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What's the most high falutin' fiction you've read?

Started by Catalogue of ills, October 20, 2021, 12:10:47 PM

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Catalogue of ills

You'll note that I didn't go with 'highbrow' - that suggests that it's better or superior to middlebrow or lowbrow, and I'm not a snob. In fact, some highbrow stuff is dreadful, unsurprisingly. But obviously some fiction (lit-er-a-ture, darling) is a lot more ambitious than most and fuelled by an intellect significantly above Len Deighton's.

So how high have you gone? I think my high water/brow mark is probably Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, a bogglingly intellectual retelling of the Faust story via the syphillitic genius of a composer of classical music, using the structure of composition theory to frame the telling in ways that shot so far over my head I was only vaguely aware of them. It was either that or The Magic Mountain, also by Thomas Mann, which includes lengthy philosphical passages concerning aesthetics and makes Sophie's World look like the Ladybird Book of Philosophy, which I suppose it is in a way. Both of those books by Mann are actually really good, though I favour The Magic Mountain as it is more accessible and less dense than Doctor Faustus.

Small Man Big Horse

Two from when I did my English degree:

Paradise Lost - I struggled with aspects of this, if only because of the archaic language used and having to keep on looking up what certain words meant, but then every so often there'd be a line or part which absolutely blew me away and which made it all worthwhile.

Medieval Mystery Plays - As above on the language front, but the opposite on them being worthwhile as I found them tedious and really annoying.

And one before that:

Crime and Punishment - Which I read to see if I wanted to study English at university, and largely loved. The middle section which comes across as a 100 page plus fever dream as he mentally collapses is exhausting but I'm glad I stuck with it as it certainly changed my mind about my plans to become Britain's most popular serial killer.

Catalogue of ills

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on October 21, 2021, 09:56:57 AM
Two from when I did my English degree:

Paradise Lost - I struggled with aspects of this, if only because of the archaic language used and having to keep on looking up what certain words meant, but then every so often there'd be a line or part which absolutely blew me away and which made it all worthwhile.

Medieval Mystery Plays - As above on the language front, but the opposite on them being worthwhile as I found them tedious and really annoying.

And one before that:

Crime and Punishment - Which I read to see if I wanted to study English at university, and largely loved. The middle section which comes across as a 100 page plus fever dream as he mentally collapses is exhausting but I'm glad I stuck with it as it certainly changed my mind about my plans to become Britain's most popular serial killer.

I laughed out loud at the last line, cheers for the insights

Bently Sheds

I tried reading To The Lighthouse by Dorothy Parker and found, as I'm demonstrating here, which I am wont to do, inasmuch as is humanly possible given the circumstances, which, in and of themselves, are somewhat irrelevant and, as such, heretofore and forthwith, ENDLESS FUCKING MEANDERING FUCKING SENTENCES THAT TAKE ABOUT HALF A FUCKING HOUR TO UNPICK. It's like she was writing to fulfil a contractual word count.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on October 21, 2021, 09:56:57 AM
Paradise Lost - I struggled with aspects of this, if only because of the archaic language used and having to keep on looking up what certain words meant, but then every so often there'd be a line or part which absolutely blew me away and which made it all worthwhile.

Quote
From morn to noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day

Has stuck with me since forever. I didn't do an English degree or anything, I think I watched a YouTube lecture when I was in a high falutin' mood and a lot of it has remained with me.

Johnny Foreigner

#5
I did an English degree, but specialised in linguistics rather than literature. I went into literature in my German degree.

I should say most of what I have read by Alexander Pope is quite challenging. The Rape of the Lock and, even more so, The Dunciad are replete with references to both classical antiquity and long-forgotten notorious personages form Pope's day. I like him, though; his prosody and metre are impeccable. Intellectually, Pope is much more challenging than Dryden, but he lacks Dryden's elegance and composure. I read them both of my own free will. By comparison, Hudibras by Samuel Butler is considerably less polished, but much more entertaining.

We had to analyse Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman at uni. To my mind, all this toying and mucking about with perspectives is high falutin' and little else.

In German, anything by Nietzsche, though Also sprach Zarathustra is probably his only work that qualifies as fiction. It is just layer upon layer of meaning or lack thereof. Schiller is quite hard to read; Heinrich von Kleist wrote several novellas that are extremely tortuous and wrought from a linguistic point of view, but I found them well worth the effort.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Bently Sheds on October 21, 2021, 10:13:50 AM
I tried reading To The Lighthouse by Dorothy Parker
You mean Virginia Woolf? Dorothy Parker seems a bit more accessible (not that I've read any of it, mind).


touchingcloth

Is all most of Joyce high falutin'? If Johnny Foreigner's "toying and mucking about" metric is to be followed.

Bently Sheds

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on October 21, 2021, 03:49:09 PM
You mean Virginia Woolf? Dorothy Parker seems a bit more accessible (not that I've read any of it, mind).
Yeah. That's the fella. The book came in a box set of Penguin classics: 1000 Years of Solitude,  A Clockwork Orange, Animal Farm, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Heart Of The Matter by Graham Greene. To the Lghthouse was the only one of them that I bailed on.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Bently Sheds on October 21, 2021, 05:25:18 PM
1000 Years of Solitude

I've never read any of his works, but for some reason I always think that his magnum opus is "Love in the Time of Solitude", which sounds like the ultimate wanking book.

Famous Mortimer

I rather enjoyed "To The Lighthouse", but then I read it when I worked in a Butlins over Christmas and New Year, long before I had a mobile phone, no telly in the chalet, so I was severely in need of entertainment.

I guess "The Recognitions" is about it when it comes to high-falutin' fiction for me, but maybe "The Glass Bead Game" too?

Johnny Foreigner

Quote from: touchingcloth on October 21, 2021, 05:12:09 PM
Is all most of Joyce high falutin'? If Johnny Foreigner's "toying and mucking about" metric is to be followed.

I've never tried to read Ulysses, but his Dubliners story collection is a real page-turner and quite accessible. Finnegan's Wake is gibberish. There are critical editions of that, in which half of each page consists of footnotes.

Dr Johnson's novel, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, was rather unnecessarily philosophical as well; it's quite obvious he was merely trying to emulate Voltaire.

Another pompous book I recall was by Dutch author, Simon Vestdijk, and called The Waiter and the Living ('De kelner en de levenden'). Four hundred pages of strenuous mysteriousness and at the end, we are supposed to believe that 'the waiter' was Jesus Christ. Ludicrous.

chveik

possibly Rabelais in the original old french. or Faulkner's 'Absalom, Absalom!', not the easiest read

Johnny Foreigner

I definitely want to read Rabelais, and Gil Blas as well. Been years since I read a French book; I'd probably need a dictionary for every sentence.

Mister Six

I read To the Lighthouse at uni but can't remember a damned thing about it, except there's a bit in the middle that's kind of abstract and interesting, and surrounded on either side by tedium.

I read Ulysses in secondary school after studying and enjoying Dubliners. It's hard to remember, though, how much I liked Ulysses and how much I was just pretending to like it so I could feel better. I'll swing back to it at some point, but next year's big read is The Brothers Karamazov.

Other than that I think most of my really clever/outre reading has come in the form of comic books, oddly enough. The Filth is a fun mindbender, as is Rogan Gosh, but they're probably too accessible and crude on the surface to have literary merit almond academics, even though you could say the same thing about Joyce half the time.

Mister Six

Oh! I read the Society of the Spectacle this year, and reckon I understood most of it (with a bit of concordant research), but I skipped the chapters on Marx because I honestly couldn't be arsed doing that much work.

Chedney Honks

I think for me it has to be The Alchemist by Paolo Coehlo? Will change your life.

bgmnts

A 50 year old Spanish woman genuinely recommended that to me, even gave me a copy to read. 

Dont remember my life being changed at all, or even what happens.


timebug

I read Ullysses easily, found no problem with the writing; until, around eighty percent or more into it, I just lost all interest and never finished it. Most unusual for me, if I get past fifty pages of anything, I will usually finish it. I dunno what happened or why, but I simply found one passage that I was unable to get through. It was not a difficult bit, it just held no interest for me at all, and I bailed out. Never went back o it, never felt that I wanted to.
But as has been pointed out already, Finnegans Wake is utter bollocks! Tried it and lost the will to live. Reads like some old acid head just writing down his thoughts at that particular time.
Thomas Pynchon also defeated me.Started two or three of his, to see why he was devisive; soon found out. Utter shite (IMO) that I regretted looking at!

touchingcloth

Has anyone ever read Pilonné dans le Cul par Mon Livre "Pilonné dans le Cul par Mon Propre Cul" in the original French?

thenoise

In addition to those already mentioned "The Man Without Qualities" (Robert Musil) sure is a big old read.

thenoise

Finnegans wake remains the only book I have given up on (after only a few pages too), it just became words after a while. I tried listening to an audiobook of it and it sent me to sleep.

Has anyone here finished it? Is there any point persevering if I can't make head nor tails of the first ten pages?

Johnny Foreigner

Night! The rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of, Night! Pedwar, till the waters come down at Lahore.

Johnny Foreigner

Quote from: thenoise on October 22, 2021, 07:13:07 PM
In addition to those already mentioned "The Man Without Qualities" (Robert Musil) sure is a big old read.

One of my lecturers wrote his PhD on that; we therefore studied excerpts from it, but I was never tempted to read the whole book.

buttgammon

I've read Finnegans Wake and although I like it, it's not worth the effort for everyone. The first time I read it, it took about six months, and with copious help from notes; a substantial amount of it is still unintelligible to me, but something you learn with it is that it's impossible to understand everything and you have to just go along with the flow of the writing sometimes. The most enjoyable way to read it is to do it socially, especially through reading groups. I've been involved in two of these at different times - a fairly serious academic one a few years ago and the more casual one that I'm currently in - and they're a really fun way to engage with it. The pleasure of the book comes out more when you're reading it with other people, especially when you hear it read out loud.

Because of the way it's structured, there's nothing to stop you jumping in at the middle. A good starting point would be chapter I.8, which is usually considered the most accessible[nb]Accessible by the standard of the book - it's still a bloody difficult read[/nb] section of the book, but is also a brilliant piece of writing that a lot of people find really beautiful; at the very least, that chapter would be a litmus test of whether you'd like the book or not. There are lots of online resources (of variable quality) that can help readers and also some really good books. Many readers will keep a copy of Roland McHugh's Annotations to hand - this book mirrors the text of the book page-by-page and decodes a lot of the allusions and words from various languages. I'd also recommend a book called Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake, which is a really entertaining guide that uses a few in-depth readings of certain sections to provide a good overview of how the book works, while also talking about Joyce's writing process.

Notorious difficulty aside, I'm not sure I'd call it high falutin' - there's too much toilet humour and fucking in it for that!

studpuppet

Quote from: Johnny Foreigner on October 22, 2021, 09:00:53 PM
One of my lecturers wrote his PhD on that; we therefore studied excerpts from it, but I was never tempted to read the whole book.

I got a lovely two hardback boxed set of this as my leaving present from one of the bookshops I worked in. I've NEVER OPENED IT.

However, I'd maybe put Boris Vian and Richard Brautigan into the high falutin' category.

touchingcloth

With sentences like

Quote
Haroun Childeric Eggeberth he would caligulate by multiplicables the alltitude and malltitude until he seesaw by neatlight

...I've always thought there would be mileage in a game of Finnegan Or Poo. And it's even got a "cab" in there, if proof be needs be.

buttgammon

Quote from: touchingcloth on October 22, 2021, 11:04:40 PM
With sentences like

...I've always thought there would be mileage in a game of Finnegan Or Poo. And it's even got a "cab" in there, if proof be needs be.


It's very HS Art, that's for sure!

touchingcloth