4 ms·

Which books of the canon did you read that you found to be garbage prose?

by lupire 2y ago

sovnwnt 2y ago
I wouldn't say it's "garbage prose" but I read A Tale of Two Cities in school and found it impossible to form a mental image from the text in some parts. I'm still struggling to understand what "Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail." means.
- pasc1878 2y ago
  Look at what happened in 2008 with banks collapsing - by having runs upon them. This is being done via postal withdrawals here. This isn't obscure.
  - vitus 2y ago
    Or more recently, the run on SVB last year where everyone started panicking that the bank was no longer able to hold its deposits, just because it announced that it had taken action to generate something like $40 billion in liquidity. And then the next day alone, customers withdrew $42 billion. All of this was much worse during the Great Depression, before we had FDIC insurance guaranteeing deposits up to a certain threshold. If you've ever seen It's a Wonderful Life, it depicts a bank run during that era as George Bailey is about to go off on his honeymoon. (I remember my 6th grade history teacher describing this as we watched that movie around the holiday season.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Bank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Ban...
  - everforward 2y ago
    This is incredibly obscure for normal people. FDIC covers up to $250k, I believe per bank but don’t hold me to that. You have to have a metric shit ton of cash laying around before you can’t be fully covered by FDIC stripes across a few banks. Bank runs haven’t been a “normal person problem” in nearly 100 years (FDIC started in 1933 after the Great Depression bank runs).
    - pasc1878 2y ago
      Not really the media were covering it a lot in 2008 - Front page headlines in newspapers and first story on TV news. Ok people did not lose money directly. But they were withdrawing from some banks (e.g. Northern Rock) and it made massive economic and political issues.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  I agree: A lot of Dickens is nearly impossible to understand as a child. The re-writes are terrific and solid storytelling!
- allturtles 2y ago
  I wasn't familiar with the passage but having read it I think it means that the sounds and sights of the nighttime mail carriage ride made the bank messenger fantasize a run (i.e. an excess of customer withdrawals) upon his bank. The wider context is that the shadows of the night are cast as various phantoms in the minds of the people on the carriage, and even the horse pulling it: > While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the night watchman in his box at the door of Tellson’s Bank, by Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows of the night took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and took such shapes to the mare as arose out of HER private topics of uneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at every shadow on the road. > What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and bumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the forms their dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested. > Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank passenger—with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the next passenger, and driving him into his corner, whenever the coach got a special jolt—nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the bulky bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great stroke of business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money, and more drafts were honoured in five minutes than even Tellson’s, with all its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson’s, with such of their valuable stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a little that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in among them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen them. I actually think it's a really neat passage, it invokes the surreal more than I would expect from 19th century prose. Also, this part just before is very vivid and quite funny: > Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like Smith’s work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over.
  - sovnwnt 2y ago
    Yeah I wasn't sure if the "run on the bank" had actually happened or not.
calvinmorrison 2y ago
I would say I loathed hemmingway in school and really didn't grasp it at all until I was an adult. I love Hemingway
- freilanzer 2y ago
  This is why instilling interest in reading is important, instead of killing it with the usual dry books.
saagarjha 2y ago
I hated Romeo and Juliet. Teachers loved to explain how this was so relevant to us teenagers and yet it’s two people in a deeply concerning relationship who die for each other for pretty stupid reasons. Modern interpretations are far more interesting.
dmazzoni 2y ago
I wouldn't use the term "garbage prose", but I do agree that many books from the literary canon aren't the greatest choice to assign to kids. Steinbeck and Faulkner come to mind. I understand that they're important, influential, and well-written. But I just didn't relate to them. There was almost nothing about the main characters' challenges or desires that I could understand. My son was assigned "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton - he didn't mind reading it, but he said he just didn't really relate to any of the characters. Even though it's set just 50 years ago, the culture it describes bares basically no resemblance to modern-day life for a teenager.
- whythre 2y ago
  “ My son was assigned "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton - he didn't mind reading it, but he said he just didn't really relate to any of the characters. Even though it's set just 50 years ago, the culture it describes bares basically no resemblance to modern-day life for a teenager.” Maybe that’s ok? I read the Outsiders when I was young (25 years ago or so) and although I thought it was a bit weird, it wasn’t bad. My life bears little resemblance to many current contemporary people’s lives the world over, but exploring those differences can be good. I am all for giving the kids a chance to see a different world and get a sense of how things can change.
  - freilanzer 2y ago
    > I am all for giving the kids a chance to see a different world and get a sense of how things can change. Not if you're discouraging children from reading as a hobby by assigning the driest works there are. With the exception of Faust, all 'homework books' were horribly dry and frankly boring. For example, The Sorrows of Young Werther - utterly irrelevant. I would understand any child or teenager who gave up on reading if they were forced to read books like these - and even worse, spend endless hours discussing and being tested on them.
- da_chicken 2y ago
  The Great Gatsby is the one that comes to my mind. How exactly is a modern high school student supposed to relate to any of the characters in this book? Even when I was reading it in school I kept stopping and questioning just what these characters even were. It felt like reading about aliens, totally disconnected from reality. I not only lacked the historical context, I didn't have enough social context to grasp the character motivations or actions. The whole book was like the allegory of the cave. Steinbeck is a close second, though. I had to read three of the man's books (The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, and Grapes of Wrath) and I don't think I enjoyed a single page of it. I remember finding a copy of The Pearl as an adult and being shocked it was less than 100 pages. We somehow extracted 18 weeks of discussion and essays and tests on that book. No wonder I hated it. We tortured every word of it.
throwaway2037 2y ago
Shakespeare and Chaucer were fucking awful. They did nothing but make me hate reading and English class. It took me years to enjoy reading after the "classics". Many of my classmates were similar.

Which books of the canon did you read that you found to be garbage prose?

by lupire 2y ago

Which books of the canon did you read that you found to be garbage prose?

I wouldn't say it's "garbage prose" but I read A Tale of Two Cities in school and found it impossible to form a mental image from the text in some parts. I'm still struggling to understand what "Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail." means.

pasc1878 2y ago
Look at what happened in 2008 with banks collapsing - by having runs upon them. This is being done via postal withdrawals here. This isn't obscure.
- vitus 2y ago
  Or more recently, the run on SVB last year where everyone started panicking that the bank was no longer able to hold its deposits, just because it announced that it had taken action to generate something like $40 billion in liquidity. And then the next day alone, customers withdrew $42 billion. All of this was much worse during the Great Depression, before we had FDIC insurance guaranteeing deposits up to a certain threshold. If you've ever seen It's a Wonderful Life, it depicts a bank run during that era as George Bailey is about to go off on his honeymoon. (I remember my 6th grade history teacher describing this as we watched that movie around the holiday season.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Bank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Ban...
- everforward 2y ago
  This is incredibly obscure for normal people. FDIC covers up to $250k, I believe per bank but don’t hold me to that. You have to have a metric shit ton of cash laying around before you can’t be fully covered by FDIC stripes across a few banks. Bank runs haven’t been a “normal person problem” in nearly 100 years (FDIC started in 1933 after the Great Depression bank runs).
  - pasc1878 2y ago
    Not really the media were covering it a lot in 2008 - Front page headlines in newspapers and first story on TV news. Ok people did not lose money directly. But they were withdrawing from some banks (e.g. Northern Rock) and it made massive economic and political issues.
throwaway2037 2y ago
I agree: A lot of Dickens is nearly impossible to understand as a child. The re-writes are terrific and solid storytelling!
allturtles 2y ago
I wasn't familiar with the passage but having read it I think it means that the sounds and sights of the nighttime mail carriage ride made the bank messenger fantasize a run (i.e. an excess of customer withdrawals) upon his bank. The wider context is that the shadows of the night are cast as various phantoms in the minds of the people on the carriage, and even the horse pulling it: > While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the night watchman in his box at the door of Tellson’s Bank, by Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows of the night took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and took such shapes to the mare as arose out of HER private topics of uneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at every shadow on the road. > What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and bumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the forms their dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested. > Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank passenger—with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the next passenger, and driving him into his corner, whenever the coach got a special jolt—nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the bulky bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great stroke of business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money, and more drafts were honoured in five minutes than even Tellson’s, with all its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson’s, with such of their valuable stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a little that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in among them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen them. I actually think it's a really neat passage, it invokes the surreal more than I would expect from 19th century prose. Also, this part just before is very vivid and quite funny: > Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like Smith’s work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over.
- sovnwnt 2y ago
  Yeah I wasn't sure if the "run on the bank" had actually happened or not.

calvinmorrison 2y ago

I would say I loathed hemmingway in school and really didn't grasp it at all until I was an adult. I love Hemingway

freilanzer 2y ago
This is why instilling interest in reading is important, instead of killing it with the usual dry books.

saagarjha 2y ago

I hated Romeo and Juliet. Teachers loved to explain how this was so relevant to us teenagers and yet it’s two people in a deeply concerning relationship who die for each other for pretty stupid reasons. Modern interpretations are far more interesting.

dmazzoni 2y ago

I wouldn't use the term "garbage prose", but I do agree that many books from the literary canon aren't the greatest choice to assign to kids. Steinbeck and Faulkner come to mind. I understand that they're important, influential, and well-written. But I just didn't relate to them. There was almost nothing about the main characters' challenges or desires that I could understand. My son was assigned "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton - he didn't mind reading it, but he said he just didn't really relate to any of the characters. Even though it's set just 50 years ago, the culture it describes bares basically no resemblance to modern-day life for a teenager.

whythre 2y ago
“ My son was assigned "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton - he didn't mind reading it, but he said he just didn't really relate to any of the characters. Even though it's set just 50 years ago, the culture it describes bares basically no resemblance to modern-day life for a teenager.” Maybe that’s ok? I read the Outsiders when I was young (25 years ago or so) and although I thought it was a bit weird, it wasn’t bad. My life bears little resemblance to many current contemporary people’s lives the world over, but exploring those differences can be good. I am all for giving the kids a chance to see a different world and get a sense of how things can change.
- freilanzer 2y ago
  > I am all for giving the kids a chance to see a different world and get a sense of how things can change. Not if you're discouraging children from reading as a hobby by assigning the driest works there are. With the exception of Faust, all 'homework books' were horribly dry and frankly boring. For example, The Sorrows of Young Werther - utterly irrelevant. I would understand any child or teenager who gave up on reading if they were forced to read books like these - and even worse, spend endless hours discussing and being tested on them.
da_chicken 2y ago
The Great Gatsby is the one that comes to my mind. How exactly is a modern high school student supposed to relate to any of the characters in this book? Even when I was reading it in school I kept stopping and questioning just what these characters even were. It felt like reading about aliens, totally disconnected from reality. I not only lacked the historical context, I didn't have enough social context to grasp the character motivations or actions. The whole book was like the allegory of the cave. Steinbeck is a close second, though. I had to read three of the man's books (The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, and Grapes of Wrath) and I don't think I enjoyed a single page of it. I remember finding a copy of The Pearl as an adult and being shocked it was less than 100 pages. We somehow extracted 18 weeks of discussion and essays and tests on that book. No wonder I hated it. We tortured every word of it.

throwaway2037 2y ago

Shakespeare and Chaucer were fucking awful. They did nothing but make me hate reading and English class. It took me years to enjoy reading after the "classics". Many of my classmates were similar.