whats your least favourite work from the literary canon

[communist daughter]

I despise Wordsworth with a vengence, his work is dull, monotonous, uninspired and ripped off. i think his sister dorothy had more talent, and his mate coleridge was the real genius.

[Bombadil]

Well, I never much cared for Whitman, which means I never much liked Ginsberg. Don't care for Ferlenghetti (however it's spelled). Oh and some Brits may kill me...but I never liked little Teddie Hughes.


the lynch mob cometh...

[communist daughter]

i liked ted hughes when i was like 10, but its all black, death, darkness, scary things, animal allusion, black, more death, northern gloominess, and finally, death. which is all well and good but he made a career of it, damn him.

[cameron]

You don't like Walt Whitman?? shame on you. How can you not like "Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me shall be you!"

You don't like Ted Hughes?? double shame on you.

As this is the fiction section I thought I'd get us back on track and say I don't like Thomas Hardy as a novelist. (Although he's my favourite poet.) I quite like misery in small doses but 300 pages of The Mayor of Casterbridge is more than enough for anyone.

Cam

[communist daughter]

is it wrong to dislike D H lawrence as a novelist? similar situation, i love his poetry but his prose is sick-inducing. sons and lovers is constantly, 'she turned around and looked at a rose, which made him feel sick for no apparent reason' and wound me up just a little.

[camus]

Bring on Death and Northern Gloominess I say.

Next you'll be saying Larkin was a miserable arse, I don't know..........

Not read enough to say who I like or dislike, most books I read I love, and most poets as well.

Although I'm struggling with the Idiot at the moment, which is saddening me. After Crime and Punishment I was expecting an easy ride, not so.

[pseud]

I was never much impressed with Dickens. I've heard it's an acquired taste, but then, I never gave him a fair shake after the anti-climactic Tale of Two Cities.

Caleb

[communist daughter]

Bring on Death and Northern Gloominess I say.

Next you'll be saying Larkin was a miserable arse, I don't know..........

ok, ok, im just desperatly jealous, i live in the midst of yorkshire gloominess and i know im not going to be able to make a living writing about it, no dont get me wrong i do enjoy ted hughes, i just dont think he should have been laureate, its not fair.

larkin just makes me laugh so much, i cant ever hate him.

dickins, well i actually enjoyed a fair few of his books and the first book i read was great expectations, so i have an unfair biased regard for his writing. the pickwick papers does bore me senseless though.

i havent tried to read idiot, is it worth it or too difficult?

[Bombadil]

It took me a day, but I finally pinned it. (Foul language did ensue on revelation and shall be passed on hereto.) I absolutely fucking hate everything the Franz Kafka ever did. I sleep walked through the Trial, and in my hours of waking...reading a goddamned fifteen page paragraph...I felt like clawing my fucking eyes out. If I meet the bastard in the afterlife, I'm going to give him a sound beating, just for picking up a pen.

[pseud]

Did you read Kafka in German?

[communist daughter]

metamorphoses is worth it, just to get you hooked.

[Bombadil]

Can't read german...hated Metamorphosis as well...

sorry.

[communist daughter]

ahhh i cant say i agree. i love rereading that, i guess knowing derrida helped me deconstruct the reality of the situation.

[pb]

I think the point of Kafak is that he wrote in monotonous prose. The only excitement that ever exists in a Kafka-esque world is a legal or bureaucratic one. The animal fixation of Ted Hughes can be annoying, but then his handling of language is superb

'Going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place.'

'The swallow of summer
The seamstress of summer
She scissors the blue into shapes and she sews it' (disclaimer: this quotation may be completely wrong)

'The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guy-rope'

'Flexing like the lense of a mad eye'

'Hearing the windows tremble to come in
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons'

And I think it is impossible to disregard Hughes completely. He and Plath are this century's Brownings, and are assured of a place in history because of that.

Thomas Hardy? His prose is depressing, to be sure, but sections - such as in Far From The Madding Crowd - are breathtaking. Like Cam, I also admire his poetry though - 'The Going' must be one of my favourite poems.

I enjoyed cd's take-off of 'Sons and Lovers' ha ha ha - 'She laughed and I stared into her shining black eyes and I hated her. PS I fancy my mum'.

I have to say I HATE Jeanette Winterson. I think she's shit. I'm sorry, I'm not a chauvinist. But you will think I am when I say I don't much care for Plath either.

pb

[communist daughter]

i just had a feminist fiction module at uni which was basically 'lets kiss winterson's ass'. damn them all.

[camus]

PB,

Funny I've always associated Wintersons book - Oranges are not the only Fruit with Cohens song - Suzanne, surely its not just the orange link?

[pb]

camus, don't know what to say mate. I like oranges.

[pb]

The fruit, not the book.