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Why most contemporary US and British literature sucks.

stcanard said:
I call bullsh*t.

A 5 or 6 year old does not have the vocabulary to be able to read Solzhenistyn or Joyce, and definitely does not have the reading comprehension to be able to understand the thematic principles behind them.

Before 10 years old even taking them through C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, Roald Dahl, or Lemony Snicket takes an incredible amount of guidance, help, and explanation.

I'm not even sure what his first books where, but then my son was reading _Captain Underpants and the Plot of Professor Poopy Pants_, or _Ricky Ricotta and his Mighty Robot vs the Jurassic Jackrabbits from Jupiter_, _ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ was not a viable alternative.
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I was 10 years old when I read Waiting for Godot, Portrait, and One Day in the Life...

No kidding but I understood the gist of it. I became more ambitious and read Platuarch [sic] during middle school... I pretty much followed the Britannica's Gateway to the Great Books of the Western World.

Remember, John Stuart Mill read works of Greek philosophy as a kid. If you don't believe that our standards have fallen so low, well look at the kiddie section of B and N.

Anyways it's back to reading Foucault for fun. Nice ride. :cool:
 
so what you're telling me is that you never read a book before the age of 10? and you're calling that a success?

from what i've seen.... i'm thinking your method of learning to read isn't exactly a winning solution. :rolleyes:
 
princealfie said:
I was 10 years old when I read Waiting for Godot, Portrait, and One Day in the Life...
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Hell, I was translating Homer, Thucydides, Virgil, Horace and Victor Hugo when I was ten. I can't say I understood the finer nuances at that age, but it didn't put me off anything.

I did enjoy Winnie Ille Pu more, however.

winnie-ille-pu-2-small.jpg
 
princealfie said:
I was 10 years old when I read Waiting for Godot, Portrait, and One Day in the Life...
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If you were 10 when you read your first books, then this is a serious failing in whoever was teaching you to read. You were about 5 - 6 years too late

Plus, if those were your first books, you were not reading -- the term reading implies comprehension. You were doing an extended phonics lesson.
 
I think one of the main problems with this thread is that it is titled, "Why most contemporary... literature sucks," but it doesn't really go on to explain why it sucks, but rather just starts bashing authors instead.

"Good literature" is entirely subjective; the same "modern literature sucks" argument has been made over and over again for centuries, and I don't think it is any more true now than it was then. Most people prefer Michael Crichton to Mark Twain. So what? The "classics" grow more and more inaccessible to the general public every year, but it doesn't matter in the end because new classics have always and will always continue to take the place of the old ones.
 
Xeem said:
The "classics" grow more and more inaccessible to the general public every year
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This is very true, and the reason behind it very misunderstood. It has nothing to do with appreciation, intelligence, or education, much as the elitists want to think otherwise.

English is a very fluid language and changes incredibly rapidly. This makes English literature more difficult to understand as time passes -- on the extreme you can see something like Chaucer's _Cantebury Tales_, which although it is possible to gain some understanding really requires translation for a 21st Century English speaker to understand.

This was driven home to me a while ago trying to read _The Jungle Book_ to my son, as it was a much loved book from my childhood. Although he enjoyed some of the stories, we eventually had to stop, because the vocabulary has changed so much in the time since it was written, that it is practically an adult book now, as it requires quite a broad background to be able to understand a number of the terms.

Even _The Chronicles of Narnia_ is already starting to suffer from that.
 
I just finished Ivan Doig's "The Whistling Season". Storytelling is alive and well, I assure you.

Why so many attacks on the bad and no praise for the good?
 
princealfie said:
I was 10 years old when I read Waiting for Godot, Portrait, and One Day in the Life...

No kidding but I understood the gist of it. I became more ambitious and read Platuarch [sic] during middle school... I pretty much followed the Britannica's Gateway to the Great Books of the Western World.

Remember, John Stuart Mill read works of Greek philosophy as a kid. If you don't believe that our standards have fallen so low, well look at the kiddie section of B and N.
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Mill is also estimated to have had one of the highest IQs of any person that ever lived. Mozart wrote an opera at 4 years old. I'm 24 and have yet to start on my first opera. I don't know if we should be comparing ourselves to the most remembered individuals in history.

I agree with you to an extent, but your comparison to Mill is a tad ridiculous.

Solzenhitzen is pretty heavy...I don't think I would give it to a ten year old. But if you understood it, then that's great. I suppose it would have been crucial in shaping your world views.
 
Xeem said:
The "classics" grow more and more inaccessible to the general public every year, but it doesn't matter in the end because new classics have always and will always continue to take the place of the old ones.
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Really? I'd argue many (perhaps most) are inaccessible from the get go. Hard to write the poltiics of your time, harder to read it without sufficient perspective.
 
princealfie said:
I was 10 years old when I read Waiting for Godot, Portrait, and One Day in the Life...
...
Remember, John Stuart Mill read works of Greek philosophy as a kid. If you don't believe that our standards have fallen so low, well look at the kiddie section of B and N.

Anyways it's back to reading Foucault for fun. Nice ride. :cool:
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Maybe I should feel like an amateur, since my love for reading grew out of the works for Scarry and Blume and didn't expand until later. But, there is something nice about being about knowing that I had time to be a child. When the time came for me to grow up, I put away childish things (although, the HP movies and Transformers movie kept me blissfully entertained as I was high as a kite on Perco after getting my wisdom teeth removed).

Related, I don't know if our standards are falling, or if we are allowing our children to take advantage of increased life expectancies and helping them to enjoy their childhoods as long as they can. I know I'm glad that I didn't have to start working in the fields when I turned 6 and that I wasn't expected to start my family at 14.

I think your final point summarizes my issue with the "classics." When we are looking for fun, should we do what we enjoy or conform to others? Exactly who is qualified to determine a classic? How many thousands of books are written each year? We can't even figure out who the best 10 college football teams in America are, and there are only 119 of those. Isn't fun whatever we enjoy doing (in this case reading)?
 
Jesus H. Christ on a bike!

4 pages of guff about nothing.

How about this; the first book I learnt to read, before I was even born, and it is indisputably the best book ever written was "Do Not Feed The Troll". You will find it in the library nestling among "Sending Money To Nigeria" by Western Union and "Cheap Brand New Mac Laptops Below Cost Price" by Gullible Webbuyers.

"Princealfie" with his transparent "Pseuds Corner" shtick must be laughing himself sick at all of this. :rolleyes:
 
princealfie said:
Remember, John Stuart Mill read works of Greek philosophy as a kid. If you don't believe that our standards have fallen so low, well look at the kiddie section of B and N.
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Remember, back when JSM was reading Greek philosophy as a kid, most adults (nevermind children) were illiterate and would probably never read a book in their life.

Using one of the Western words most celebrated political philosophers as an indicator of standard will always lead you to talk utter BS.
 
weckart said:
4 pages of guff about nothing ... "Do Not Feed The Troll".
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Yeah, but its slow today, what else are we going to do?

At least Alfie gives it a shot at being an entertaining troll, and was nice enough to take it out of the Harry Potter threads. Arguing can be fun if done right :D
 
FleurDuMal said:
Remember, back when JSM was reading Greek philosophy as a kid, most adults (nevermind children) were illiterate and would probably never read a book in their life.

Using one of the Western words most celebrated political philosophers as an indicator of standard will always lead you to talk utter BS.
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OD'ed on your Baudelaire eh? :p
 
princealfie said:
Okay, the Harry Potter folks made me throw down the gauntlet. I'm ready.

Most of today's novels are lousy. For me, there are fewer and fewer novels worth reading or even challenging to the mind.

During the past 3-5 years, there are only a handful of good American and British novels.

William Trevor's The Story of Lucy Gault
Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day
Cormac McCarthy's The Road
Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men
William Vollmann's Europe Central
Ian McEwan's Saturday
Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections
Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land
Ann Beattie's The Doctor's House
Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons

And that's about it for me.

Okay, and Harry Potter is way overrated. I will start my future kids on James Joyce's Dubliners and Samuel Beckett.
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i love beckett, waiting for godot should be mandatory
 
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