Posted on 06/27/2023 9:01:38 AM PDT by C19fan
HG Tudor (narcistic psychopath) thinks Harry should have reversed it . Interview the Pope about childhood trauma and Putin about a Merciful God.
Miss Havisham will be a social climbing mulatto who is jilted by a member of the aristocracy whose racist family just won’t let him be happy.
Disney is a disaster because it uses Feminist writers, producers and directors that have no clue what they’re doing and Netflix is copying ,LOL
This is a Dickensian move.
You didn’t find it suspenseful when Orlick was going to kill Pip in the kiln? Or when Jaggers hints at his maid’s “large hands”? Or the creepy aura of a hermit woman wearing a wedding gown and one shoe? Or Magwitch pushing young Pip around?
I have read a lot of Dickens, and GE is not my favorite, but it is well crafted and a good read.
lol
I SO wish PG Wodehouse were alive and writing today. Prince Harry is almost identical to some of the duller, more self-indulgent drones. Even Wodehouse never thought to make an actual prince one of them. And Meghan is like Florence Cray without the intelligence. I’d take Madeline or even Honoria over her any day.
I made a few chapters before putting it down.
I prefer Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice_and_Zombies_(film)
Pretty easy to NOT watch. Ignored their podcasts as well. Bloody grifters.
I like Dickens' stories very much--I think Nicholas Nickleby is probably my favorite--but I find him too wordy (he got paid by the word).
I have a similar problem with Henry James. I particularly love Washington Square and The Wings of the Dove, but he's too wordy.
I'm sure it's just me.
I love literature, and I love learning why others like or dislike a particular opus.
Thanks again!
The language was changing in Dickens’ time. Compare Pickwick Papers to Bleak House, for instance. For UNDERrated Dickens I recommend Martin Chuzzlewit, from which we get the word Pecksniffian. Between Pecksniff and Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House, he described Virtue Signaling to the hilt.
Still wondering if Harry is here on a visa that allows the harkles to dodge paying income taxes...
Really, really wondering if someone is using Netflix to launder money to the Harkles...
Hey, Archewell has a new hire...
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I love William Faulkner. I read The Sound and the Fury five times, including Faulkner's explanation of what it was about which was the opposite of helpful. I was utterly confused--though not completely devoid of understanding. Then one night at a party at my sister's house, I met one of the guests who taught Faulkner in college, with emphasis on The Sound and the Fury. I said, "You're not leaving here tonight until you tell me what that thing is about." She said, "Okay," and we sat on a sofa for several hours. She explained it to me in great detail. Then when I read it again, it was crystal clear, but I was depressed for a week.
I also had trouble with Anna Karenina. It was boring. But I LOVED War and Peace! My daughter told me to throw out my copy and get a translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I did. It made all the difference in the world. It came to life! I loved it!
BTW, I telephoned the Russian Embassy in Washington and asked how to pronounce Karenina and also Rachmaninoff. The man I talked with was very nice and very helpful.
My father read constantly. We had a large book case filled with books, mostly from my mother's father's collection. As a child I loved thumbing through the books, even before I could read, and wondering what they were all about.
I remember climbing into my father's lap, asking him what he was reading. "The Merchant of Venice", he said, "by William Shakespeare." I asked about it, and he read it to me, line by line, explaining everything to me.
He also too great pride in having me memorize poems and recite them for him. I took great pride in it too.
I read Les Miserables and Le Rouge et le Noir, en français, with the help of my French teacher, who is from a little town west of Paris. I LOVE Victor Hugo.
But the greatest book I've read--I think--is the Bhagavad-Gita. I've read four different translations and struggled with in in Sanskrit.
It just goes to show how tastes can vary. I couldn’t get through Faulkner (”As I Lay Dying”), and his transliteration of dialects. “Moby Dick” was awful, and I couldn’t finish that one, either. Bartleby the Scrivener was short enough to finish, but was inscrutable, like a Twilight Episode that makes no sense.
However, I can plow through 700 pages of Bleak House, and marvel at the way Dickens’ paints 19th Century England, even though his audience was mostly people who lived in it. To me, that makes him an anthropological historian as well as a novelist. There is no shortage of French historians who recommend “Tale of Two Cities” as a way to understand the zeitgeist of the French Revolution.
Never tried “War and Peace”, liked “Crime and Punishment” in high school. But whereas Dickens alternates tragedy and comedy within the same book, Dostoyevsky, who claimed to love Dickens’ writing just takes the reader down. And then, when you are at the bottom, he takes you farther down. So, the same book I thought was interesting at 17 became too depressing to finish 40 years later. Perhaps it is because in my maturity the sadness of the pathetic characters is all too real.
I am jealous of your ability to read Hugo in the French. I struggled with the first six books of the Aeneid for Latin, and although I could translate (with effort) well enough, it never sang to me. Fitzgerald’s translation of “The Odyssey” was a good read, though.
I try to impart knowledge and interest in ancient mythology to my 14 year old son by combining my knowledge of superheroes with that of Greek and Roman mythology (the Norse stuff is fascinatingly perverse). Limited success. Of course, he barely tolerates my explanations as to why the Golden and Silver Age Superheroes are generally superior to the present versions (especially Warner, who NEVER understood superheroes except MAYBE Batman, sometimes).
That was the point though. If you could easily say why Bartleby was the way he was the story wouldn't have lasted as long as it has.
I love Moby Dick. It's one of my absolutely favorite books.
I like Billy Budd too. However I completely agree with you about Batleby. It was mindnumbingly boring.
I also liked Tale of Two Cities. It certainly helped me to "understand the zeitgeist of the French Revolution." I will never forget the horrifying Madame Defarge.
I also love Dostoyevsky, especially The Brothers Karamazov, and you are absolutely right: "when you are at the bottom, he takes you farther down." Well said!
I loved what you said about your son. My grandson is 15 years old. We are very close. My wife and I have tried to impart to all our children the things we love, but, of course, they have their own unique viewpoints.
My wife is a musician, and we never listen to popular music, but my grandson loves to play rock music when we're in the car together, and I like some of it.
BTW, we had a home in Cedar Crest for several years. We loved it. Two of our grandchildren were born in Albuquerque.
You think I should give Bartleby another try?
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