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?

@OhWhyNot

When I first read Wuthering Heights (I think I was 19) I viewed it romantically. Have read a few times since then and it’s not at all quite the opposite. How Wmily Bronte could have written the book with so little life experience I don’t know but where it is set is the perfect backdrop for the story. It just wouldn’t work in the same way in day Devon.

It’s essentially characters from the role-playing game she played, first with all her siblings, later on just with Anne, and kept on well into adulthood, set in an imaginary country called Gondal. WH is pretty much Gondal-type action —feuds, villains, violence, tempestuous women — but set in a recognisable Yorkshire.

Some aren't too bad. Dracula for instance.

Not suitable for today as the language is old fashioned and tbh depressing.

Not suitable for today?! That's quite a depressing attitude! Should we ditch everything that's old then? Of course it's suitable for today - loads of people love Dickens, and stuff a lot older, even when it's depressing!

Dickens isn't depressing. There's mystery and intrigue, and a lot of comedy. There's even a bit of detective work. The characters and situations are layered. It's good to concentrate on a book, it's a way to switch off.

Yes I have read that about Emily Bronte. It’s more the obsession and possessiveness side of the characters that I am amazed she could write about. They led such sheltered lives what books did they have access too. Was this from gossip they heard. Fascinating family

One reason they seem over long and waffly, at least the older ones, is that publishers used to demand a novel in 3 volumes. The private lending libraries (no free ones then) demanded 3 volumes, because it was more lucrative for them.

Books were very expensive by current standards - IIRC £1.50 for one volume, so the vast majority of people couldn’t afford them anyway.

Frustrated by the the power of the publishers and private libraries, Dickens started his own magazines, for serialising his own novels and those of his friends. One of them was a weekly at 2d (old pence), which had a massive circulation and was stuffed with advertisements to aid profits. This brought his novels to a vastly wider audience than would have been possible via a publisher.

Wilkie Collins’ ‘The Woman In White’ was first serialised in one of his friend Dickens’ magazines. It was a huge bestseller and caused a massive sensation, not to mention provoking comments from upper crusty types, that such reading material should not be available to the lower orders!!

AFAIK that novel has never been out of print.

It’s intellectual OP - so yes not often ‘easy to read’. Also books were meant to be entertainment savouredbslowly

I absolutely agree about the Brontës, @OhWhyNot. Where did that all come from?
I think nowadays we have an instant gratification culture and more sources of entertainment. If you had no tv or even radio, you'd immerse yourself in a book.

The Woman in White is a really excellent read (imo).

It does depend on the book and the author, as others have said there's huge variation between them, and also personal preference comes into it.

I found Wuthering Heights and Jayne Eyre gripping and the style of writing surprisingly modern. I like Dickens too.
Currently reading War and Peace and it's surprisingly easy to read, it's just long. I also like many of the American classics - Tennessee Williams' plays, to Kill a Mockingbird, The Bell Jar, for example.

I can't get on with Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy at all, so tedious.

What I find is that modern books tend to be written a lot more succinctly and in a way that is attention grabbing, compared to the old classics. I think it's because nowadays we have shorter attention spans and also it's a crowded market - there are huge numbers of books published every year, in every conceivable genre. Books are also relatively cheap and accessible to the masses. If you don't like a book it's easy to ditch it and buy another. There's also been an explosion of creative writing courses and all sorts of finance options to pay for them. Writing is much more accessible, so authors have to work harder to stand out and grab/retain readers' attention.

Whereas in the past there would only have been a handful of writers, who wrote for a relatively small audience of educated people. In Tolstoy's time most of the population would have been illiterate. Books would have been expensive and not nearly as easily available as today.
I think if the authors of the old classics had to compete in today's market, many of these lauded classics wouldn't even get published. No way could an author these days get away with multiple pages of verbose descriptions of a field or someone's drawing room.

@OhWhyNot

Yes I have read that about Emily Bronte. It’s more the obsession and possessiveness side of the characters that I am amazed she could write about. They led such sheltered lives what books did they have access too. Was this from gossip they heard. Fascinating family

They read a lot of Walter Scott, Byron, Gothic novels, the Romantics in general etc— they had access to good libraries at Keighley, they had access to neighbours’ libraries, and they seem to have read the papers and journals their father subscribed to from a very young age. They do seem to have drawn on history/local legends associated with local houses and places, too, and the ghost stories and folk tales told by their servants.

For those saying they hate or struggle with Dickens, what about A Christmas Carol? Very much a classic but not difficult to read and not overly long either and one that will have you in tears unless you're heartless!

YANBU. I find that when I've waded through read a bit of one, if I stop and think about what's actually been happening I never know. It's like reading through fog.

I can never find the 'funniness' in Jane Austen, even though I know she is famously funny.
I don't understand any of Wuthering Heights: who people are, what's between them, what happens.
I've only read A Christmas Carol of Dickens, and only having seen the film, which meant I came to it with some idea of what goes on.

I do remember liking The Return of the Native and Jude the Obscure, oddly, although I haven't read them since my teens.

The funny thing is, I'm an English graduate...

I agree @Blackbootswithredribbons.
I did English in my degree but I don't like Dickens, Shakespeare etc

Re Thomas Hardy, his Far From The Madding Crowd was first published in a monthly mag (not one of Dickens’, IIRC it was Blackwood’s, editor was Virginia Woolf’s father.).

Each episode ended on a real cliffhanger, exactly like a modern soap. The mag was targeted at the more affluent middle classes upwards, and Hardy had to modify the more ‘shocking’ sections, e.g. the opening of the coffin to see the dead baby beside its (unmarried) mother, since they were considered far too unsuitable for nice young ladies to read.

They were reintroduced for the 3 volume novel, since it was considered that anyone wealthy and (presumably) educated enough to be able to buy or borrow them, was not likely to have their morals corrupted!

@Maireas

I bloomin love Dickens. Those long books, with lengthy descriptions. A lot of the books are so vivid and compelling, witty and incisive. It really slows you down and forces you to focus. Like the antidote to our instant culture. Great Expectations and Bleak House are works of genius (in my opinion!). Though I don't like Austen.

Agreed! (Although I don’t mind Austen.)

@icelolly12

For those saying they hate or struggle with Dickens, what about A Christmas Carol? Very much a classic but not difficult to read and not overly long either and one that will have you in tears unless you're heartless!

I think, for me, the issue with Dickens is the sentimental moralising - which, I know, is absolutely how he made his money and props to him; I know he did a lot for social reform. do like the way Christmas Carol is put together. And I think the revelations about Scrooge's past work well as a novelistic device and as a way of making us vaguely sympathise with him in context. But it's also yet another one of those 'awww, poor me, people women weren't nice enough to me so I used my considerable power to be an utter dick to everyone' stories, and, sorry, there are too many of them.

I think it depends on which classics.

I love Thomas Hardy - all his stories have great plots and are page turners. Dickens I cannot abide. His use of "dialogue" in many of his characters makes it a right ball ache to read and he needed a good editor to cut down the waffle.

After labouring through a list of general classics in my teens and twenties, I then started on American classics, they are usually much easier to read and I've read loads of good stuff.

I should point out they are more modern obviously.

@Maireas

The Woman in White is a really excellent read (imo).

Yes, it is. I must read it again.

It’s Dickens’ sentimental moralising that makes me roll my eyes too, @SarahAndQuack — having said that, I’ve read virtually all of his novels except Pickwick Papers (the comedy doesn’t always do it for me, either), and I do think Great Expectations is a practically perfect novel.

Even if the three interesting/not sweet female characters get (a) burned alive by their own wedding dress, (b)married off to a wife-beater and (c) brain-injured. Still, I’d take Miss Havisham, Estella and Mrs Joe over Dora Spenlow any day.

[quote KitchenKrisis]@Auroreforet

I've not read much zola but try nana, sublime!!![/quote]
Interesting - I have read most of what Zola has written but Nana was the only one I couldn't finish!

@Maireas

Dickens isn't depressing. There's mystery and intrigue, and a lot of comedy. There's even a bit of detective work. The characters and situations are layered. It's good to concentrate on a book, it's a way to switch off.

Yes! I like reading Dickens. I think his character descriptions are so vivid and I find his style of writing very engaging for the most part.

I think that reading the classics requires a different mindset. You have to read more slowly, it requires a concentrated effort. I read in French too and it's a similar experience. I need to slow down or I'll miss something important or I need to reread it a few times to understand it.

I think that's the answer re the Brontës - they were living in that parsonage in Howarth, but read widely and created games. They didn't have closed worlds.
I know what pp mean about Dickens, often the female characters are unsatisfactory, but much of that is contextual.