Bad Hemingway Contest

[Errata]

Had to smile about 19th century authors who tell their "dear readers" what to do-- they can't help it, really, they're Victorians! Even "Black Beauty", which I encountered in an abridged version and found exciting, can be less so in its full version. Library cataloguers call this "didactic fiction", meaning a lesson is being imparted (well, they hope it is...)

Forgot to mention Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables", a very long book (originally published in five parts, I think), full of rich details, information about the street urchins of Paris, and long chapters on a better sewer system. I found it hard going at times, but preserved, and was very grateful that I did.

The more details in a book, the better I like it.

I loved Les Miserables. But I'm good with French 19th century authors. Well, half of them. I like Balzac in small doses, I love the Three Musketeers, and The Count of Monte Cristo, and I like Zola, thought not everything equally. But Maupassant and Flaubert are the perfect examples as to why obsessive types need to stay out of the arts. And I keep trying Sand because I want to like her, I just can't.

But the French 19th century experience was different from England. England was all about clenching up, and France was all about letting go. France did the tightass thing. They lost like a third of their population to the guillotine because of it. Live and let live they said. I agree. And french literature reads like opera. That sort of pace and height of emotion. So its easier to get through the rough parts.

[Pcdunn]

Had to smile about 19th century authors who tell their "dear readers" what to do-- they can't help it, really, they're Victorians! Even "Black Beauty", which I encountered in an abridged version and found exciting, can be less so in its full version. Library cataloguers call this "didactic fiction", meaning a lesson is being imparted (well, they hope it is...)

Forgot to mention Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables", a very long book (originally published in five parts, I think), full of rich details, information about the street urchins of Paris, and long chapters on a better sewer system. I found it hard going at times, but preserved, and was very grateful that I did.

The more details in a book, the better I like it.

[Errata]

I had to read "Bleak House" in college (a course on the 19th Century English novel). Actually I did like it, but that spontaneous combustion business of Mr. Krook was rather too short. Two characters go to see him and find the burnt remnants of the man. Michael Harrison, the fellow who tried to push the theory that James Kenneth Stephen was the Ripper (not the Duke of Clarence), and who wrote "In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes" wrote a whole book on the phenomenon of "Spontaneous Combustion" entitled "Fire From Heaven". He managed to make that one sentence in "Bleak House" a cornerstone of a chapter on Dickens (who really got involved in this subject, and says so in his own note to the novel).

I've never read "Daniel Deronda". Coming after the equally long (and impossible) "Middlemarch" I just decided not too. Maybe one day I'll tackle either "Felix Holt, Radical" or "Romola", both of which are shorter.

Jeff

Daniel Deronda is a book for anyone who has ever wondered if they were shallow... which is more important, comfort and standing or love? But it's not black and white. And in the novels of this era they rarely are, with the idea of Romantic love beginning to trump "arranged" marriages. But in this case, it's not one of those "of course you should choose the poor shepherd boy". The stakes are very real, and choosing otherwise doesn't make a person the bad guy.

And Middlemarch is to this day the only book I've actually thrown away. I give books away, I keep them, I never ever trash them. Except that one.

[Mayerling]

I had to read "Bleak House" in college (a course on the 19th Century English novel). Actually I did like it, but that spontaneous combustion business of Mr. Krook was rather too short. Two characters go to see him and find the burnt remnants of the man. Michael Harrison, the fellow who tried to push the theory that James Kenneth Stephen was the Ripper (not the Duke of Clarence), and who wrote "In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes" wrote a whole book on the phenomenon of "Spontaneous Combustion" entitled "Fire From Heaven". He managed to make that one sentence in "Bleak House" a cornerstone of a chapter on Dickens (who really got involved in this subject, and says so in his own note to the novel).

I've never read "Daniel Deronda". Coming after the equally long (and impossible) "Middlemarch" I just decided not too. Maybe one day I'll tackle either "Felix Holt, Radical" or "Romola", both of which are shorter.

Jeff

[Errata]

I can't totally agree with you - I do like some Dickens and I think Austin's "Mansfield Park" is among my ten favorite novels. Problem was that in that century, with literacy rising, authors wrote too much - and more pruning of their texts would have occurred in the 20th Century. Hence (I believe) your liking Doyle and Poe - they are basically short story writers (though actually so is Kipling, so my theory has a hole in it - also "Don Quixote" is really two long parts of one novel of over twelve hundred pages complete.

What did you think (if at all) of Bierce? Except for his sardonic humor pieces and his "Devil's Dictionary" most of his works are short stories.

I actually like Twain's short humor pieces more than his novels. I do think his political essay, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" is possibly the best attack on imperialism ever written.

James is a chore for me. His early novels like "The American", "Washington Square", and "The Europeans" remain favorites - and have one thing going for them that the later James threw aside: they are short. The last great novel of his was "What Maisie Knew", which may be the saddest novel I ever read. But ... my father lost his eyesight in 1975, and I spent many evenings reading to him. When we read "The Wings of the Dove" in 1983 it was a monstrous chore - we read up to the celebrated point of Milly Theale looking down from that high alpine peak to the valley below. I asked Dad when we finished that four page description that James put together if I should continue. He said no, and we shortly began reading Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (which we liked). Five years later we returned to "The Wings of the Dove"...and after a month and a half completed it. Except for the novella, "The Turn of the Screw" (a better choice for James) we never tackled any other work of his.

I did end up loving Joseph Conrad's works. Started in on him in college. And then I also found I liked Crane.

Jeff

It's not length. A lot of it is editing, where I look at a page of exposition and all I needed was a single sentence, but a lot of it is pace. But my Kryptonite is descriptive narrative. I can't read Tolkein either. Great stories, but I just can't stick with five pages of minute descriptions of a forest. And then I got to Tom Bombadil and decided the man was clearly stoned. But a book has to flow. Dickens would have dropped dead if he ever managed flowing narrative.

But I can hang with some authors I genuinely don't like. I just typically need some extra incentive to open the book. As a playwright, Chekhov gives me hives. But I had to review something of his for a class long ago, and I found his short stories. Which are far less heavy handed than his drama. Some of them were pretty good. And I can't stand George Eliot, but rumors of a very positive depiction of Jews in a Victorian novel led me to Daniel Deronda, which is now a guilty pleasure book.

I also read Bleak House because someone told me it had spontaneous human combustion in it, which is actually interesting, so I plowed through the book looking for this pivotal plot of SHC, and it turns out, it's appearance in the novel was shorter than that of Eudora Welty's flying cow from Mobile, and that was a single sentence. The greatest single sentence in all of literature, but still.

There is also a tremendous difference between reading a book and having a book read to you. Aside from the pleasure a child gets from parental bonding, being read to is gentler. Words sort of wash over you and drift into your head. They arent drilled in there. And adventure books lend themselves to being read aloud, but because many of these classics are written by overly wordy and descriptive authors, they are a pain to sit down and read.

I can run with early 20th century, mid 20th century is probably the tersest literature out there, so that's fine. 16th and 17th century literature has a nice lyrical quality to it... but 19th century authors are either hammering at me, trying to baffle me with word salad, or scolding me. Just about every book from that period makes me want to throw it across the room shouting "Don't tell me what to do!" I have no idea how they all managed to be that wordy without managing the slightest bit of subtlety. It's actually remarkable.

Bierce doesn't grab me. He's funny, but he's the same kind of funny with everything he writes, so it's like Oscar Wilde. You can see the wit coming a mile away, and that kind of ruins wit.

[Errata]

I grew up reading Poe, Twain, Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Kipling, Robert Frost, even read more of Dante's "Inferno" than we'd been assigned in class... I liked "Pride and Prejudice", most of "Wuthering Heights", and adored the musical "Man of La Mancha."
Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Bester, Pohl, Heinlein, Ellison... Classics come in many genres, and sometimes with illustrations and word balloons.
READ! That's the point..

It's funny you mention it, but you know how there are people who read books for the love of books, and then there are people who read books to feel more intellectual and to brag a little?

The dividing line between the two is Dante. Book lovers read Inferno. Braggarts read Purgatory and Paradise.

And lest someone try to argue the literary merits of Paradise, stop right there. It's terrible, it's not interesting, and if ever the phrase "the romantic sub plot felt tacked on" was appropriate, it was there. Even Dante didn't read it. If he had he would certainly have availed himself of some crucial editing.

Which is fine, the only reason I read Moby Dick was to sound more literate at the age of 11. Which is why Melville makes me angry. Why would you take such a great story, epic life lessons, fantastic characters, and then work them over to the extent that even the action scenes require air traffic controller type concentration so your eyes don't slide off the page and focus on something vastly more interesting, like paint drying.

[Pcdunn]

I grew up reading Poe, Twain, Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Kipling, Robert Frost, even read more of Dante's "Inferno" than we'd been assigned in class... I liked "Pride and Prejudice", most of "Wuthering Heights", and adored the musical "Man of La Mancha."
Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Bester, Pohl, Heinlein, Ellison... Classics come in many genres, and sometimes with illustrations and word balloons.
READ! That's the point..

[Mayerling]

I think it's fair to say that this was my least favorite literary era.

I like Conan Doyle. I like Lewis Carrol.

Which leaves Poe. Out of possibly Every American who put pen to paper in the 1800s, I like Poe. That's it.

I can't totally agree with you - I do like some Dickens and I think Austin's "Mansfield Park" is among my ten favorite novels. Problem was that in that century, with literacy rising, authors wrote too much - and more pruning of their texts would have occurred in the 20th Century. Hence (I believe) your liking Doyle and Poe - they are basically short story writers (though actually so is Kipling, so my theory has a hole in it - also "Don Quixote" is really two long parts of one novel of over twelve hundred pages complete.

What did you think (if at all) of Bierce? Except for his sardonic humor pieces and his "Devil's Dictionary" most of his works are short stories.

I actually like Twain's short humor pieces more than his novels. I do think his political essay, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" is possibly the best attack on imperialism ever written.

James is a chore for me. His early novels like "The American", "Washington Square", and "The Europeans" remain favorites - and have one thing going for them that the later James threw aside: they are short. The last great novel of his was "What Maisie Knew", which may be the saddest novel I ever read. But ... my father lost his eyesight in 1975, and I spent many evenings reading to him. When we read "The Wings of the Dove" in 1983 it was a monstrous chore - we read up to the celebrated point of Milly Theale looking down from that high alpine peak to the valley below. I asked Dad when we finished that four page description that James put together if I should continue. He said no, and we shortly began reading Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (which we liked). Five years later we returned to "The Wings of the Dove"...and after a month and a half completed it. Except for the novella, "The Turn of the Screw" (a better choice for James) we never tackled any other work of his.

I did end up loving Joseph Conrad's works. Started in on him in college. And then I also found I liked Crane.

Jeff

[Errata]

It's hard to believe Bulwer-Lytton was (from about 1830 to 1870) one of the leading writers in Britain. When I was in college I saw an entire set of his novels in the library there, and he wrote almost as much as Dickens or Thackeray or Trollope. But even back then he was not all that respected. Thackeray took him down several pegs. In a series of satires on modern novelists that he did in "Punch" (like a spoof on James Fennimore Cooper where he refers to his having written "The Last of the Mulligans"), he starts off spoofing Bulwer-Lytton's literary name. Initially it was just "Bulwer" but he kept changing it, so Thackeray does this as "by B..., Sir, E. B., Sir E.B.-L., Sir E.-L, B-L. L-B." Later, when in the 1840s Bulwer wrote some tedious poem about modern urban life, but did not bother attaching his name to it - yet had seen fit to tell some friends he wrote it - Thackeray reviewed the poem and then said something to the effect, "The author has seen fit to write this poem in the style of one of most distinguished writers."

Jeff

I think it's fair to say that this was my least favorite literary era. I'm widely read, but there is something about the 19th century writers that brings a yawn out of me. I don't like Bulwer Lytton, I hate Dickens, and spare me Jane Austin. I hate the Brontes, I despise Hardy. I like Kipling's poetry but not his prose. Henry James is okay, but you might as well read Woolf, who is better. And I love HG Wells' stories, but not the way he writes them. And who doesn't love Oscar Wilde's witticisms, but his prose was unrelateable.

I like Conan Doyle. I like Lewis Carrol.

But the Americans are no better. Twain's essays are far better than his novels. Most American's at this point are either writing highly political allegories that no longer apply, or creating very important movements in literature, but that doesn't make the books interesting. And Melville makes me angry. Louisa May Alcott writes a good book, thought the subject matter is about as bland as it gets.

Which leaves Poe. Out of possibly Every American who put pen to paper in the 1800s, I like Poe. That's it.

Don Quixote is brilliant. The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the most important works out there. Shakespeare is my god and savior. So just because I have an altar to Stan Lee and Siegel and Shuster next to Shakespeare and Durang doesn't mean my idea of literature comes with a comic strip. But by all that's holy that century was just deadly dull.

[Mayerling]

I have been reading these contests since I was like, 11. And then I read The Last Days of Pompeii and laughed for days. I thought it was just that the title came from him. No, it's the title and the tortured structure.

But I got one of my favorite puns of all time from that contest. And I use it all the time, because I'm clearly a nerd. "What a friend we have in cheeses".

It's hard to believe Bulwer-Lytton was (from about 1830 to 1870) one of the leading writers in Britain. When I was in college I saw an entire set of his novels in the library there, and he wrote almost as much as Dickens or Thackeray or Trollope. But even back then he was not all that respected. Thackeray took him down several pegs. In a series of satires on modern novelists that he did in "Punch" (like a spoof on James Fennimore Cooper where he refers to his having written "The Last of the Mulligans"), he starts off spoofing Bulwer-Lytton's literary name. Initially it was just "Bulwer" but he kept changing it, so Thackeray does this as "by B..., Sir, E. B., Sir E.B.-L., Sir E.-L, B-L. L-B." Later, when in the 1840s Bulwer wrote some tedious poem about modern urban life, but did not bother attaching his name to it - yet had seen fit to tell some friends he wrote it - Thackeray reviewed the poem and then said something to the effect, "The author has seen fit to write this poem in the style of one of most distinguished writers."

Jeff

[Errata]

That one is held at one of my alma maters, as a matter of fact, San Jose State university, San Jose, California. I used to have a tee-shirt from the event, which was originally sponsored by the English department.

Bulwar Lytton wrote "The Last Days of Pompeii", which apparently makes good disaster movies, yet poor prose.

I have been reading these contests since I was like, 11. And then I read The Last Days of Pompeii and laughed for days. I thought it was just that the title came from him. No, it's the title and the tortured structure.

But I got one of my favorite puns of all time from that contest. And I use it all the time, because I'm clearly a nerd. "What a friend we have in cheeses".

[Pcdunn]

"Suddenly, a shot rang out..."

Reminds me of the Bulwer Lytton "It was a dark and stormy night" contest

That one is held at one of my alma maters, as a matter of fact, San Jose State university, San Jose, California. I used to have a tee-shirt from the event, which was originally sponsored by the English department.

Bulwar Lytton wrote "The Last Days of Pompeii", which apparently makes good disaster movies, yet poor prose.

[c.d.]

I think that one is still going.

c.d.

[Errata]

Reminds me of the Bulwer Lytton "It was a dark and stormy night" contest

[Mayerling]

"And, he thought, "Belle foaled for me!"