5 ms·
Nothing misunderstood. IMO it's just a mediocre book with overemphasis on hiding middling meaning in prose. A story that speaks many words but says little.
by ttz 6y ago
Nothing misunderstood. IMO it's just a mediocre book with overemphasis on hiding middling meaning in prose. A story that speaks many words but says little.
- omosubi 6y agowhich novels are better?
- leephillips 6y agoSo, so, many. Moby Dick; The Scarlet Letter; Lolita; Ulysses; Et Tu, Babe; Lexicon; Malone Dies;....
- gverrilla 6y agoulysses - you gotta be kiding. did you read that?
- leephillips 6y agoTwice, and I dip into it now and then and read a chapter. It’s one of my favorites.
- gverrilla 6y agoI think Joyce was great, and I have a lot of respect for what he's done on his work regarding form, but I tried really hard and it was unbearable to keep on reading Ulysses - I got past half, but had to abandon - and this is coming from someone really used to 'hard' reads.
- QuesnayJr 6y agoI think the conceit (the different styles for different chapters) sometimes overwhelms the book, but it has a lot of highlights, like the opening and closing chapters. I think of this quote often: History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
- dan_hawkins 6y agoUlysses is Irish though.
- leephillips 6y agoSo is Malone Dies; maybe I misinterpreted the question, if it was asking only about American novels.
- happyconcepts 6y agoBrothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky struck me as a better novel. But it's almost 1000 pages.
- alwaysanon 6y agoI really rate Jack London as the great American novelist. I like the lessor known Sea Wolf the best of his but White Fang and The Call of the Wild really capture a sense of adventure and the history and vibe of that period of American expansion into the West.
- deepsun 6y agoInterestingly, Jack London saw writing as purely commercial activity. He preferred to buy plots, or "take the idea" (hence lots of plagiarism accusations) to inventing.
- ReptileMan 6y agoI would say that from what is considered Great American Classics only catch 22 is actually good.
- tjalfi 6y agoThere's always The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
- kinghtown 6y agoNo, it’s an excellent novel. I do think it’s a little overrated, but mediocre would be a silly take on it. It’s highly regarded for a reason. For sure there are greater American novels..
- leephillips 6y agoAn opinion that differs from yours is not, thereby, silly. I also find it mediocre. A bit of a bore overall, the prose unremarkable.
- kinghtown 6y agoWe all harbour silly opinions.
- dang 6y ago"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html