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Bukowski Moments

quote:

Originally said by Charles Bukowski Reading the poets has been the dullest of things. Even reading the great novelists of the past, I said, "Tolstoy is supposed to be special?" I go to bed, I read War and Peace. I read it, I read it, I say, "Where is the specialist in War and Peace?" I really tried to understand. I mean, and then many of the great poets of the past, I've read their stuff. I've read it. All I get is a goddamn headache and boredom. I really feel sickness in the pit of my stomach, I say "There's some trick going on here, this is not true. This is not real, its not good."

So what were the moments when you encountered a piece of art that's critically acclaimed yet turned out to be nothing special at all and more like a load of crap that has somehow tricked people into liking it?
I'll post some stuff later, hopefully this thread won't derail until then.

James Joyce.

Oh, and Faulkner.

*resists urge to derail*

Jane Austen. What a load of shit.

bokowski is good shit.

Re: Bukowski Moments

quote:

Originally posted by Meat187 So what were the moments when you encountered a piece of art that's critically acclaimed yet turned out to be nothing special at all and more like a load of crap that has somehow tricked people into liking it?

Lord of the rings.

richard wagner.

i get that his music is 'better than it sounds' but seriously, it is some dull shit.

• Orwell's 1984: Had to read this in class and still think it's utter crap. Badly written, uninteresting and generally not enjoyable for the reader at all. It may be intersting in a political or sociological sense (although it's main implication today is a stupid reality TV show) but that doesn't change the fact that I think it's a bad book.
  
• G�nther Grass: One of Germany's most acclaimed authors. I tried to read "The Tin Drum" but failed. I finished "Cat and Mouse" and it was terrible. Weird storytelling, utter boredom and nothing of interest or quality whatsoever.
  
• James Joyce: Thankfully I didn't even bother with Ulysses but started with "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". That guy has got to be kidding all the critics. Large passages of the book are just annoying, confusing and inaccessible. And from what I've heard Ulysses is a hundred times worse. Call me ignorant, but a book where I need to read a professors explanations to understand what the author is trying to say is a shit book imho.
  
• The Beatles: Most people will strongly disagree on this one but I find their music completely unspectacular. Not really bad, just nothing special and not woth any of the fuss.
  
• The Departed: 92% on RT and all my friends liked it. Yet I went from bored to annoyed to even more bored and was even close to walking out of the cinema since that crap dragged on for eternity. Yeah, huge amount of big names but what exactly is so good about this movie?
  

I kind of feel this way about Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Then again, I am not that far into it yet so I will give it more of a chance.

Also, Saul Bellow is another, as I recently wrote:

quote:

I think I finally realized what bugs me so much about Saul Bellow and why I can only rarely finish his books: none of his characters are very likable. I have read significant amounts of but not finished The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, and now Humboldt's Gift. I finished Ravelstein, but I think that was because it was about Allan Bloom and I was really interested in Bloom at the time. It's also shorter than many of his other books. Anyway, Bellow's protagonists always feel like they're just avatars of the author. Bellow was married five times and divorced four: his protagonists always have trouble with women and failing marriages. He was at the University of Chicago during the "Great Books" phase instigated by Hutchins and Adler: his protagonists always seem to have a thing for old philosophy and history in general. But more than their obvious resemblance to the author, the protagonists annoy me because of their narcissism. The incessant narcissism and self-regard sometimes comes disguised as self-deprecation and "aw shucks" attitude, which annoys me even more than open preening. And the rest of the characters that fill the story are either almost as annoying or not fleshed out enough to be interesting. I mean, I know that realistic characters are supposed to have flaws, but that doesn't mean that every character has to have flaws that overpower anything good about them. Okay, enough negativity. Bellow does write great prose and I enjoy his philosophical musings. His writing is even insightful sometimes. But I just can't get over his annoying characters.

quote:

Originally posted by Meat187 James Joyce: Thankfully I didn't even bother with Ulysses but started with "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". That guy has got to be kidding all the critics. Large passages of the book are just annoying, confusing and inaccessible. And from what I've heard Ulysses is a hundred times worse. Call me ignorant, but a book where I need to read a professors explanations to understand what the author is trying to say is a shit book imho.

I liked Portrait and found it quite readable. I don't really see what's hard to understand about it.

Ulysses I can see being difficult. I've only read excerpts of it (which I liked) for a course, but I picked up the book recently and will start on it soon.

quote:

Originally posted by Meat187 Orwell's 1984: Had to read this in class and still think it's utter crap. Badly written, uninteresting and generally not enjoyable for the reader at all. It may be intersting in a political or sociological sense (although it's main implication today is a stupid reality TV show) but that doesn't change the fact that I think it's a bad book. ... The Beatles: Most people will strongly disagree on this one but I find their music completely unspectacular. Not really bad, just nothing special and not woth any of the fuss.

You're not alone.

quote:

Originally posted by Lira You're not alone.

Lol it's easy to laugh at 1984 now that the term "big brother" has become a clich�. But at the time it was written it was a fairly dystopic vision that was relevant (height of Soviet tyranny and all that).

Have you read Orwell's Animal Farm?

Also I'd be interested to know your opinion of Huxley's A Brave New World.. I found it more relevant than 1984 for some reason.

quote:

Originally posted by astroboy

Huxley vs. Orwell in comic form:

http://www.recombinantrecords.net/d...s-to-Death.html

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles I liked Portrait and found it quite readable. I don't really see what's hard to understand about it. Ulysses I can see being difficult. I've only read excerpts of it (which I liked) for a course, but I picked up the book recently and will start on it soon.

i liked ulysses.. i guess it depends what you're trying to get out of it though..

as a piece of writing it's brilliant, if you're looking for clear narative etc then you're not going to be keen on it.. the last chapter is awesome imo

i agree that there are heaps of pieces of 'art' that are completely shite in reality though... might be worth setting a standard for what's wrong with them..

just because you personally didn't enjoy it, or didn't get it doesn't really make it bad...

quote:

Originally posted by astroboy Lol it's easy to laugh at 1984 now that the term "big brother" has become a clich�. But at the time it was written it was a fairly dystopic vision that was relevant (height of Soviet tyranny and all that). Have you read Orwell's Animal Farm? Also I'd be interested to know your opinion of Huxley's A Brave New World.. I found it more relevant than 1984 for some reason.

i'm an orwell fan as well...
1984 = win imo

that huxley vs orwell comic is awesome too

Lord of the Rings

Christianity

The Beatles - For the life of me I can't understand what people see in them.

quote:

Originally posted by astroboy Lol it's easy to laugh at 1984 now that the term "big brother" has become a clich�. But at the time it was written it was a fairly dystopic vision that was relevant (height of Soviet tyranny and all that). Have you read Orwell's Animal Farm?

No, after I read 1984, I promised myself I wouldn't read anything by Orwell's any time soon.

But, the reason why I disliked 1984 is not because it is cliché. It's because it is shallow and far-fetched. I don't know if you were born in Australia but, if you weren't, we both have in common the fact that we were born under dictatorships - so 1984 should not be that much far from home. Yet, it is.

The whole "newspeak" thing made me cringe. It relies too much on an extreme version of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis that is not taken seriously in science these days. Sure enough, Russians are quick to spot the difference between "siniy" and "galuboy", whereas English speakers need some more time to notice the difference between these two shades of blue (as they perceive it). Having two different words make it easier to work in some contexts, but lacking a distinction doesn't mean you can't perceive that difference. And I feel it all starts from this mistake. When Winston read Goldsteam's book, and later when he was captured and tortured, it felt like I was being dragged along with a snowball based on erroneous assumptions, crafted by an angry chubby teenager with a cute delusion of grandeur thinking that (s)he had come up with the deepest insight ever in the History of political science and psychology... when it's actually something that you're more likely to hear from a clueless crank.

quote:

Originally posted by astroboy Also I'd be interested to know your opinion of Huxley's A Brave New World.. I found it more relevant than 1984 for some reason.

All right, I will read it in December

Ps.: By the way, what Sartre recommendation? You said you recommended me something by Sartre in another thread, but I don't remember

quote:

Originally posted by Meat187 The Beatles: Most people will strongly disagree on this one but I find their music completely unspectacular. Not really bad, just nothing special and not woth any of the fuss.

+1000000, The Beatles are way overrated. I can understand that maybe a person who grew up with this music may like it. You know, they were there when it was the big thing, they were swept up in it. To them it was something new and different. What I cannot understand is all the stupid high school kids who are so fucking obsessed with The Beatles. Their music is dull and absolutely uneventful, I would even say it's bad. They are that thing your parents love that you'll never understand because you didn't live it yet somehow all these fucking hipster kids jack off to The Beatles. It's fucking retarded.

/rant

Pink Floyd, other than the cover of 'The Other Side Of The Moon' they can go fuck themselves with their money till they're numb

quote:

Originally posted by Lira The whole "newspeak" thing made me cringe.

Newspeak may be hyperbolic or just not be a very plausible idea, but why do you think the whole book stands or falls based on that?

JM Coatzee. He won a Nobel prize for literature, but his books are good only for academics to write papers about.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. This book is fucking awful. The critics of its day panned it, and they were right.

Battle Royale. Not a highbrow film as such, but definitely critically acclaimed. I found it nonsensical, derivative and severely over-rated.

V For Vendetta. Again, not very highbrow, but it baffles me that so many people seem to think this is a good film. Political stances are being put before critical sensibilities, methinks.

Definitely didn't like 1984. It was one of the first books I read and it almost turned me off of reading altogether.

oh and fucking Casablanca, fuck that shit

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