post your unpopular literature opinions?

Some of Dickens novels - and The Pickwick Papers was one - were written in installments for a periodical. I'm guessing this makes them easier for reading aloud

Certain writers come alive when read aloud. Dickens, for example, P. G. Wodehouse, and Evelyn Waugh seem very different if you sit in a room with a gifted reader.

Absolutely! A reading of Pickwick Papers, some years ago, comes to mind.

haha...yes. I am reading LOTRs for the first time at the moment, and can sympathize. Parts of it are very impressive. It fact, at moments he touches genius (the Treebeard and Shelob chapters, for example), but I've had enough now and want it to finish.

The Inklings were an interesting bunch though. Tolkien could read 20 odd languages, and C. S. Lewis seemed to carry the whole of western literature and philosophy in his head (he knew Plato, Aristotle and Homer inside out in the original Greek, Virgil inside out in Latin, Dante in Italian, not to mention Chaucer, Spenser, John Donne, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth...you name it). Yet they never lost a simple love of story. It's sweet to think of these professors sat in a pub listening to Tolkien read about Hobbits. Lewis even read the Narnia books out loud to them!

Today, people treat literature like a flippin extension of politics. It's as if Jane Austen and Henry James are 'the enemy', there to be dissected by Feminists and Marxists and Structuralists and various other groups with an axe to grind. And they do it in such a miserable, joyless way. Literature is meant to be beautiful and entertaining. People who want to 'cancel' certain authors ought to read 1984 – but then some of them probably want that 'cancelled' as well (oh, the irony).

Hugo Dyson, supposedly!

Yes, possibly. I know Tolkien read it out loud to the Inklings (his little group of drinking pals, which included C. S. Lewis.

Didn’t one of the Inklings say during one such reading “not another fucking elf”?

But lots of excellent writers who produce beautiful work are total wankers. The list of ‘good novels by writers who come across likeably in interviews’ would be very short.

One of my favourite contemporary novelists is a colleague of a friend of mine in a university creative writing department, and is the colleague from hell — arrogant, uncollegial, prickly. Still a genius.

I get tired of the expectation that women authors in particular are expected to perform niceness and relatability, and that their appearance and public persona are often read alongside their work — Lily King has a good bit on the differences between male and female author photographs in Writers and Lovers.

I like that Sally Rooney doesn’t play that game, and comes across as stone-faced and aloof. Whatever I think of her novels.

And I hate to tell you, but the ‘literary establishment’ generally has minimal impact on an author’s sales. A prize will give a bump, sure. But no one has ever written a review of anything Dan Brown has ever written that said anything other than ‘hilariously awful’, but he sells. Marian Keyes and Cecilia Ahern are seldom reviewed, ditto celebrity memoirs.

Yes, possibly. I know Tolkien read it out loud to the Inklings (his little group of drinking pals, which included C. S. Lewis). A good narrator can do wonders. The Tom Bombadil chapter, for example, is wonderful read out loud (by a good reader). Same goes for the Treebeard chapter.

Certain writers come alive when read aloud. Dickens, for example, P. G. Wodehouse, and Evelyn Waugh seem very different if you sit in a room with a gifted reader.

Another point to make re the alleged 'taming' of Darcy is that he is actually totally well-functioning, emotionally intelligent, non-arrogant on his home turf. The awkwardness (experienced by many in the novel as pride) is mostly just shyness coupled with the difficulty of interacting with the freakshow set of personalities that he has around himwhen he is in EB's territory - his own awful relatives and the mostly awful Bennets. And Wickham of course.

EB was much more in need of 'taming' (well, not taming but serious work on her own personality) than Darcy. She was scathing about all her neighbours, playing everything for lols and irony - beause that was how her dad taught her to be. All of the Bennet daughters have personalities that are precisely calibrated to the degree of disillusion their father had at the birth of another daughter. As the second daughter to come along, she couldn't win his affection by modelling the feminine ideal but he was very very open to loving her when she caught on to the flavour of his own rather bankrupt sarcasm in relation to neighbours. She cures herself of that by transferring her affection to the much more dutiful, serious and compassionate Darcy.

I agree about Lessons in Chemistry. It’s all fairly predictable too.

Lessons In Chemistry is good, but nothing amazing, and is also far too long.

All good points.

Mine is that most literary fiction is unreadable, self -indulgent shite.

Marriage was pragmatic but I think it was accepted that some affection was desirable between the couple. Austen told her niece not to marry without affection, and she herself turned down a very favourable match that would have secured her family's future. So while marriage was basically a woman's career it had a better chance of success if the couple liked and respected each other. If you married a wrong 'un you were doomed, you belonged to your husband and were completely at his mercy. Elizabeth Bennet was quite right to refuse to enter into marriages that she was convinced wouldn't work.

This was one of my favourite childhood books ever and remains so. Beautiful, haunting novel.

It's getting like my book group in here.

Any more unpopular opinions?

I also agree re Jane - several of Austen’s books, most notably Sense and Sensibility, seem to paint that sort of decision in a favourable light, it’s like taking one for the team. So Elinor soldiers on without a word after Edward’s desertion, Lydia is painted as a hysterical idiot for making a bad match and later punished by karma etc.

To be fair, I’ve always had more difficulty understanding her first refusal of Darcy - bit stuck-up but might unbend a bit and would also solve her and her family’s problems and probably at least be constrained by society manners, no evidence of other huge red flags - than that of Collins - an ignorant and boring oaf who would drive her to distraction and condescends despite being out of her league. I admire her independence and strong-mindedness but in her place it was quite a selfish decision. Her family needed to marry off their daughters and quite apart from anything else if she’d waited a huge amount longer she’d have been on the shelf and doing herself a disservice. Women with the resources and freedom to insist on living their “best life” were pretty thin on the ground then.

I’d also like to caveat that I’m not sure EB and Darcy would have had a happily ever after. Two strong, intelligent personalities cramped inside the stricture of a Georgian marriage, with personality traits that have already caused friction in their relationship? I think that’s probably not a good sign.

EB always comes across as a bit self-centred - loveless society marriages were the norm at the time and by refusing Darcy because he seems to be up himself, she’s throwing her family under the bus. I think Self-Absorption and Self-Centredness wold be a better title.

Do you think so? I admired her strong principles. Her father was of the same mind (though not the most pragmatic man) regarding her marriage proposals.

A few years down the line, with no prospects (just for example) of any of her sisters marrying, I wonder if she might have struggled more to refuse Collins or Darcy. Though I often wonder if the more passive Jane might have been pushed accepting Collins had Bingley not been in the picture.

I'm enjoying the P and P discussion!

I’m not sure it’s a case of either of them taming each other? In the historical/societal context they are respectively a proud but generous, upstanding man and a spirited, intelligent strong woman who tends to judge on the spur of the moment (prejudiced is a bit outdated because she didn’t decide to hate him before she met him). They both acquire feelings of affection for the other and on reflection, with new information in EB’s case, make a love match. To be honest, and this does not reflect my feelings of how women should be today, but EB always comes across as a bit self-centred - loveless society marriages were the norm at the time and by refusing Darcy because he seems to be up himself, she’s throwing her family under the bus. I think Self-Absorption and Self-Centredness wold be a better title.

And, with P&P you could just as easily say that Darcey tames Elizabeth, by showing her that she is wrong to judge from initial appearances

I agree they both made alterations on reflection @MissLucyEyelesbarrow

Would you like me to go through every one of her novels? I think I’ve made my point about the fantasy aspect (nothing wrong with a romance and a wedding btw - but I stand by my unpopular opinion!)

You said that all Austen novels had this plot, and you can only quote one example. I mean, nice try fronting it out by pretending you're picking P&P as the 'most famous example', but this isn't remotely the plot of any of the others, is it?

And, with P&P you could just as easily say that Darcey tames Elizabeth, by showing her that she is wrong to judge from initial appearances. And Darcey was never troubled was he? - he was very happy, charging about, insulting the daughters of the upper middle class.

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow take P&P since it's the most famous. Darcy overcomes his 'pride' and falls in love with (the much less eligible) Elizabeth because she shows him his actions affect others and he needs to be less arrogant. Elizabeth overcomes her 'prejudice' and falls in love with (the rich and hot) Darcy because, well, he's nice to her now.

@oddgirl I felt exactly the same. Maybe it's a generational thing as I just didn't get it. If it's supposed to capture a younger generation I despair tbh as all the characters have such little insight. I wasn't sure if that was meant to be the point, but either way to be lauded as the writer of her generation left me feeling a bit sad and underwhelmed.

@StrangePaintName I didn't realise it was fashionable to dislike Sally Rooney's novels. My impression was quite the opposite. I genuinely don't understand all the hype and thought it had just become a fashionable thing to be seen reading her books on Instagram as they are the 'in' thing.

I completely agree @JaneyGee and Wind in the Willows is an all time favourite of mine.