(no subject)

[fajrdrako]

From March 19, 2009: What’s the worst 'best' book you’ve ever read — the one everyone says is so great, but you can’t figure out why?

Easy: Moby Dick. I'd heard great quotes from it on X-Files and Star Trek and it sounded brilliant. So only a few years ago I sat down and read it cover to cover, and haven't been so bored (or frustrated) by a novel since Ivanhoe. But I understand why some people might like Ivanhoe, or, rather, might have done so in the 19th century. Moby Dick? I just didn't get it.

It quotes well, though. Ignorance is the parent of fear.

It was a sharp, cold Christmas.

Comments

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

Wuthering Heights. Romantic? They hated each other!

At least it wasn't as agonisingly boring as Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Romantic? They hated each other!

Yeah. That's a weird one. The only good thing about it was that one of the movies had Timothy Dalton.

The only thing I remember about Tess of the D'Ubervilles - and I never read the book, just saw the movie - was how beautiful Nastassja Kinski was.

(Shallow, me? I like a good book or a good story, but I like beautiful people too.)

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Tess is excellent, if heart-breaking. I like the film, but no film or TV version has done it justice: they are all too kind to the vile Angel, and don't see through Alec's 'bad boy' pose. (Alec is very, very bad for my h/c complex!)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't remember the characters now, except Stonehenge.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

The fault there is in the marketing (often exacerbated by soppy film versions). Wuthering Heights isn't a romance: it's a dark tale of revenge and property and madness.

Tess is fascinating and tragic, I find: it exposes the cost of body/spirit dualism. I find it distressing because it costs the life of one of Hardy's most delightful and good (and entirely unstuffy) young men.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Marketing is often a problem. The movie-makers may understand what they have, but the marketers go for - something else entirely.

I do plan to read Tess eventually. Not sure what I'll think.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Did I send you my article on it from The Thomas Hardy Yearbook (2000)?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

No...?

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I'll resend it. I thought I had. It's called Body and Soul, Love and Murder.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Got it - thank you!

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

If it had been marketed to me as dark revenge and madness, I would almost have certainly enjoyed it a lot more. I prefer revenge and madness to romance any day :D

Bit like the Jim Carey movie, The Cable Guy - if it had been marketed as a homoerotic stalker-thriller, instead of a comedy, it may not have been panned so badly.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

True. A lot of the percecption is formed by preconception.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I found the same with the film of The Hireling: from the things I'd read, I had anticipated (dreaded) a sort of Lady Chatterley storyline. Instead, it's darker and more sensitively-done story.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Sounds good.