Old timer novels.

[jag]

OK guys.
I've tried to read some of these 'old timer' novels like Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, TPODG, Dickens, etc and though there is a lot of great language and stuff I find them real hard going and often abandon them halfway thru.
Are they really that bad (old) or is it just me????

[disrepdog]

I like some Dickens, but they are longwinded on the whole.

[Conscious Bob]

I've read quite a few and they're generally harder going than modern novels.

Different times, different mindset.

[Deep Black]

I steer clear of them, my wife if trying to work her way through many of the old classics though. She seems to like most of them

[Old Vig]

OK guys.
I've tried to read some of these 'old timer' novels like Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, TPODG, Dickens, etc and though there is a lot of great language and stuff I find them real hard going and often abandon them halfway thru.
Are they really that bad (old) or is it just me????

If only it was just the old novels; a fair proportion of new stuff falls into this category too (e.g. Love in the tim of Cholera).
I really enjoyed Moby Dick, but Don Quixote took me over a year and a half to grind through (it gets notably better toward the end), and don't remind me of The Silmarilion.
I do wonder what the authors of lists like "100 books to read before you die" expect from us. Am I somehow enriched having ploughed through the tedious War And Peace (although the battle of Borodino was a great chapter)?
A lot of these tomes are confusing too, like why does Dr Frankenstein abandon all his scientific detachment so easily.
As for your question, are they bad? They're obviously well regarded over a very long time. Individual reactions differ. Maybe the chance of a classic book having a resonance with an individual reader might be in inverse proporion to its age? Maybe they're intended to be instructional more than enjoyable? Like you I wonder why I persist, it would be easier to just bluff it.

[BeckyH]

Most of these books are denser than most of the stuff we read these days-they have deliberate serious philosophical and moral underpinnings that you sometimes have to think about and work to extract the meaning from.
Like an artichoke-lots of work to get to the good stuff. Whether or not it's worth is is up to your perception. I happen to love artichokes.

[edash]

When those books first came out people had a lot less distractions and things to fill up their leisure time, so could spend more time reading.

I tried reading some of the supposed classics a few years ago but gave up after a few months when I realised I was only reading them because I felt I had to, not because I wanted to, and wasn't enjoying them. I don't feel my life is any more empty for having stopped reading them.

[jag]

Well, I'm glad this has started a heated debate, rather than our usual ramblings.
I do like George Orwell, I think he was a forward thinking motherfucker.
Billy Shakespeare? Good for quotes.

[198505]

I tried to read Jane Eyre after reading the Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde and just called it a day after page 60 something, just not my thing.
Just cos it's old, don't make it gold.

[Deep Black]

I do like George Orwell, I think he was a forward thinking motherfucker
All Orwell or just his final 2 novels?

[Old Vig]

All Orwell or just his final 2 novels?
He he, are you bluffing, or have you read the lot? I know I haven't, but I can tick off 1984, Animal Farm and Down and out in Paris and London.

I don't know much about the rest, but wikipedia is our freind ... Burmese Days , A Clergyman's Daughter, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Coming Up for Air, The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia. The early titles sound like they might be less serious.

[Conscious Bob]

I enjoyed The Road To Wigan Pier, 'we've nothing to lose but our aitches'.

[Deep Black]

He he, are you bluffing, or have you read the lot?

I've actually read non at all :o Though I'm aware that only Animal Farm & 1984 (he last two) are really considered in the "classics" area. Indeed they are the only (1984 more so) SF of his works too.

Both are sitting there on my bookshelves though

[Old Vig]

I've actually read non at all :o Though I'm aware that only Animal Farm & 1984 (he last two) are really considered in the "classics" area. Indeed they are the only (1984 more so) SF of his works too.

Both are sitting there on my bookshelves though
For shame ;-) 1984 is worth it if you have a strong constitution. Lots of parallels with IMB stuff, e.g. the Grey Area hunting out thoughtcrime, or the New Speak of Marain.

[Conscious Bob]

I've now got my holiday old timer book. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler.

[Deep Black]

Speaking of classics, just picked up Brave New World for £1.50

[Old Vig]

Speaking of classics, just picked up Brave New World for £1.50
I re-read that one last year, it hadn't stuck in my mind the way 1984 did, and I found some of the scenes quite dated, especially the marked chauvenism. It still has some power to shock even in these jaded times.

[Champagne Socialist]

My 18 month old nephew has developed a bed time delaying tactic.
When my brother is reading him his bedtime story he demands that every last word or string of letters, including the ISBN number be read.

I bought him war and peace.

My sister in law laughed.
She doesn't do the bedtime read.

[Deep Black]

Our daughter just continues to grab another book ad infinitum

[Conscious Bob]

For shame ;-) 1984 is worth it if you have a strong constitution. Lots of parallels with IMB stuff, e.g. the Grey Area hunting out thoughtcrime, or the New Speak of Marain.

Parallels? I consider your given examples as opposites

in 1984 thoughtcrime by definition are thoughts considered illegal by the state.

Grey Area sifted the thoughts of it's victims (a practice considered taboo by other minds). The point being it didn't punish for thinking the 'wrong' thoughts, it used it's powers to look for evidence of actual past misdeeds.

In 1984 newspeak is a version of English where words are actively banned and as a result speakers of newspeak exhibit a much reduced vocabulary.

Marain was designed by Minds as a completely new language, not a cut down version of an old one. By that definition it's not newspeak.

One is dystopian, one is utopian, one is yin, one is yang.

[jag]

Er shouldn't that be Yin and Yang.

[Conscious Bob]

Er shouldn't that be Yin and Yang.

Ya asking or telling me Confucius?

[jag]

An easy mistake to make, but now you are enlightened.;)

[Old Vig]

Parallels? I consider your given examples as opposites

in 1984 thoughtcrime by definition are thoughts considered illegal by the state.

Grey Area sifted the thoughts of it's victims (a practice considered taboo by other minds). The point being it didn't punish for thinking the 'wrong' thoughts, it used it's powers to look for evidence of actual past misdeeds.

In 1984 newspeak is a version of English where words are actively banned and as a result speakers of newspeak exhibit a much reduced vocabulary.

Marain was designed by Minds as a completely new language, not a cut down version of an old one. By that definition it's not newspeak.

One is dystopian, one is utopian, one is yin, one is yang.
I didn't mean to imply they were the same.

Marain and newspeak are quite different, but they are both tools for social engineering. They both aim to be a framework for certain desireable patterns of thought. That one is based on English and the other entirely artificial is not especially relevant, just the goals the designers are trying to achieve. Marain is the prerequisite for post-scarcity thinking, it de-emphasises most forms of ownership, viz marriage, slavery, money, property are strange concepts to the culture. The privacy of the personal mind state is still retained - maybe that's the step that the sublimed take, shaking off the final mental shackle. Newspeak is mainly aimed at erradicating thoughtcrime; creating simpler citizens.

Winston's government try to expose his thoughtcrimes, and in that are like the Grey Area, not respecting the privacy of their subjects. Again, not the same but both books explore the concept of the right to free thought.

ymmv

[Conscious Bob]

I didn't mean to imply they were the same.

Marain and newspeak are quite different, but they are both tools for social engineering. They both aim to be a framework for certain desireable patterns of thought. That one is based on English and the other entirely artificial is not especially relevant, just the goals the designers are trying to achieve. Marain is the prerequisite for post-scarcity thinking, it de-emphasises most forms of ownership, viz marriage, slavery, money, property are strange concepts to the culture. The privacy of the personal mind state is still retained - maybe that's the step that the sublimed take, shaking off the final mental shackle. Newspeak is mainly aimed at erradicating thoughtcrime; creating simpler citizens.

Winston's government try to expose his thoughtcrimes, and in that are like the Grey Area, not respecting the privacy of their subjects. Again, not the same but both books explore the concept of the right to free thought.

ymmv

Well, to meet halfway and to expand on the yin yang theme how about complementary opposites instead of parallels? The Culture compared with 1984, that's a new twist.

I don't think Marain is a tool for social engineering, I think it's a language to stimulate thought, I can't remember the origin of this quote:

'Marain was designed to appeal to poets, pedants and engineers'.

The Culture interacts with the rest of the galaxy in a very active fashion and that requires citizens that can understand the motivations of those they meet. The best way to fully engage is to fully understand so open patterns of thinking would be particularly important for contact and special circumstances.

With you on the further Grey Area, right to privacy explanation.

[RobD]

With some of the older classics you do have to adjust to a style and pace that may seem rather rambling by later standards - 18th century English novels, for example. I find critics who talk in terms of a "canon" of classics highly pretentious: it seems inevitable to me that not everyone will appreciate the same authors. If you find Dickens a bit long-winded, try Wilkie Collins, who wrote for the same market as Dickens, but is generally a bit racier (but don't expect his books to read like Jeffrey Archer's). Or try some of Dickens's shorter stuff (e.g. A Christmas Carol or The Haunted Man[I], both very effective moral fables). Personally I enjoy most of Dickens but have never been able to get through a Jane Austen novel, even though I have to accept many people love her books.

Modern "classics" are a different issue - the writing of authors like Orwell or Waugh is generally a model of economy. But if you start reading something by Thomas Mann or try to tackle [I]Ulysses, you have to be prepared for the long haul.

[RobD]

He he, are you bluffing, or have you read the lot? I know I haven't, but I can tick off 1984, Animal Farm and Down and out in Paris and London.

I don't know much about the rest, but wikipedia is our freind ... Burmese Days , A Clergyman's Daughter, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Coming Up for Air, The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia. The early titles sound like they might be less serious.

Sorry, I missed this discussion at the time. Apart from 1984 and Animal Farm, Orwell is remembered for his brilliant non-fiction more than for his four early novels (Burmese Days, etc.) . Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London are very good, and better still is Part 1 of The Road to Wigan Pier, though Part 2 is now virtually unreadable. Anyone who wants to make a living in journalism or who has to write business reports, etc., should read some of Orwell's essays, as they are a model of how to write clear English. Some of these essays are are famous in their own right, e.g. the ones on Donald McGill postcards, P. G. Wodehouse, Henry Miller, Shooting an Elephant, etc., etc.