MattL86 Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 Not totally on topic, but has anyone else found Dickens to be somewhat of a mixed bag? Some of his books are deserving of their praise, but some of the other ones are really in severe need of an editor and a major amount of trimming. I'm looking at you David Copperfield. Tale of Two Cities is full of unneeded crap too. Beautiful prose kind of covers it up I guess.This is an opinion I almost never voice, cause, you know, it's Dickens and I prefer to not sound like an Ostrogoth. But the thread title just made me itchy.More on topic, classics often suffer from being read AFTER the reader has already been exposed to copycats (the D&D reference earlier in the thread to Dying Earth, most LOTR complaints, etc). So often you have to appreciate them from a more historic perspective than a pure entertainment one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Fan Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 Anyway, I will never understand why the response to a "classic" that one doesn't enjoy is "OMG Classics suck/this person can't write/people were stupid back then" instead of "Eh, it wasn't for me/wasn't to my taste/didn't appeal."I think its due to everyone's hyper-inflated sense of self-importance. "I think it is crap, my opinion is worth much more than THEIRS, and I am infallible."Something along those lines... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 It's more actually a reaction to that kind of attitude. Or the perception there of anyway."This is a classic. You must like it. If you don't, there is something wrong with you because it's a classic.""This book sucked. Fuck classics. They are all overrated piles of shit and screw your insinuations about my taste."And so on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bronn is God Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 It's more actually a reaction to that kind of attitude. Or the perception there of anyway."This is a classic. You must like it. If you don't, there is something wrong with you because it's a classic.""This book sucked. Fuck classics. They are all overrated piles of shit and screw your insinuations about my taste."And so on.Not going to lie, this was me. But, there were some classics which really did hit me hard. Golding's Lord of the Flies for one, I found it very good, and despite pages upon pages of description of the island, it made for a great story worthy of a classic.But then I read something like 1984 and I just cannot see what all the fuss is about. The characters suck or are non existent, the plot sucks, the only redeeming feature is the world building, even I stopped caring about that about a third of the way through.I guess it all comes down to the reader. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VarysTheSpider Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 But then I read something like 1984 and I just cannot see what all the fuss is about. The characters suck or are non existent, the plot sucks, the only redeeming feature is the world building, even I stopped caring about that about a third of the way through.Think it sounds like you were just looking for different things from the book. It was never supposed to be about the characters or the plot, really.But as regards earlier comments in the thread, I don't accept for a moment that Orwell was a "bad writer." He might - might - be a "bad novelist", but that's a slightly different thing (and which I'd disagree with anyway). Even the "bad" examples like 1984 are littered with quotable phrases and one-liners that are still used today or remembered long after people put the books down, whether for their emotional punch or because they crystalise complex ideas. And it's when you read outside of the novels and into his essays that this is more abundant - essays like Shooting an Elephant, Marrakech (I really do challenge anyone to read Marrakech, a 6 page description of the city's poverty and the insecurities of imperialism, and tell me that's an example of a bad writer), the Spike, the Lion and the Unicorn, Politics and the English language, Down and Out in Paris and London... loads more I'm forgetting, loads more I really need to get around to reading some day. The guy wrote a lot, and most of it was intelligent, powerful and honest work on issues that needed to be written about. That's why he's considered as one of the best writers of the 20th century. Whether he could write a convincing love story is trivial by comparison. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Screaming Turkey Reborn Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 People saying George Orwell was a bad writer; what the fuck? Have you read any of his his essays? The man was a brilliant writer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bronn is God Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 /snipI dont think Orwell is a bad writer. I enjoyed Animal Farm somewhat.Still 1984 bored me to tears.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lummel Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 Anyway, I will never understand why the response to a "classic" that one doesn't enjoy is "OMG Classics suck/this person can't write/people were stupid back then" instead of "Eh, it wasn't for me/wasn't to my taste/didn't appeal."Agree entirely. There are plenty more books on the shelf.Not totally on topic, but has anyone else found Dickens to be somewhat of a mixed bag? Some of his books are deserving of their praise, but some of the other ones are really in severe need of an editor and a major amount of trimming. I'm looking at you David Copperfield. Tale of Two Cities is full of unneeded crap too. Beautiful prose kind of covers it up I guess.This is an opinion I almost never voice, cause, you know, it's Dickens and I prefer to not sound like an Ostrogoth. But the thread title just made me itchy.You Ostrogoth! Most, maybe all I'm not sure, of Dickens' novels were written in installments to be published in monthly magazines which meant that he had to contract to provide a more or less set amount of manuscript pages every month. Then he started setting up, running and editing monthly magazines himself (Household Words etc there were a couple) and he was the principal writer for these too. So there was this enormous time pressure on him just to bang the stuff out and very little scope to go back and revise because all the previous installments have already been published. And you can't just provide 60 printed pages instead of eighty one month because you'll have a hole in your magazine and no material to plug it, or your readers will feel short changed and stop subscribing and then you get dragged back to the blacking factory in poverty, so there's a tendency to stuff out the story with sub-plots and extra characters that you don't really need, I suppose also that gave him scope to vary what he was writing about if he got stuck.A lot of 19th century writers wrote in monthly installments: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Trollope, Elizabeth Gaskell......But as regards earlier comments in the thread, I don't accept for a moment that Orwell was a "bad writer." He might - might - be a "bad novelist", but that's a slightly different thing (and which I'd disagree with anyway). Even the "bad" examples like 1984 are littered with quotable phrases and one-liners that are still used today or remembered long after people put the books down, whether for their emotional punch or because they crystalise complex ideas. And it's when you read outside of the novels and into his essays that this is more abundant - essays like Shooting an Elephant, ...... The guy wrote a lot, and most of it was intelligent, powerful and honest work on issues that needed to be written about. That's why he's considered as one of the best writers of the 20th century. Whether he could write a convincing love story is trivial by comparison.Shooting an elephant is great. One incident that tells you so much about power and authority.I dont think Orwell is a bad writer. I enjoyed Animal Farm somewhat.Still 1984 bored me to tears..Thoughtcrime! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VarysTheSpider Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 I dont think Orwell is a bad writer. I enjoyed Animal Farm somewhat.Yeah sorry, I was addressing that part to other people who posted that a couple of pages ago, but I was too lazy to multiquote. :blushing: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrownedCrow Posted February 19, 2011 Author Share Posted February 19, 2011 Anyway, I will never understand why the response to a "classic" that one doesn't enjoy is "OMG Classics suck/this person can't write/people were stupid back then" instead of "Eh, it wasn't for me/wasn't to my taste/didn't appeal."As Shryke suggested, if you keep hearing for years and years that a book is incredible and a classic and that if you're a true SF fan then you will love it...and then you read it and it sucks, well, it can be quite annoying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gigei Posted February 26, 2011 Share Posted February 26, 2011 The Wizard Knight? Cause that's an odd one. I love it to death, but I understand some of the hate.Was it Free Live Free? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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