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Sep. 11th, 2012 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatBook quotes from Good Reads:
*I had not seen "Pride and Prejudice," till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.”
― Charlotte Brontë
Interesting. But it does make sense that a ponderous, dreary, often flowery Victorian writer would make this sort of comment about Austen. Suffice it to say, I can re-read Austen. I can even watch various versions of Pride and Prejudice. While I read Jane Eyre once, seen three versions, went to sleep during the last one. And each time want to go back in time and hit Charlotte repeatedly over the head with her own book. Lady? Lighten up. And stop pontificating.
*" “I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
― Mark Twain
It should be noted that Twain despised most of the writers of the 18th and 17th Centuries.
He sinks the Henry James in Huck Finn, and the Sir Walter Scott. (As much as I love Twain's wit, I admittedly found everything he wrote but Huck Finn to be maddening. Too much dialect. Too folksy. Innocents Abroad...tended to ramble and lacked momentum. Hate to say it Twain, but in some respects - Austen's Pride and Prejudice's satiric wit was a bit more subtle, and a tad more clever. It also was a lot easier to read.)
*“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Algonquin Wits
I've admittedly felt the same way about a few books. Twilight. Atonement. House of Sand and Fog. But most notably American Psycho...that book I truly wanted to throw aside with great force. (It should be noted that I gave all of them away to people who would adore them, except for Twilight which I never bothered to buy. I treat books like cats, as treasures.) I rather like Parker, she is disarmingly honest and self-deprecating.
When reading reviews of books or anything for that matter - you should check out the reviewer/critic's tastes, what do they consider amazing, what do they hate, and how do they think - before following their recommendation.
For example? When a reviewer tells me that the master of horror and suspense is Stephen King and one of their favorite books is Eat Pray, Love...I think alrighty then. Let's move on. (This reviewer hated "The Thief Book" which I'm considering and "Gone Girl" which I'm wary of.) Granted, if the reviewer has insanely eclectic taste like I do, you may have to dig deeper than that. Particularly if they are moody and have a tendency to change their mind about things in mid-stream.
*I had not seen "Pride and Prejudice," till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.”
― Charlotte Brontë
Interesting. But it does make sense that a ponderous, dreary, often flowery Victorian writer would make this sort of comment about Austen. Suffice it to say, I can re-read Austen. I can even watch various versions of Pride and Prejudice. While I read Jane Eyre once, seen three versions, went to sleep during the last one. And each time want to go back in time and hit Charlotte repeatedly over the head with her own book. Lady? Lighten up. And stop pontificating.
*" “I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
― Mark Twain
It should be noted that Twain despised most of the writers of the 18th and 17th Centuries.
He sinks the Henry James in Huck Finn, and the Sir Walter Scott. (As much as I love Twain's wit, I admittedly found everything he wrote but Huck Finn to be maddening. Too much dialect. Too folksy. Innocents Abroad...tended to ramble and lacked momentum. Hate to say it Twain, but in some respects - Austen's Pride and Prejudice's satiric wit was a bit more subtle, and a tad more clever. It also was a lot easier to read.)
*“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Algonquin Wits
I've admittedly felt the same way about a few books. Twilight. Atonement. House of Sand and Fog. But most notably American Psycho...that book I truly wanted to throw aside with great force. (It should be noted that I gave all of them away to people who would adore them, except for Twilight which I never bothered to buy. I treat books like cats, as treasures.) I rather like Parker, she is disarmingly honest and self-deprecating.
When reading reviews of books or anything for that matter - you should check out the reviewer/critic's tastes, what do they consider amazing, what do they hate, and how do they think - before following their recommendation.
For example? When a reviewer tells me that the master of horror and suspense is Stephen King and one of their favorite books is Eat Pray, Love...I think alrighty then. Let's move on. (This reviewer hated "The Thief Book" which I'm considering and "Gone Girl" which I'm wary of.) Granted, if the reviewer has insanely eclectic taste like I do, you may have to dig deeper than that. Particularly if they are moody and have a tendency to change their mind about things in mid-stream.
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Date: 2012-09-13 03:13 am (UTC)But of course consider the source: I found all the Bronte sisters to be over-blown and over-wrought and almost unreadable (Jane Eyre is the most subtle/subdued in my opinion... but it is full of ridiculous coincidences and nonsensical characters) with absolutely no sense of humor at all.
Like most Americans I admire Mark Twain, but I don't love any of this books... I've read a lot of them but they don't cry out to be reread (they aren't that layered, or at least I don't find them so) and all that 'folksy' charm of writing out local accents gets old really fast.
So I'll feel free to consider Jane Austen to be on the greatest writers of fiction ever....
It's personal taste, I get that (I know a lot of people who loved 'Eat Pray Love' LOL).
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Date: 2012-09-13 10:37 pm (UTC)Hee, thought much the same thing, myself. Jane Eyre is actually the only one I made it through and enjoyed. Wuthering Heights grated on my nerves. Not a fan of 19th Century Gothic novels. Didn't even like Jane Austen's satire of the 18th Century ones in Northanger Abbey.
Wuthering Heights - I've been told - is meant to be humorous and a black comedy, I just don't see it. It might be the language.
Like most Americans I admire Mark Twain, but I don't love any of this books... I've read a lot of them but they don't cry out to be reread (they aren't that layered, or at least I don't find them so) and all that 'folksy' charm of writing out local accents gets old really fast.
Hee, me too. Feel exactly the same way. Twain was one of those weird novelists, who I adored as a person, loved his witty essays and humorous critiques (they are quite brilliant) but found his novels rough going. Particularly maddening was his use of dialect. It was apparently all the rage back then, still is. Really hate writers who feel the need to spell out local dialects phonetically. It's head-ache inducing to read. Read some really horrible romance novelists who attempted it...they apparently thought, hey, if Margaret Mitchell can do it in Gone With the Wind, then so can I. (Copying Margaret Mitchell is not something I'd advise.)
Would also agree that Twain's novels aren't well layered. He's a satirist, and Americans aren't very subtle with their satire nor layered. The Brits do it better for some reason. I don't why. But they do.
The only one I liked or remember is Huck Finn. Which had the most complex and layered characters in his novels. Tom Sawyer is a bit of a villain in it, which I found fascinating. Huck is possibly one of the more complicated characters. And Jim...as well. Their relationship is wonderful. But it is rough going due to the dialect. Twain got in trouble posthumously for the black dialect - that's why the book was banned from various libraries after Twain's death. They failed to see the satiric edge in his writing - which I thought was obvious, but I can see how others may have missed it.
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Date: 2012-09-13 11:32 pm (UTC)It is funny about Austen's 'Northanger Abbey': I took it really personally the first time I read it! I was young, and a chronic daydreamer who read too many romances (not Gothic, but lots of suspense... like the early Mary Stewart novels). As Austen poked fun at Catherine Moorehead I felt upset/embarrassed as though I was being ridiculed.
LOL
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Date: 2012-09-13 06:22 am (UTC)Makes sense that Bronte, doesn't get Austen at all, because reading Jane Eyre you realise she is all about being pompous and dramatic something Austen doesn't buy into at all. She makes fun of this and stays hyperrealistic. Northanger Abbey is virtually a book long parody of the Gothic Novels.
And Twain would want a plot and doesn't like to have a meta plane. But with Austen there is no plot and it's all about the meta plane. Still I would have thought that he would at least like/get the humor.
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Date: 2012-09-13 10:46 pm (UTC)Didn't think of it that way, but you're right. That's probably the reason he didn't like Austen. Although there's not much of a plot in Twain's Innocent's Abroad - which is basically just a travelogue.
I think it may also be about class issues and the subject matter. Austen's novels focused on the British middle class, and cast system, as well as the whole charade of getting a man. Something I'm not quite sure Twain could appreciate.
But to be fair, he had issues with Henry James as well - refused to read The Bostonians. I can't imagine him liking the Brontes.
That's quite true about Bronte and Austen. Austen made fun of the type of books Bronte loved to write. Actually she made fun of Bronte's entire view of the world. Which explains why a lot of people were upset when the most recent film version (the James McAvoy/Keira Knightly one) of Pride and Prejudice felt a bit too much like Wuthering Heights - with gothic film undertones. Anyone who knows anything about Austen, would realize she'd be laughing her head off or turning in her grave at such thing. Now, if only someone would make a Jane Austen version of Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights.
Now that would be fun!
I've noticed online that there is a split between people who preferred Auste and people who preferred the Brontes. Which I've found to be interesting, since I'm firmly in the Austen camp and found the Brontes exasperating reads.