Posted on 03/09/2007 11:22:35 PM PST by Blind Eye Jones
Many of the philosophical works translated from German or Russian are a bit difficult to follow in English.
I remember being frustrated after reading Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, thinking Austin covered the same territory in less than 5 pages.
When I start 'em, and the reward doesn't seem to be worth the output, I stop.
And I don't usually pick 'em up again unless I have to.
Well, as I mentioned with "Das Kapital," by Karl Marx, I never did get farther than about 20 pages into it. But with "Babbit," by Sinclair Lewis, I had to read the whole thing, because I had to write a report on it in my senior year of high school. For the life of me, I honestly can't remember exactly what it was about. I seem to recall that it was about the pointlessness, tedium, and boredom of middleclass life, although I don't think Sinclair meant to reinforce the book's subject by inspiring those same feelings in the reader!
Mark
So who do you think is the real Thomas Pynchon?
Great reading.
For serious reading dabble into James Saunders Pearce's 'thirdness'.
"Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco, on recommendation by a literary geek girlfriend (at the time). So many (foreign) names, so many bizarre conspiracies I just gave up. I think I made it to about page 150 or so (I try to read a book to at least page 100 before I toss it).
"Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a close second only because it bored me to tears.
I Cor 12
3 Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.
8 For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit;
It is by the power of the Holy Ghost ye can know and understand all things!
Dick and Jane.
Karl Barth's commentary on the Epistle to the Romans
Maybe we've tapped into an unknown and unexpected tide of opinion that can be used for Good and the state of America's literacy.
I remember at one Bradeis book sale I went to. After I had bought up a couple of copies of Silas Marner and went into my act, one of the Brandeis ladies (who were looking on in horror) asked me why I was tearing the book in half. I went into my speil. She started grinning and wordlessly handed me my money back. There are thousands, maybe millions, of us out there.
Spread the WORD! Join the "Silas Marner Destroyers."
No dues, no stuffy meetings. All you have to do is promise to destroy every copy of that crummy book you come across and ask others to do the same.
Oh, this looks like a fun thread."
LOL
It was something by Heidegger, probably Being and Time. (By the way, Sartre is real bad reading too.)
Lots of good nominations on this thread already, though I enjoyed Atlas Shrugged and Proust was ok. Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow), that was an ordeal for me. But so was Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Some trash is unavoidable. Into each life, you know. Somebody gives you a book they swear is riveting and life-altering, and you keep reading and hoping there's a point, or something's bound to happen after 400 pages.
I counsel my children to beware of paperback books that come in different colors, like Kleenex. If the cover's decorative that's a dead giveaway of a book that reads like disposable wipes.
Well, the whole novel is 3,000 pages long. I took it with me on a trip (when studying abroad in Austria). I didn't have any other books (just Volume 1 of 3). I really wanted to like it. I kept expecting something to happen, besides 5 page descriptions of him walking. Nope.
Later I even tried to start Volume 2 for some reason. One of the first sentences went on for seemingly 3 pages. That was it. Game over, man. game over.
Well, to be fair, the impenetrability of any translation could be [fairly or not] blamed, at least partially, on the translator. OTOH, a really good translator could make a dense work less dense, by providing a lot of marginalia and explanatory footnotes. Thus the contest ought to be restricted to the works in their original language only, with further disqualifications as to the readers'/judges' language proficiency levels. And then the proper judging could take place, like in Olympic figure skating.
I much prefer Solzhenitysn's novels to his Gulag Archipelago. The First Circle is brilliant and profound. Gulag Archipelago is just rambling. There is no structure--he just goes on and on about how evil the system was, in a sarcastic tone. The novels get the point across much better.
There are few novelists better than Aleksandr, but many, many better historians.
Oh, come on. I cannot be the only one on Freerpublic who actually enjoyed Silas Marner, rereading it for pleasure, even.
I do admit to loathing The Mill on the Floss, though.
****I much prefer Solzhenitysn's novels to his Gulag Archipelago. The First Circle is brilliant and profound. Gulag Archipelago is just rambling. There is no structure--he just goes on and on about how evil the system was, in a sarcastic tone. The novels get the point across much better. ****
I enjoyed everything by Solzhenitysn but especially "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch."
bump to track the thread
Herman Hesse
The book of Revelation is quite easy to understand, IF you have read and understood all 65 chapters that come before it. It's just the last chapter in the Book.
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