Man, J. P. Donleavy
100. The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington



And now the Reader's Choice list for The Modern Library. This list was obtained from online and mailed in ballots to readers around the world. Mostly online. You could only vote once. In bold are the books I've read. And no I don't agree with the choices. Some of them ahem making you wonder about people.



This is the list people on the atpo board were complaining about. The cult list. It was voted on by online readers. Unlike BBC2 list, the majority of books seem to be by Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard, which is sort of frightening if you think about it. The one's I've read are in bold. While I've read several by Rand, I haven't read anything by Hubbard, nor do I plan to. I have however read an embarrassingly large number of them - do to the fact I'm a sci-fi/fantasy fan.

1. ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand
2.THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
3. BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
4.THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
5.TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
6.1984 by George Orwell
7.ANTHEM by Ayn Rand
8. WE THE LIVING by Ayn Rand
9. MISSION EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
10. FEAR by L. Ron Hubbard
11.ULYSSES by James Joyce
12.CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
13.THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
14.DUNE by Frank Herbert
15.THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert Heinlein (can't remember if I've read this one or not, it is the one Tim Minear is writing the screenplay for though.)
16.STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert Heinlein
17.A TOWN LIKE ALICE by Nevil Shute
18.BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
19.THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
20.ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
21. GRAVITY'S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon
22.THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
23. SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
24. GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
25.LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
26. SHANE by Jack Schaefer
27. TRUSTEE FROM THE TOOLROOM by Nevil Shute
28.A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving
29. THE STAND by Stephen King
30. THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN by John Fowles
31.BELOVED by Toni Morrison
32. THE WORM OUROBOROS by E.R. Eddison
33.THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
34. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
35. MOONHEART by Charles de Lint
36. ABSALOM, ABSALOM! by William Faulkner
37. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
38. WISE BLOOD by Flannery O'Connor
39. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
40. FIFTH BUSINESS by Robertson Davies
41. SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYING by Charles de Lint
42.ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
43.HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
44. YARROW by Charles de Lint
45. AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS by H.P. Lovecraft
46. ONE LONELY NIGHT by Mickey Spillane
47. MEMORY AND DREAM by Charles de Lint
48. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
49. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
50. TRADER by Charles de Lint
51. THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams
52.THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
53. THE HANDMAID'S TALE by Margaret Atwood
54. BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy
55.A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
56. ON THE BEACH by Nevil Shute (not sure if read or not, might have been Alas, Babylon, the two are frighteningly similar, do own it)
57.A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
58. GREENMANTLE by Charles de Lint
59. ENDER'S GAME by Orson Scott Card
60. THE LITTLE COUNTRY by Charles de Lint
61. THE RECOGNITIONS by William Gaddis
62. STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert Heinlein
63.THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
64. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving
65. SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES by Ray Bradbury
66.THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson
67. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
68. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
69. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
70. THE WOOD WIFE by Terri Windling
71. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
72. THE DOOR INTO SUMMER by Robert Heinlein
73.ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE by Robert Pirsig
74. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
75. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
76. AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS by Flann O'Brien
77.FARENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury
78. ARROWSMITH by Sinclair Lewis
79.WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams
80. NAKED LUNCH by William S. Burroughs
81.THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy
82.GUILTY PLEASURES by Laurell K. Hamilton
83.THE PUPPET MASTERS by Robert Heinlein
84. IT by Stephen King
85. V. by Thomas Pynchon
86. DOUBLE STAR by Robert Heinlein
87. CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY by Robert Heinlein
88. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
89. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
90.ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST by Ken Kesey
91. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
92. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
93. SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION by Ken Kesey
94. MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather
95. MULENGRO by Charles de Lint
96. SUTTREE by Cormac McCarthy
97. MYTHAGO WOOD by Robert Holdstock
98.ILLUSIONS by Richard Bach (I remember reading it, but can't remember what it was about except I don't want to admit I read it.)
99. THE CUNNING MAN by Robertson Davies
100. THE SATANIC VERSES by Salman Rushdie

Weird list and more white male dominated, I suspect than the above one, hence the outrage.



Here's the Radcliff publishing course's response, which I've read more of and sort of prefer to the above two lists. Is it more balanced than the Modern Library List? You be the judge.



The books I've read are in bold.

1.The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2.The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
3.The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4.To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5.The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6.Ulysses by James Joyce
7.Beloved by Toni Morrison
8.Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9.1984 by George Orwell
10.The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
11. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (Okay this is the fourth list this book has appeared on, feeling guilty for not reading it yet.)
12.Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
13.Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
17.Animal Farm by George Orwell
18.The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19.As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20.A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
21. The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
22.Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
23. Their Eyes Are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (one of my picks for number one, along with Ulysess on Modern Library voters list...sigh.)
24.Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26.Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
27.Native Son by Richard A. Wright
28.One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
29.Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
31.On the Road by Jack Kerouac
32.The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
33. Call of the Wild by Jack London
34.To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35.The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
37 The World According to Garp by John Irving
38 All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
39 A Room With a View by E. M. Forster
40 The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
41 Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
42 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
43 The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
44 Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
45 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
46 Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
47 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
48 Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
49 A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
50 The Awakening by Kate Chopin
51 My Antonia by Willa Cather (I read it but only vaguely remember it)
52 Howards End by E. M. Forster
53 In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54 Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
55 The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56 Jazz by Toni Morrison
57 Sophie's Choice by William Styron
58 Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
60 Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61 A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
62 Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63 Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64 Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
65 The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66 Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
68 Light in August by William Faulkner
69 The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
70 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
71 Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
72 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
73 Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
74 Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
75 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
76 Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77 In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
78 Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein (Okay I remember this, but I'm not sure if I read it.)
79 The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
80 The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82 White Noise by Don DeLillo
83 O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84 Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85 The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
86 Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
87 The Bostonians by Henry James
88 An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89 Death Comes For The Archbishop by Willa Cather
90 The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
91 This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92 Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93 The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
94 Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
95 Kim by Rudyard Kipling
96 The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
97 Rabbit, Run by John Updike (vaguely remember it.
98 Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
99 Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100 Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

Well, read more on this list at least. Highly recommend Beloved for those who haven't read it. It's an odd ghost story - that deals with the concepts of guilt, forgiveness, clemency, pain and slavery and reclaiming a life. Brutal in its honesty. Also Their Eyes are Watching God - by Zora Neal Hurston - an amazing book about painful relations between people. Sort of poetic. Also controversial when it was written.

Comments

[rahael.livejournal.com]

Virtually no Europeans apart from English writers on all the lists - which is strange for me, because if I do read any 20th C writers, they are usually European.

The cult list makes me laugh and laugh because Ulyssess comes way below L Ron Hubbard!!

Re:

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Virtually no Europeans apart from English writers on all the lists - which is strange for me, because if I do read any 20th C writers, they are usually European.

Yep, they seem to be mostly American writers, with a few exceptions: Joyce and Rushdie.

That's one of the reasons I like the NYPL list a little better. It seems to cover more territory. It also says "most influential" as opposed to best, which is an interesting distinction.

The cult list makes me laugh and laugh because Ulyssess comes way below L Ron Hubbard!!

That was my reaction when I first saw it. I'd voted for Ulysses and Beloved at the time. LOL! Never read L. Ron Hubbard. Almost picked up one of his books to see what the hoopla was all about. My friend CW who has read him, told me not to bother - mostly action-adventure sci-fi. Heinlein in her opinion is better. She also said that the humorous thing about Dianetics - the book that Scientology is based on - is Hubbard meant it to be a satire of the self-help/cult movement. He was trying to be satirical, but people took him seriously. Poor guy. He's either laughing his head off in the great beyond or turning over in his grave.

[randomways.livejournal.com]

These are all very odd lists, which is why I've avoided doing any of them in my own LJ. Though I may succumb eventually.

But some of the choices mystify me -- I despise The Colour Purple as,imho, an example of a highly talentless work, for instance, and cannot see how it ever made it so high. Ditto The World According to Garp. I've read Finnegans Wake...and don't believe for a second that the list-makers have. I also have trouble seeing how Faulkner's second-tier works beat out The Sound and the Fury. I am impressed that you read it...it's one of those books that needs an entire companion volume just to make sense of it.

And some gratify me -- I quite agree with you about Beloved (agree on Their Eyes Were Watching God too, for that matter, though ZNH is a little too political for my tastes, so I wouldn't rate it in the top 20) and think it's neat that someone else agrees that it's actually better than the Pulitzer-Prize winning Song of Solomon. Wide Sargasso Sea is marvelous and a must-read, especially for fans of Jane Eyre. And you definitely should read Lolita. It's a marvel of stylistic talent, something you can't get from the movies.

Then there's White Noise, which had all my friends making yummy sounds but left me kinda blah. Since my friends are usually quite reliable, I'm thinking I'm missing something. Oh well.

But very odd lists nonetheless. Too limited by the language issue. Which, even if one is focusing on English, ignores the wealth of excellent translations. Where is are the Achebes (just one mention!), the Mahfouz's, the Malamuds? Mann? Pasternak? Solzhenitsyn? Marquez?!?!?! Infinite are the arguments of literature students. Et cetera, ad nauseum. The problem I see is that in limiting it to the English language texts, they're missing out on a wider range of books that have had a broad influence. Certainly, the English language is the most wide-spread and influential, but.... And, let's face it: some texts (Finnegans Wake springs to mind) can only be considered English because it's hard to make a case for any other language.

Re:

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

You might want to take a peek at the NYPL list which does include all those writers.

I also have trouble seeing how Faulkner's second-tier works beat out The Sound and the Fury. I am impressed that you read it...it's one of those books that needs an entire companion volume just to make sense of it.

Ah. While I'm impressing you...hee hee. Not only read it - wrote my undergraduate thesis on it, comparing it to James Joyce's Ulysses, the comparison was on the characters Molly Bloom and Caddy - two characters that seem to be a central focus in both books, thematically and plotwise. I used Freud and Jung and Neumann to analyze the psychological bits. It made a nice companion, I thought to my analysis of the female motif in the Mabinogion and Welsh folktales I'd collected.
The funny part about all of this? (Just in case you get too impressed). Is I managed to leap over my own head as well as the professors in the analysis. Never did like to do simple things. In retrospect, I envy the classmates who did their thesis on "Edgar Allen Poe", "the mathematics in Alice in Wonderland", or the dark anti-hero themes of Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's The Watchman.

An unnecessary knife of support

[atpotch.livejournal.com]

for 'The Color Purple', which, while exploring various issues crucially relevant to the twentieth century (racism, female empowerment, education's ability to create distance), manages to do with with a singular lack of wisdom, beauty or vivacity. And I don't think 'Finnegans Wake' can be this popular either.

TCH

Re: An unnecessary knife of support

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Men have the oddest responses to Alice Walker. I've only met a few men who liked The Color Purple or her other novels - one was the drama teacher who referred me to the novel in high school. I read Color Purple over 20 years ago. In 1983 or 84 I believe around the time it was first published. I remember loving it at the time, because it spoke to me both in the journal entry style and the metaphors of identity.
I don't remember much of the book, but it does haunt me, more actually than some of the other books I've read on these lists - including Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, which for the life of me I can't remember even though I did read it. Very densely written book.

When The Color Purple was first published - it was very controversial. Alice Walker was accused of hating men.
Of portraying the African-American male in an unsavory and prejudicial light. Some of the comments aimed at her, were reminiscent of the comments Richard Wright aimed at Zora Neal Hurston, claiming she falsly depicted African-American men and furthered stereotypes regarding them. Hmmm. Both women do discuss something interesting from their cultural experience which is the struggle for women during a certain time period, particularly minority women. Walker goes on to write another highly controversial work: The Temple of My Familar - which is about female circumsin in certain regions of Africa. This book I've avoided.

Good writers - are writers who make us think. Who challenge our perceptions of reality, who make us look at the world in a way that may make us uncomfortable.
I abhor the novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, but by the same token, am the first to admit he had some interesting things to say about the materialism and objectification of the 90s, including the objectification of women. Walker discusses in her novels, the victimization of women and how they can become empowered by resisting that, not allowing themselves to be defined by the patriarchial structure - she's somewhat obsessed with it.

I liked the book. I don't feel an overwhelming need to defend it in my live journal. Just noting that it's worthy of notice.

Oh on Finnegan's Wake - I've read parts of it. Overrated. Joyce's best works were Dubliners and Portrait of An Artist as A Young Man in my humble opinion. But I give him points for ambition and expanding the narrative form with Ulysses which I've read in depth three - four times.

On Joyce

[atpotch.livejournal.com]

I think Dubliners is delicious, and, due to the avowed short story format, creates a picture of Dublin somewhat less confusingly than Ulysees. Portrait is also beautiful, although I was somewhat taken aback when the end suddenly swung into stratospheric intellectual philosophy from the beautifully told, intimate life-story of Stephen up until that time. In a sense, I think the end of the novel is the overture to Ulysees itself, and overbalances the intent of the shorter novel. But Dedalus' childhood, school memories and the crisis of his faith are wonderfully explored.

And then there's Ulysees, which is one of those books that I personally believe, regardless of how you go in to it, you will get something as your reward as long as you're perserverant and open-minded. Someone told me before I read it four years ago that I'd need to brush up on my Odyssey before reading it. Awkward as ever, I suspended the Homer until after I'd read it. Looking back now, I'm able to see some of the parallels more easily (Odysseus and Telemachus, Penelope, the Sirens, the Cyclops, the Lotus-Eaters, so on and so forth), but it still seems restricting to me to take that as the defining thread of the novel. Just like it's not necessary to have extensive background of Yeat's Cuchulain and Joyce's reappropriating of the Greek myth to oppose the quasi-muscular-Christian attitude of the Irish Republicans. Or to have boned up on the score of styles that Joyce explains, (I'm extremely fond of the catechism style used for Bloom and Dedalus' eventual meeting, just before the final spell-binding monologue.) And despite all its complexities, it finally flirts with the old Greek classical unities- the action, after all happens in one day; there is one essential scene (Dublin), and the resolution is a message, which, at an important surface level, is the simplest of all. Love, and optimism.

I was reading an interesting article on how Eliot felt utterly indebted to Ulysees in his writing of The Waste Land, which was an angle I'd never considered- the playfulness of form, the allusions to myth (Tyresias in his case), the subsequent mixing together of eastern and western religion (Shantih/Emmaueus), (Bloom, the Irish Jew), the patchwork of other works, (Eliot's frequent Shakespeare, Webster, Wagner quotes, Joyce's style and use of Shakespeare). Everything's connected.

Probably should excuse myself for rambling on about Joyce in a journal of someone who's done a thesis on Ulysees, to someone who's read Finnegans Wake! But hey, I'm perverse like that.

TCH

Re: On Joyce

[randomways.livejournal.com]

Beat me to it! I agree profoundly that Portrait of the Artist and Dubliners are both incredible works. Indeed, I consider Dubliners better than -- wait for the heresy! -- Ulysses itself. Unfortunately, it wouldn't have qualified for the lists above due to the fact that it's a short-story collection, but I defy anyone to read "The Dead" and not recognize Joyce's genius.

Interesting...I've never heard that particular Joyce/Eliot connection (though they were definitely connected via Pound.) But there was an ethos -- indeed, almost a zeitgeist -- that permeated the entire era, and I have no problem believing the indebtedness

World is suddener than we fancy it. Incorrigibly plural

[atpotch.livejournal.com]

I decided to try to back up my claim with direct evidence, so started leafing through some books of Joyce's letters, and criticism of Ulysees between Knot Theory and Algebraic Topology. I love how life is just, as MacNeice manages to get, so many

Anyhow: this quote from Eliot, explained by a bloke called Declan Kiberd:

Eliot's seminal essay on 'Ulysees; Order and Myth', published in The Dial in 1923, reads like a nervous apology for his own poem and an implicit denial that he has simply imitated the method of Joyce:

In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporeneity and antiquity, Mr Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him. They will not be imitators, any more than the scientist who uses the discoveries of an Einstein, in pursuing his own, independent, further investigation

So maybe not quite what a said, but certainly an interesting angle.

Interesting story...

[randomways.livejournal.com]

Ezra Pound, the vastly generous (and quite arrogant and unstable) patron of so many great writers and poets of the era, worked tirelessly to promote Joyce when he was still a struggling young writer. But he could also be quite...tactless. While becoming a very influential advocate of Joyce's then-unappreciated prose style, Pound encouraged a book of poemss. He was, however, quite severely critical of them, which led Joyce to title the volume "Poems Penyeach" as a reaction to Pound's harsh evaluation of their worth.

I must have missed that Eliot essay, though I've read his non-fiction extensively in my study of his literary criticism. It is an interesting angle. The Exiles, after all, were part of a new movement, a tidal change in literature rather than a sea change. And no small part of that came from what can fairly be called nepotistic backscratching. Usually, that's a sign of decay and corruption -- it's nice to see it as an essential part of a truly innovative shift for once. Even the questionable ones -- Gertrude Stein springs to mind, because I find her quite unreadable -- were working to offer moral, financial and PR support for their deserving peers.

Re: On Joyce

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I agree profoundly that Portrait of the Artist and Dubliners are both incredible works. Indeed, I consider Dubliners better than -- wait for the heresy! -- Ulysses itself. Unfortunately, it wouldn't have qualified for the lists above due to the fact that it's a short-story collection, but I defy anyone to read "The Dead" and not recognize Joyce's genius.

Agree completely. While Ulysses is noted as being amongst the first novels to be written completely in stream of consciousness style. Dubliner's in my humble opinion is the better work. And that's saying a lot, since I'm not fond of short stories. They more often than not leave me unsatisfied. Dubliners never left me unsatisfied and made me feel deeply for every character.

Re: On Joyce

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Probably should excuse myself for rambling on about Joyce in a journal of someone who's done a thesis on Ulysees, to someone who's read Finnegans Wake! But hey, I'm perverse like that.

LOL! Don't worry about it. ;-) And I'm a little hesistant to claim I read Finnagans Wake, so much as read portions of it. We did study bits and pieces.
Just as a comparison to Ulysses and to show why Ulysses worked and Wake didn't. This is taking me back several years - 1988-1989, which uhm is 14 years ago. Ack! I'm old.

I honestly think Joyce is an acquired tast. I fell in love Joyce in school. Took two courses on Joyce and did a thesis on his work. (Actually the thesis I wanted to do was Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude to Ulysess, but since I can't read or speak Spainish, my thesis advisors turned me down and suggested I do Sound and The Fury instead. I prefer Marquez - I think he expands on Joyce's style and has the same poetry of words. Faulkner falls short in my opinion. )In the courses - we discussed how Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom were two views of the writer - his younger self and his older self. There's a wonderful scene between the two men in Ulysess - where they are peeing. I remember it, because we had an incredibly amusing discussion in class that day about pissing contests. LOL!

The reason I decided to read Ulysess and became obsessed with it - is when my mother was in school, she did a report on "the censorship of Ulysess" in the US. When the book was first released, it was banned from publication in the US because it was considered too "dirty" for public consumption. Critics also found it to be unreadable. Hemingway was quoted as reporting that it was illegible in places. Now, if you're familar with Heminway's writing style - which is brief sentences, lots of dialogue and action - this makes sense. Hemingway was into using words succinctly. He wasn't into the poetry of them. This may explain why I'm not a huge fan of Hemingway and find him difficult to read. I need words to sing to me as I read them. I like to feel them in my gut. Hear them howl. Joyce's words howl. I feel them in my gut more than my head. My initial reasons for reading Ulysess were curiousity, I fell in love with Ulysess due to the writing itself.

Joyce is a fascinating writer. He loved Opera. He adored poetry. As a writer, he was most interested in getting to the emotional core of the characters, exploring those tough and tricky emotions, plot/adventure, that came secondary. He wanted you to feel the words in your bones, to feel the characters pain and escape into them. Toni Morrison has a similar style and desire - to make us feel her characters, to sense their pain. Zora Neal Hurston also does this. Because I share this desire, I find their works incredibly rewarding, more so than books by Alice Walker, or Hemingway or more plot driven writers.

OK, now we're dancing the overlap dance! (strong language)

[atpotch.livejournal.com]

Talking at each other abot similar things in different places at the same time. Great fun.

I honestly think Joyce is an acquired tast.

Agreed completely. And see my wine comment below. Although the lovely thing is, that people who are drinking the cheap wine as normal, don't even know there's the delicious expensive stuff out there if they keep searching. And neither Ulysees nor The SOund and the Fury were checked out of the University library today, although I doubt I could get a hand on a Grisham or a Rowling for love or money. Every cloud has a silver lining!

I prefer Marquez - I think he expands on Joyce's style and has the same poetry of words.

I'm actually part way through Marquez' delicious 'Living to tell the Tale', the first part of his autobiography, at the moment. If you have a moment to have a look at it, do. It's fantastic, like all Marquez. Or at least I think so. Incidentally, there's a moment of apparent ascension of Leopold Bloom in Ulysees which put me very much in mind of the young girl's (forgotten her name) ascension in One Hundred Years of Solitude. I read the Marquez first, but then read some critical essay somewhere saying that the Marquez was probably a knowing parallel. Don't know whether you picked up on this at all before your essay title was nixed, but I thought it was interesting. Magic realism never occured to me as being particularly Joycean, but Joyce is so plural that perhaps it is after all.

When the book was first released, it was banned from publication in the US because it was considered too "dirty" for public consumption

Well, I'll admit that, at age sixteen, reading a book which had a character named 'Cunty Kate' somewhat defied my expectations of a great classic! I think it's one of those uses obscenity that is in such an esoteric context, and 500 pages through at that, that it could hardly harm anyone. There's a general discussion about obscenity in the media in the UK here at the moment, since Johnny Rotten used the same expletive on live ITV1, albeit at 10:30 at night. Funny how just a few words still have the power to shock.

I need words to sing to me as I read them. I like to feel them in my gut. Hear them howl. Joyce's words howl. I feel them in my gut more than my head. My initial reasons for reading Ulysess were curiousity, I fell in love with Ulysess due to the writing itself.

Lovely. I agree.

I'm slowly conquering your journal. Apologies. It's such an interesting discussion.

TCH

Re: An unnecessary knife of support

[randomways.livejournal.com]

Oh on Finnegan's Wake - I've read parts of it. Overrated.

Heh. It's not even comprehensible, really. I think it's the only book that gave me more fits than The Sound and the Fury. And that's saying something. I mean, Faulkner originally wanted to use 6 different coloured inks in publishing it to help people figure out when the voice and the time period shifted...which occasionally happened in the middle of a damned sentence! Unfortunately for generations of undergrads, his publishers chose not to. Thank God for Cliff Notes. And thank God for the hard work of people like you who wrote essays, theses and papers on it so I could go research some background at the library.

As far as The Color Purple goes...I don't actually know much about the controversy. I'm basing my dislike on the fact that I can't stand her writing style or the way she creates her narrative. It's just a personal dislike...to each hir own, you know? It doesn't help that I'm not fond of epistolatory novels anyway. Not even Dracula, heh. What it comes down to is that I believe such writers as Toni Morrison can touch on the same issues, but with much more engaging writing. Again, personal taste. Beloved engages all the points mentioned above, but there is something about Morrison's prose that just hypnotizes me, while Walker always makes me feel like I'm working too hard just to get into her prose. I even used to feel guilty that I wasn't willing to make the effort. But thanks to the calloused page-turnin' finger of age, I've released that guilt and soared free on the tradewinds.

Hurston is a fascinating study. I remember when I first read her, for a class. My professor spent an entire class period talking just about her before we ever even got to her fiction. Her politics were vilified, and she was accused of intending to create, not just record, an authentic folk tradition. An unfair accusation, I think, but it speaks to the problem of how to bring a minority discourse into the primary one. She worked hard to make African-American literature respectable, and, in a sense, almost socialized her characters in ways that actually co-mingled the discourses. She was an interesting woman indeed.

Re: An unnecessary knife of support

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Heh. It's not even comprehensible, really. I think it's the only book that gave me more fits than The Sound and the Fury

LOL! Completely agree. We read portions of Finnegan's Wake to see how it compared to Ulysess in class a few times, and prove that Ulysess was the better work. Actually I think the professor was trying to make the point that Finnegan's Wake was a waste of time. I agree with you, I seriously doubt people who did those lists, read that book. When I did my thesis on Ulysess and Sound and The Fury, my original intent was to compare Ulysess to One Hundred Years of Solitude (a book I'd completed the summer before and felt echoed the poetry of Ulysess. Marquez even stated that Ulysess was his inspiration for this particular style of writing). But I'm horrible at languages, and could not read or speak Spainish, so they turned me down and suggested I do The Sound and The Fury instead. Ugh. Not a huge fan of Faulkner, I find him a tad melodramatic in places and the shift in points of view confusing. I prefer Joyce, Marquez, and Morrison's stream of consciousness styles - they succeed in making words reverberate in my gut.

Can't say I disagree with you on Walker. While I liked the book better than you and TCH did, I also got annoyed with the epistolary style. I've tried to write in this style once or twice and find it awkward both as a writer and a reader. It only really works if you can recreate the tone and voice of the character in the words. Very hard to do. Did it in part of a novel I finished and I'm not sure it worked there. Hurston and Morrison made me feel their characters a bit more than Walker does. I've also read more of Morrison. One of my favorite Morrison novels is a fairly short one - "The Bluest Eye", also very haunting. It really pulls you inside the character's head. I'm not sure Walker or Stoker really accomplish this as well with the epistolary style. I honestly think stream-of-consciousness works better. That said, some writers misuse it or overuse it: Cormac McCarthy is an example and so is William Gaddis, two writers who seem to be interested in making the reader's job as tough as possible. Forgetting that the point of writing is to communicate. Joyce could get away with breaking grammatical rules - because he'd proven that he was a master. Other writers? Not so sure about.

Re: An unnecessary knife of support

[randomways.livejournal.com]

One Hundred Years of Solitude is amongst my favorite novels. It makes the coveted list of "novels I wish I'd written" and bears frequent re-reading. My tastes are generally eclectic -- I like the Ian McEwans (realism, spare but beautiful prose) and the Joyces {well, you know} and the Ecos {mishmash} and the Borges (easily one of my top 3, and very academic, very esoteric). I do have blind spots, though. Delillo, for instance, as I noted above, simply doesn't do it for me. Nor does Anne Rice or Thomas Wolfe.

Haven't read "The Bluest Eye" yet, though in the short time I've been typing, I've already mapped out a plot around the name ;-) As soon as I manage to get within 100 miles of a bookstore, I can search it out...after the first 30 books already on the list get searched out. Seniority is a killer, eh? But, while I like Faulkner more than you, perhaps, he's one of those I admire more than enjoy.

Joyce could get away with breaking grammatical rules - because he'd proven that he was a master. That is an incredibly apt statement. I'm reminded of Picasso's precept that you have to be able to abide by the rules before you can break them, and anyone who knows Picasso knows that he was capable of incredibly realistic and detailed paintings of a more traditional variety long before he became the vanguard of Cubism. He is justifiably more famous for the latter...but he achieved a mastery of the former in order to rewrite the rules themselves. In other words, he skipped no steps. It's a pet peeve of mine with regards to modern writers and artists -- many of them go for modernist styles for the sake of looking/sounding sophisticated, yet some of them couldn't even write a comprehensible essay or paint a still-life. They feel that lack of talent is somehow masked by doing the latest, newest thing. However...I do feel a little uncertain in saying this, because I find it perfectly reasonable that a person could be good at Cubist painting but not realism, good at stream-of-conscious but not able to imitate even the most simplistic John Grisham narrative. My problem is, I don't see many of said artists and writers as actually being good at even their preferred mode of expression. We all have weaknesses -- I certainly share your weakness with the epistolatory style.

Re: An unnecessary knife of support

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

We certainly seem to be on the same page here! You read my mind on Picasso, I was thinking about Picasso when I stated that Joyce proved he knew the rules so earned the right to break them.

Picasso as any art student knows, could draw anything. He could draw so well in fact that it looked like a photograph. Drawing came easily to Picasso. That's why he began to push the envelope and try new things.

However...I do feel a little uncertain in saying this, because I find it perfectly reasonable that a person could be good at Cubist painting but not realism, good at stream-of-conscious but not able to imitate even the most simplistic John Grisham narrative. My problem is, I don't see many of said artists and writers as actually being good at even their preferred mode of expression.

I agree. While there are writers who jumped right in and did the stream-of-consciousness style and did it well without writing something like Dubliners first, there are far too many who attempt it and really shouldn't. Ann Rice is a good example of this. While I enjoyed her novel Interview with A Vampire, Rice got lazy and overly ambitious falling into the trap of "over-writing", if you've ever attempted to read Violin (a book I could not read all the way through), you know what I'm talking about. A writer who was able to handle stream-of-conscious without writing more conventional tales first, was Garcia Marquez. Stream-of-consciousness story-telling comes naturally to Marquez, it's a part of him. I can't imagine him writing any other way. Faulkner? I think struggled with it more. I'd read both Reivers and stories from The Hamlet prior to The Sound and The Fury and I think, Faulkner may have been a little uncomfortable. He seemed more at home in the earlier works. Can't read Gertrude Stein either, and I have tried. Don't know what it is about Stein, William S. Burroughs, and Gaddis that I struggle with, since I have no problems with Cormac McCarthy, Garcia Marquez, Morrison and Joyce. It might be the subject matter, not sure.

And on 'The Color Purple'

[atpotch.livejournal.com]

I certainly didn't pick up, from the book, any particularly disconcerting message about masculinity, either of African-Americans or in general. I didn't object to the portrayal of men, and certainly not to the empowerment of women outside of a patriarchal structure. I just, I'm thinking very much like Random her, found it a drag. And it was exactly reading Beloved that allowed me to decide on this opinion for sure- transcending my safety net of doubt (http://members.fortunecity.com/tchaikovsky/season54.html)that I always keep around. Morrison writes with such verve, such a compelling narrative voice. She has skill and tenacity in writing about abject pain, and the intelligent use of timelines heightens one of the most distressing scenes I've ever read in a novel. Up until reading it, I wondered whether my experience with Purple was just my inability to be interested in black women in the Southern USA, a deplorable narrow-mindedness. Morrison's universality grabbed me, and gently assured me that I just didn't like Walker's writing.

TCH

Re: And on 'The Color Purple'

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Ah. You just don't like her writing style. Morrison does have a more poetic style of writing, very stream of consciousness. Some critics found Beloved impossible to read. And I know quite a few people who despised the book, finding it illegible. They just don't like stream-of-consciousness style writing. Or poetry. Poetry isn't for everyone. Some people love it, some hate it. It's the apple vs. the orange argument again. One is *not* necessarily better than another, it's all about taste.

I like both styles. But then I have incredibly ecclectic tast. Read every genre of literature - love them all. This past year I've read both the pulp bestseller - Da Vinci Code (which I'm pretty sure you'd hate with a blinding passion, it's a bit like James Patterson and Grisham's styles of writing)
and Dunnett's Queen's Play. Two vastly different books.

Some people are of the opinion that you should only read *certain* books. But - the other books make it possible for those *certain* books to get published and read. And at one point in time, Charles Dickens was considered just another popular novelist.

Not stating anyone is saying that - just pointing it out.

Very interesting: Wilde, style and content

[atpotch.livejournal.com]

First off, it would be nice if the board could concentrate on discussions like this at the moment. I have blinkers on since I can't read the recent episode posts, but all the bluster about conventions, etiquette, politeness, all the anger, semantics and sarcasm is just plain tiring.

I'm scared of falling into the trap of Wilde's assertion: 'there are only two types of writing; good writing and bad writing'. While I don't know for certain if he was quoted out of context, this comment as for long been a rallying cry to people trying to explain that the content behind the prose is much more important than surface style. And, standing in the middle like a wren in no-man's-land, I watched the volleys from both angles, delighting in neither.

Let me address some of your points sentence by sentence.

Ah. You just don't like her writing style.

Well, that's not quite true, really. I didn't really like the paradigm of the novel- I thought the plot was slow and rarely exciting, and I thought the themes were used in a cumbersome way. It's a difficult distinction to make, but what I'm complaining about is not only her writing style, like Oscar Wilde, nor her premise and motivation, which I liked, but the sections that fall somewhere in between; between the wholly aesthetic and the wholy structural; between the dancing and the mathematics.

Poetry isn't for everyone. Some people love it, some hate it.

I totally agree. The fact it's for me is by the by, although I do (maybe pigheadedly) tend to associaate poets with fine stylistic use of language- the weighing of the word, its fibre, how it slithers into its place into the sentence. And that all helps a writer. To articulate precisely what she wants, mastery of words is important. Stylistic considerations are not merely the tassles on the curtains, the frills on the table-cloth - they're a crucial way of delivering the story.

Read every genre of literature - love them all.

I'd hope anyone would be able to claim that. It's not the genres that matter, it's the writing within them. I tend to think that dismissing genres as 'not one's taste' a priori is a shame, for the reader. Because it limits the reading material. Of course, just because you, I and Jeremy the baker 'love them all', doesn't mean we don't dislike books in each section. We're allowed objective and subjective critical faculties to come through. Otherwise we'd never stop reading Agatha Christie.

which I'm pretty sure you'd hate with a blinding passion, it's a bit like James Patterson and Grisham's styles of writing

I'll tell you if I ever read it :-). I do have a blind-spot with Grisham. His pacing, plot, themes might be wonderful. I find his prose style too nailsonachalkboardy to overcome. I think being this fussy about style is an acquired taste, and a bad one. It's like if you drink a lot of expensive red wine, you can't appreciate a three quid Rioja any more. And who's loss is that? ;-)

And at one point in time, Charles Dickens was considered just another popular novelist.

The implication in this sentence troubles me a little, since I don't believe that being considered a popular novellist automatically confines said writer to not being critically acclaimed, if you see what I mean. I certainly don't dismiss books due to their popularity, although conversely I don't see popularity as a seal of certain brilliance. Just a pointer to what I might expense.

This is a lovely discussion. Thank you for sharing it with me. :-)

TCH

Re: Very interesting: Wilde, style and content

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

No thank you and randomways for the discussion. And yes, we do appear to be dancing around each other a bit, problem with livejournal is you reply to emails not threads, so you can get lost. That's why I decided this round to actually log into my journal and access the thread before replying.

First off, it would be nice if the board could concentrate on discussions like this at the moment. I have blinkers on since I can't read the recent episode posts, but all the bluster about conventions, etiquette, politeness, all the anger, semantics and sarcasm is just plain tiring.

Completely agree. I've fled to live journal for pretty much the same reasons. I find I no longer have the tolerance for the sniping that goes on in discussion boards. Particularly voy discussion boards, which for some reason seem more prone to this. Has zip to do with the moderators, and everything to do with voy. May post more in depth on this in another entry.

I'm scared of falling into the trap of Wilde's assertion: 'there are only two types of writing; good writing and bad writing'. While I don't know for certain if he was quoted out of context, this comment as for long been a rallying cry to people trying to explain that the content behind the prose is much more important than surface style. And, standing in the middle like a wren in no-man's-land, I watched the volleys from both angles, delighting in neither.

Agree. Thank you for clarifying your reasons for not liking Walker and Grisham. I tend to agree with you actually. While I've read many of Grisham's works, I don't remember them. I find them quick reads or "airplane books" which don't require much from the reader and have a tendency to get overly moralistic/preachy in tone. Of course, I'm hesistant to bitch too much about him - since he's published and quite successful and well, I'm not. It might sound like sour grapes. ;-) But, I have noticed a trend in the more popular writers - who are also very prolific - over a period of time they seem to just be spewing it out. No longer working at the craft. Honing it. And for me, at least, writing is first and foremost a craft, something you *never* stop working at. Stretching yourself with. The moment you stop working at it, stop trying new things, is when your writing begins to suffer. Prolific best-selling writers fall into this trap all the time. Stephen King is an excellent example - his better works were his earlier ones, particularly the short fiction, such as The Body. Agathe Christie on the other hand, wrote her best novel later - which was Curtain. This was after writing numerous books. So one must be careful in making generalizations.

Re: White Noise

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Then there's White Noise, which had all my friends making yummy sounds but left me kinda blah. Since my friends are usually quite reliable, I'm thinking I'm missing something. Oh well.

Don Delillo. I think he may also be an acquired taste. Some people adore him, some despise him and some like myself are strangely ambivalent. I've read both White Noise and Underworld. If you didn't like White Noise, I do not recommend Underworld. In Underworld - Delillo sort of describes the cultural landscape of the US from the 1950's through 80s using NYC as a back-drop. I read it for a book club and it killed the book club. The only people who made it through the novel, were myself, the guy who recommended it and his friend. Everyone else gave up on it. The book club had started with 20 people and met in a local bar. I think we ended up having a lengthy discussion about The Maltese Falcon and how Raymond Chandler changed Dashielle Hammet's book to work on screen. Which if you've read Underworld or Delillo makes an odd sort of sense. Delillo is king of the non-sequitor. He jumps tracks. Doesn't bug me, since I tend to the same thing, drives others nuts. I remember giving Underworld to my father for Christmas one year - since he loves baseball and Underworld really uses baseball as a metaphor, he didn't like it, barely made it through the book. Found Delillo to be self-indulgent as a writer.
My undergrad professor, who was the same one who taught the Joyce class, adored Delillo. To me Delillow is sort of like reading the brain-child of John Updike and James Joyce, with a little Kurt Vonnegurt thrown in. Ponderous, yet wacky at the same time. By no means easy to read.

Re: White Noise

[randomways.livejournal.com]

I just couldn't stand White Noise. Nice to know I'm not alone. It's odd, because I rather liked David Foster Wallace's The Infinite Jest, which is similar in many ways. I mean, I think it's way overrated, but still enjoyable. Taste is a funny thing.

My undergrad professor, who was the same one who taught the Joyce class, adored Delillo

I have a theory that all undergrad professors are divided in a Manicheistic pair of subsets of good and evil. I have gotten some excellent recommendations from undergrad profs, including my first exposures to Ian McEwan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Margaret Atwood, and Rick Bass. These are the professors on the side of Light. On the other hand, I've had Christina Garcia, John Irving and Neal Cassady inflicted upon me by leering, demonic professors who leave a trailing stench of brimstone in their wakes. The theological implications of all this are staggering.