AIBU to think classics are bloody hard to read?

[Blackbootswithredribbons]

Now, don't get me wrong, I've read some amazing classics in my time (Lord Of The Flies, Jane Eyre etc) but it definitely hurts my brain sometimes! Amazing stories but the long, pointless descriptions, written in that old fashioned way that makes you feel a little stupid sometimes .

So, AIBU?

@Allmyarseandpeggymartin

I read this as “Mumsnet classics” are hard to read.

Thanks enough internet for today

Me too!

I tried to read a Dickens novel - I nearly cried. I don't think I even managed one chapter...

@daisypond

Depends what you mean by classics. I like Dickens and find his stuff very readable, but I really, really struggle with Henry James.

We had to study Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady for A level. The most boring book I have ever had the misfortune to read in my life. Thirty word sentences where three would suffice. The entire premise could be summed up here: cynical Europeans, bored English people and ingenue Americans. Dickens has far more to commend him (apart from Pickwick Papers which I gave up halfway through having given up the will to live) and also translates to film and TV adaptations particularly well as the plots and descriptions are so colourful. I like Jane Austen but not the Brontes. I love Chaucer’s Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (in modern English) and like early Hardy. I read poetry for pleasure too.

Oh and also imo-

It's ok not to like things.

I find there's a real .. as a pp mentioned... Snobbery and hierarchy around this stuff.

It's seen as a sign of being I suppose. Educated or intelligent or civilised and things like that.

To like things like reading certain types of books, enjoying certain types of plays, liking certain types of music.

I developed an aversion to things like. Opera, ballet, big old school art galleries and museums. Certain types of books plays even films as a child. And history actually.

If you say to anyone 'I'm not particularly interested in history' for example. Many will react with shock.

If anyone says ' I'm not particularly interested in physics ' then that's seen as perfectly normal and fine.

But people are interested in what they are interested in.

Preferring Mondrian to turner doesn't make you a philistine. Preferring to read Asimov to Shakespeare should not reflect poorly on character.

But in some groups, for some people. It really does.

It's just snobbery isn't it?

Like what you like. No one likes EVERYTHING that is obviously pretty involved and interesting and useful.

Do what you enjoy and hold your head high :D

@Violinist64 oooh I must strongly disagree!
The point of literature isn't to describe objects like Mount Everest, that you can replace with a picture. It's to illuminate the intangible things that make us human - love, grief, laughter.
We are (regrettably?) living in a screen-obsessed time, but language is what differentiates humans from other species. It'll never be replaced by screens, it's too fundamental. There's no greater joy for me than to just luxuriate in language expressed beautifully by a genius who is trying to share with a reader their truth about the human experience...
And as for your optimistic hope about modern novels as future classics, the problem is a maths one. Around half a million books are published each year in the US these days... In Austen's time it would have been in the 100s maximum, and obviously in terms of ancient literature we only have the fragments we have. Any 'classic' that is still in print has passed some bar of quality that I genuinely think only a tiny fraction of modern writing will match - and your chances of finding the 10 novels this decade that will still be in print in 100 years are small! :)

I remember reading some Jane Austen as a teen and complaining to my DM that nothing happens in it. She said that was probably an accurate reflection on what it was like to live then. I have since read Austen and enjoyed it, but probably because I understood more of the nuance in it.

I think classic books can sometimes be like really old paintings. It's quite easy to look at some really old paintings of Madonna and child and think "but that's truly shit, her boobs are weirdly positioned and the baby is all out of proportion". To appreciate the painting, you have to see it in its historical context, it was groundbreaking at the time and better than what came before. Obviously I'm no art historian, but not am I an English scholar, so my appreciation of literature is about on par with my appreciation of early art.

Some classic books still please an unsophisticated modern reader like me, but plenty of others are "the best of their time" and written for people who didn't have a whole load of competing entertainment. I'd put Dickens and Moby Dick firmly in that category.

I think it depends on how you read, my husband reads every single word. I don’t, I look at a paragraph and disregard any pointless words essentially. I don’t do it purposefully, I’ve always just been a very quick reader. It makes reading classics easier when you can disregard any fluff and get to the story essentially.

The worst book I've ever read was The Great Gatsby, a classic . I've also read Dickens, the Brontës, and a few of the Russian classics, Dr Zhivago being my favourite.

I prefer interesting ideas to people. As it were.

Hence decent sci fi.
Not about our world lives now or in the past.
But submerging in something somewhere different. They need to make you think.
Of course those things often prompt thoughts about how we are and what we do.

DD asked for book called screwtape letters by CSLewis. She said I might like it and wow. Now THAT has insights into our nature. It's the whole point of the book. It's brilliant. I love the writing as well.

Naturally Orwell my god. Anyone want me to link an essay that I was well. Shit. He was a bona fide genius. ?

V into politics at mo. Started communist manifesto, got mao and mein kampf on Kindle. Sadly as mentioned concentration rubbish and think they pretty heavy duty!

Horses for courses really whatever you find engages your interest.

[quote WoolyMammoth55]@Violinist64 oooh I must strongly disagree!
The point of literature isn't to describe objects like Mount Everest, that you can replace with a picture. It's to illuminate the intangible things that make us human - love, grief, laughter.
We are (regrettably?) living in a screen-obsessed time, but language is what differentiates humans from other species. It'll never be replaced by screens, it's too fundamental. There's no greater joy for me than to just luxuriate in language expressed beautifully by a genius who is trying to share with a reader their truth about the human experience...
And as for your optimistic hope about modern novels as future classics, the problem is a maths one. Around half a million books are published each year in the US these days... In Austen's time it would have been in the 100s maximum, and obviously in terms of ancient literature we only have the fragments we have. Any 'classic' that is still in print has passed some bar of quality that I genuinely think only a tiny fraction of modern writing will match - and your chances of finding the 10 novels this decade that will still be in print in 100 years are small! :)[/quote]
I find this idea that great literature is just a sort of delivery system for telling us about being 'human' quite weird TBH. Can't we like literature for itself? Why does it have to be about 'the human experience'?

If someone says they love a certain painting, or a certain piece of music, we wouldn't expect them to insist it taught them about the human experience - we'd accept they could enjoy it as art.

I do feel some of the snobbery around 'great literature' is rooted in this idea that literature has to teach you things. It's a very Calvinist kind of moralism: you can't just enjoy something beautiful, you have to say it has didactic value.

And then that raises the point someone's already made on this thread, that when people talk about 'classic literature' they're not usually talking about a wide spectrum of types of writing, in diverse languages, by people from diverse cultures. So it's awfully easy for praise of classic literature as something that teaches us about 'the human experience' to come across as reinforcing the idea that 'the human experience' that's important, is a white Western experience.

Can not get into Dickens.
Which i find odd as he was supposedly a popular writer in his time.
Hardy and Austin are readable and i enjoyed most.
Loorna Doone is my favourite old classic.
The Bronte sisters. Nope. Couldnt read any.

Modern classics are similar. I love some but Catcher in the Rye... Absolutely hated it.

I guess that tastes change and are always divided but its all interesting.

I love my kindle for the dictionary and Wikipedia functions on it - highlight a word and it will give you the definition and save it for you as well. It makes reading old classics far easier!

(Btw, do you have any evidence about the statistic on numbers of books printed in Austen's time? I can't imagine it was anything like as low as a few hundred. More like thousands, I would think, though I accept this is masses fewer than today!)

(Sorry, published, not printed.)

@SarahAndQuack Fantastic point, hadn't thought about it like that.

Reading older classics gets easier with practice.

I tried to read Wuthering Heights in lockdown. I couldn’t cope. Ditto Jane Eyre.
On the other hand I did also read The Crucible and Animal Farm which I found brilliant.
I bought the bloody KIDS versions of Bronte to read as WH and JE killed me off

Thanks @ElvisPresleyHadABaby! I'm thinking aloud really.

@SarahAndQuack

(Btw, do you have any evidence about the statistic on numbers of books printed in Austen's time? I can't imagine it was anything like as low as a few hundred. More like thousands, I would think, though I accept this is masses fewer than today!)

It was a thing then for novels to be printed in serial form. So a new chapter or something would be published monthly say. Cheap to buy and you'd build the whole book up over time. So they had to have cliffhanger or similar to make you want to buy the next. Dickens was published a lot this way.

I think some were published as series in newspapers as well?

So it's a bit apples and oranges to today

Also who aimed at?

Books would have been expensive for many, and what was literacy like? (Genuinly no idea).

I think literacy is to some extent a red herring, as is cost of books - people read to their families (including servants) a lot. I know it's later than I was asking about, but certainly with Dickens, there are hundreds of stories about Victorian paterfamiliases (no idea if that's the right plural) insisting on reading aloud to their huge families so much that the descendants were put right off him!

I don't know how expensive books were relatively, but I reckon as you say, cheap print was probably reasonably accessible even if bound books weren't.

Depends on the classic!

I love Dickens, I love Jane Austen. Love Jane Eyre.
Of later classics I love To Kill a Mockingbird and Rebecca.
I love Anna Karenina.

I cannot get on with most of the other Russian books. I've read Crime and Punishment and War and Peace and I struggle.
I cannot abide Catcher in the Rye, or Lord of the Flies.

The ones I like are easy to read because I enjoy the stories. The ones I dislike are hard because I don't particularly like the stories, or the characters, or both. I don't mind a page of description if I'm enjoying the story and the writing. I do mind if I'm bored of the plot anyway.

@goose1964

The worst book I've ever read was The Great Gatsby, a classic . I've also read Dickens, the Brontës, and a few of the Russian classics, Dr Zhivago being my favourite.

Just goes to show that we all have different tastes - I adored The Great Gatsby. But have started Wuthering Heights multiple times and never managed to finish it as I hate the characters and the setting and everything about it.

Loved Dracula, hated Frankenstein.
Love Dickens, hate Thomas Hardy (The Woodlanders for GCSE English Literature may be responsible for that but I have tried again as an adult and didn't fare any better and have concluded that Hardy can fuck right off)

Many books that are considered "classics" are very accessible. Orwell, as has already been mentioned, writes in very unfrilly language. Brave New World was published about 16 or 17 years before 1984 but is also not old fashioned in its writing style - I only read it for the first time last year and loved it. Rebecca (although I'm not a huge fan of Du Maurier's others) is similarly "easy" to read but beautifully written and such a gripping story.

Is John Wyndham considered a classic writer? Day of the Triffids (written in the 50s I think) is an amazing book although I love everything he has written.

My dad used to buy Readers Digest condensed books which I loved as a child, I wish I still had them. Maybe I could cope with Hardy that way!

Like I said I don't really know- what you say makes sense.

I know with art it can become lauded after artist dies.

Did that happen with writing back then?

Great works being uncovered, or things only shared locally or with family friends get more well known? Things published but unsuccessful at the time or small print run?

Again no idea just wondering!

@Itsnotover

It depends which one. Silas Marner - literally dull as dishwater.

Nooo. It's a beautiful heart wrenching tale.