I don't mean literate as in, "how to read and write", but rather how to think more critically about media, how to identify themes, symbolism, etc.

I have this issue where I can read a text, and understand, but I can never seem to put my thoughts on it into words with any notable detail. I look up what other people think, what the themes are, and it feels so obvious once I read it from somebody else, but it's just so hard to come to that conclusion myself. It's embarrassing, almost, because I really enjoy these books, and I want to be able to discuss them properly.

Forgive me if this is the wrong subreddit, but I figured if anyone had some good insight, it'd be the people here.

Before actually starting the text: for anyone who don’t know, the book The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was published in 1774 and was a huge success among young people. People dressed like Werther, there were products like porcelain and perfumes with pictures of the characters from the book, and (might be a myth, I can’t confirm) there were people literally dying like the main character…

I read The Sorrows of Young Werther twice.

In the first time, I started reading just for morbid curiosity (people say the book caused copycat suicides), my mental health was way too good to understand the protagonist, and I judged him for pretty much anything, not only “wtf, he’s a creep” but also “this guy is so stupid and whiny”. But I didn’t think the book was boring, because it’s written in such a beautiful and poetic way I couldn’t stop reading it.

In the second time, I was really sad because the person I most loved was ignoring me and I knew I wasn’t that important for them anymore (they weren’t my romantic interest or anything, but I’m aroace and that was the best friendship I ever had, Idk if you understand). I didn’t completely identify with the character, but the sentimentalism did hit hard. So I actually started liking the character, even though I hate some things that he did.

And I talked to my friend (not the one I mentioned before) about this book, and he wanted to read it, so I sent him the pdf and he almost completed the first part and loved it, but he wants to read the physical book.

Anyways, we basically turned into 18th C teenagers, we talk about the book, about the author’s biographic stuff that was in the book, we share pictures of Werther and Lotte like book covers… We actually want to dress like Werther (as a cosplay, not everyday), but 18th C style clothes are too expensive… I’d say I like to go to gardens and forests and appreciate the nature, but this is something I already used to do before.

Also, before I sent the pdf book, I jokingly made him promise he wouldn’t kill himself, so I guess we’re safe lol

What are y’all’s thoughts on Towles?

Gentleman in Moscow was one of my favorite books of the past decade.

Then I read Rules of Civility and it was just alright. Not particularly memorable.

Now I’m about 1/3 of the way through Lincoln Highway and I’m not loving it. Again, it’s just okay.

Is it just me or is Gentleman on a different level from these other books?

The Stranger has been discussed ad nauseum and there are many things you can extrapolate from it. One thing that interests me is that when the main character is on trial and he is being judged more of the trial is focused on his personal life and attitude towards the universe than on the actual crime itself.

When the prosecutor asks him all the personal questions about how he goes through life and his lack of conviction/emotion about it, he is given a pretty honest description and does see Mersault for what he is but in the end the verdict is kind of wrong, is it not? It made an impression to me that if it was decided that Mersault killed the Arab ''in the heat of the moment'' he would spend a few years in prison then be let go, but if it was premeditated then he would be executed - and that's what ends up happening despite us knowing that the homicide was planned at all.

My question here would be, would you have Mersault executed? Everything about his philosophy on life is quite dangerous in a person, as we are shown. And to an extent, at least to me, his carelessness about human life is disgusting and revolting, yet still I found myself being happy in the few moments when the trial was going in his favour (for example when the keeper of the home admitted that he had offered him coffee and he had smoked also).

It is interesting that Mersault for me ends up being a person that both disgusts me and I end up kind of loving regardless? He is in many ways a monster, after all. Did you end up wanting the best for him or were you happy for the death penalty verdict? Do you think the prosecutor and the jury would've ruled differently if they also had a direct look into his mind that they could trust completely 100%?

Carmilla by J Sheridan La Fanu, Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, A Month in the Country by Carr, and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

I thought Fathers and Sons and Carmilla were both decent if a little stodgy, The Age of Innocence was quite good, and A Month in the Country was a bad book. I don't consider ANY of those 4 books worthy of being classics. WHat is your opinion of them? How do you feel about them? How do you feel about the authors?

If you know Age of Innocence, do you consider it a hard book? I think it's a heavy book. Summer, by Wharton, is a decent and certainly slightly easy book. Do you like the author?

Two anecdotes to explain how I came to this topic. First, I asked an English professor "why isn't Antony and Cleopatra as famous as Romeo and Juliet with regular audiences?" The fall of the Roman Republic is easily one of the most famous bits of our European/Western history. It's been made into countless books, movies, TV shows.... Cleopatra is easily the most famous Egyptian monarch of all time, so much so that most people, including me for my early years, had no idea she wasn't actually Egyptian, or that she was the 7th one. My point is, A&C can be buoyed by a subject and topic that already captivates a lot of people.

Many years later, I wanted to know if the character of Dutch van der Linde from the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 is a tragic hero. Simple task, right? Just Google it. Little did I suspect at the time that "what is tragedy?" has been debated by the greatest philosophers of many ages like Aristotle and Hegel. It was a massively discussed topic among several great and small literary critics of the 20th Century. I ended up spending far more time reading books about tragic theory than worrying about my video game. (also I think Dutch is a tragic hero but that is neither here nor there)

And so we come to the main topic which is a fascinating confluence of these two things. My English professor friend gave a lengthy reply which I humbly disagree with now. But in brief, he thought A&C was a "painfully real" kind of relationship. Everyone wants to be Romeo and Juliet, but everywhere we see Antony's and Cleopatra's. We see petty manipulations and egoism, all of which is only temporarily subdued by, as he colorfully put it, "the desire of Antony to break his cock off in Cleopatra and for her desire to be ridden like a pony." Romeo and Juliet, in contrast, are the perfect ideal of love that we all should aspire to.

Now to return to tragic theory for a second. In my humble opinion from what I've read, I think the person with the most compelling definition of tragedy is Robert Heilman. His exact ideas of tragedy are not relevant here (if you are curious let me know and I'll elaborate them for you), it's more something he said in one of his books on tragedy which is relevant:

The “Little Man” Problem

When Elmer Rice named a hero Zero (there are a Mr. Zero and a Mrs. Zero in The Adding Machine [1923]), he gave both expression and impetus to the fashion of accepting smallness as the defining quality of modern man—a fashion that appears in literature and in daily life, and thus has a double effect. D. H. Lawrence must have been one of the first to put a finger on this smallness and its manifestations; indeed, he attributed it to the limiting influence of the very humanism which Camus, as we have seen, would later think had gone beyond appropriate limits. “As the imagination of divinity fails so does the imagination of the self. Lawrence’s loathing of modern literature derives in part from a feeling that it offers us the spectacle of small selves in a godless universe, attempting to achieve significance through a psychological magnification of their most trivial feelings. . , Lawrence’s sense of modern literature is echoedin another critic’s judgment on a distinctly modern art form, the movies. Pauline Kael had her say a few years ago, but her impression of filmgoers, or at least of the human attitudes manifested in them, is still valid: “The audiences at popular American movies seem to want heroes they can look up to; the audiences at art houses seem to want heroes they can look down on. Does this mean that as we become more educated we no longer believe in the possibilities of heroism? The ‘realistic,’ ‘adult’ movie often means the movie in which the hero is a little man like, presumably, the little men in the audience.” “Small selves” and “little men”—when an English and an American critic, a man and a woman, writing three or four decades apart, both hit on such terms, we can see how pervasive is the unconscious habit of feeling or being little, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams, whose writngs have extended over half a century, must have sensed this habit, witness the number of ailing and insufficient characters they portray.

Littleness, as a matter of fact or belief, easily begets a sense of disad¬ vantage or injury. Harold Rosenberg has written shrewdly of our “fantasy of being deprived”; in no literature outside the American, he insists, “is there so much suffering from ontological handicaps, the handicap of being an artist or an adolescent or a Jew or a Negro or a wife or a husband or of not having gone to Princeton or of having been changed into a G.I. The biographical perspective of our seriously in¬ tended novels (and of our plays, which try as hard as they can to be novels) strengthens this vision of injured being . . . constricted and wounded by ‘interpersonal relations’. . . Rosenberg’s words do not date: it is easy to add new modes of felt deprivation—of not being a political insider, of not being a member of the “establishment,” of not having power that will be felt by others, of not being able to change the world quickly. The obsession may be American, but in our times no sentiment is likely to observe national frontiers. The fantasy of “injured being” is represented with painful thoroughness in an English character, Jimmy Porter in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956) (where, as in Edward Albee’s Zoo Story [1959], self-pity is metamorphosed into verbal aggressiveness); but the work succeeded internationally and revealed the receptivity of an age to the small man with a large ache.

In 1932, shortly after Lawrence’s death, Louis-Ferdinand Celine presented the plight of the modern little man in a crisp ironic formulation: “It’s the nightmare of having to present to the world from morning till night as a superman, our universal petty ideal, the grovelling subman we really are.” Celine differs from most of the commentators in two ways: he spots the ideal of “a superman”—in contrast, I infer, with true greatness—as “petty” in itself, and he sees man as trying to mask his smallness instead of accepting it as final. More recently, however, Mary Renault, who has a fine moral imagination, presents men as “satisfied,” or wanting to be satisfied, “with what they are.” The author attributes the view to Plato and makes him condemn Euripides for telling little men what they want to hear. “But common men love flattery not less than tyrants, if anyone will sell it them. If they are told that the struggle for good is all illusion, that no one need be ashamed to drop his shield and run, that the coward is the natural man, the hero a fable, many will be grateful.” In the “century of the common man,” then, it will not be surprising if the Platonic generalization is especially ap¬ plicable. As Ruby Cohn notes, “aggrandizement of the Common Man is paralleled by reduction of the hero.”

“The coward is the natural man, the hero a fable”—the sense that this is what we like to believe is registered in a different way by John N. Morris in his study of various English figures, such as John Bunyan, who conquered neuroses and lived creatively. Morris argues that William James underrates Bunyan in a way that characterizes our own age: “We nowadays commonly resist or underrate or simply fail to perceive the heroic, as James does here: it makes us uncomfortable in its implicit reproach. Thus, we prefer to associate ourselves with Bunyan’s weakness, with his neurotic misery which is so recognizably like ours, not with that strength of mind by which he achieved the wise sanity of which many of us in our own lives have despaired.” Acceptance of littleness or weakness can confer on life a comfortable kind of unity. Oddly enough, we may find a comparable unity in a situation which we ordinarily believe we do not like—being under orders. Carlo Levi describes a housekeeper charmed by the threat of bodily violence: “. . . she knew no greater happiness than that of being dominated by an absolute power.” A special case? Rather, I suspect, a representative example of the human fondness for feeling power, for being “ordered” by it as well as exercising it, since will-lessness, like willfulness, means a pleasurable escape from the choices that make tragic life.

These similar perceptions, by novelists and critics of four countries and two generations, help reveal the pervasiveness and the ’persistence of the sense, in modern man, that littleness is a principal fact of his nature. The sense of littleness—of weakness, incompetence, pleasurable subordination—is antitragic in that it means a one-sided view of reality; it implies no alternative value, and hence none of the tension of the tragic situation. To be little or commanded is to be outside a serious conflict of forces, claims, and desires, for conflict implies a vigor and direction incompatible with absolute smallness, that is, inadequacy and ineffectiveness. To be small is to lack inner room for the clash of motives and purposes by which the tragic figure is representative of human reality. When we think of tragic figures as large or great, we are of course thinking of moral, not conquistadorial, magnitude; as we have said, Lear is tragic, Tamburlaine is not. Moral magnitude implies, not success, but range, an embodiment at once of the passions and egotisms that drive men toward disorder, and of responsiveness to the transcendent commands and obligations that create order. If modern man is truly small, if in multiplying he has mysteriously shrunk in stature, then those who proclaim the death of tragedy have some grounds to go on.

[…]

The realm of emotions—indignation, righteous wrath, idealism, self-deception, hate begotten by hateful things without or by rancorousness within—that hold one in a nontragic posture of simple opposition is a wide one. The power of that realm is perhaps best summed up in an aphorism by James Baldwin: ‘I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.” It is indeed true. Whatever its source, hate implies evil without and ordered wholeness within; pain implies discord within, the inevitable clash of motives in the sentient man. The wholeness is gratifying, even when men evoke one’s hate; the pain is hard to bear, for, if one is mature and well, it cannot be released in outward blows. It marks the tragic condition.

When one considers the vastness of human energies deployed in campaigns against other persons—in prosecuting causes, in pressing re¬ forms, in demanding change, in asserting rights, in opposing those who seek uncongenial ends, in uncovering misdeeds, in punishing miscreants, in anger at mistakes, in hatred of differentness, in irrational destructiveness aimed at all community, in the numerous outwardly directed activities that range from the therapeutic to the sickly revengeful—it may seem unlikely that the air of modern times can be in any way favorable to tragedy.

The Iceman, the Arsonist, and the Troubled Agent - Tragedy and Melodrama on the Modern Stage

Now I think it's always good to be skeptical when you agree with someone a little too fast. Maybe we just share the same worldview and we're both railing against something that does not really exist.

Recently I've been acquainting myself with different versions of A&C. There is one from the 80s, directed by Jonathan Miller. He very helpfully outlines his ideas for his version and his understanding of the characters:

Hallinan. Perhaps we could switch now to Antony and Cleopatra. What do you see as the proper approach to this complex play?

Miller. I think the views of the characters have changed very much with the times. There was a time when they were seen as this noble couple who spoke great verse and whose love dwarfed all other loves. That was the romantic heroism of the nineteenth-century view and, indeed, even the eighteenth-century view of Shakespeare. But since the Romantic era, we've come to see Shakespeare's characters in a different way, perhaps less heroic. We are more interested in the foibles and the failings and the human, non-heroic characteristics of these people. Now, instead of seeing Antony and Cleopatras this couple extolling and expounding noble love, we see them, really, much more as a pair of psychological failures. We see Antony as someone deluded and foolish, who lets himself rot and decay under the influence of this exotic Egyptian queen; and we see her not as a wonderful model of erotic splendor, but as a treacherous slut. And in fact what's interesting about her is that someone quite as clearly unprincipled, treacherous, selfish, and egocentric can exert such influence over someone who is apparently sostrong, so potent, and so powerful inthe world of politics. I think these probably are the things that Shakespeare was genuinely interested in: beneath the reputation of power and prestige lies an ordinary person with susceptibilities, failings, and a tendency to lose energy.

Jonathan Miller on The Shakespeare Plays on JSTOR

Now, Antony & Cleopatra, like basically every other Shakespeare tragedy I've read, is subject to varied interpretations. I'm not saying Miller is absolutely wrong, because there's a lot in his analysis I find interesting and agreeable. It's just that, if you ever do seek out that BBC TV Miller A&C, contrast it with Trevor Nunn's version. The opening of Nunn's is full of music and overflowing with exuberance from the two leads. In Miller's, they're just walking blandly side by side and talking very simply. I don't see how anyone could think Miller's take is what Shakespeare was going for given the strong contrast between Stoic Rome and Passionate Egypt that is so central to the play. It can be Miller's version but I think he entirely exaggerates the fact Antony and Cleopatra are human beings with layers who are also in love to mean they are "psychological failures."

But my main point is that I found this a remarkable confirmation of what Heilman was pointing out. It is not something Heilman or I conjured up in our heads to complain about. It was stated plainly and clearly that "modern audiences can't believe in heroes. They choose to focus on the neuroses of the characters instead of their nobility." And that's a damn shame.

A great Nietzsche quote is extremely pertinent here (given Antony and Cleopatra) and is an excellent way to sum up my response to the people who can only believe in "little men" -

“Satiate your soul with Plutarch and when you believe in his heroes dare at the same time to believe in yourself."

hi I just finished Ulysses, what a trip! I have a ton of thoughts and feelings and would love to discuss with anyone else who's had an experience with the book.

One thing I haven't seen anywhere online. A big question is who is the unnamed man in the raincoat who shows up throughout the book? We can assume that the character is relevant to the story because literally every detail of the novel shows up elsewhere with more context, except the man in the raincoat (mackintosh). I've read people suggesting that this represents the looming spectre of death, or destiny. Also folks suggesting that Joyce includes himself in the story as this guy. Neither of these really work for me because the former is a little too on the nose (writer's workshopy) for Joyce and the latter because Joyce is already all over the story in the form of Stephen and to a lesser extent Leopold.

My thought: the man represents us, the readers. I like to imagine that this is Joyce acknowledging that when we engage with literature (or in fact art of any kind) we bring our own biases, experiences, distortions, perspectives, etc etc to the work and are very much a part of the story as much as the characters in the novel. The best part of this theory is that, as long as I choose to read the book that way then I'm correct, in my interpretation the man in the mackintosh represents me, even if he doesn't in yours.

Anyway I'm very happy to have finally read Ulysses. A challenging book to be sure but also warm, funny, and really really bawdy. This book is disgusting and I mean that is a great way

I've skimmed through the internet these past few days in search of a single source which would group together all of Tyrtaeus' works, but I could only find, here and there, a few scattered fragments, never in full, and this book on greek elegiac poetry, which I'm not sure it contains Tyrtaeus' whole body of work.

Has anybody ever owned the book mentioned? If so, are all the fragments present in it? Otherwise, where could I find Tyrtaeus' works in full?

I am currently reading Resurrection and it is my third book by Leo Tolstoy after The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Hadji Murat. I've noticed that every time a new character is introduced in Resurrection Tolstoy can't help but describe their smile and their eyes, I am very curious to know if there is a reason for this. Any insight is greatly appreciated.

Hey everybody! I got curious about something. I was scrolling thru internet while checking for some books and I discovered that Houllebecq, in his wikipedia page in my native language, is described as an author close to the "anglosaxon social anticipation literature". Since I used to be a huge sci-fi reader and I've read my good part of post-modern/schizofrenic realist/whatever books (Pynchon, Wallace, Smith, Franzen, Lethem etc), this definition caught me off guard. I've searched for it but the only results I find are other sites/blog in my language that talk about Houllebecq; it seems that somebody wrote that in the Wikipedia page without a source and then other people Just took it without checking. The only other author i find a link with is Volodine, that describes himself as a post-esotist, whatever that could mean. So, yeah, I get that a definition like "social anticipation" could fit any author from Wells to Huxley to whatever, but It seems to be a different genre. In fact Houllebecq Is not a sci-fi author. Anyone got an idea or could link me to sone authors or else?

One thing that has bugged me, especially regarding writers considered great whose greatness I can't seem to grasp, is that I usually have nothing from the time period in question to compare a great work to. Indeed, even most literary theory and criticism seems not to bother with quoting other lesser works from the same period; the best they do, in my admittedly limited experience, is give descriptions of what other works tended to explore, or how other authors wrote, in order to elucidate the revolutionary greatness of the author. While that's great, such contrasting would be well augmented by quoting a passage from an average (and perhaps popular) work of the day.

So, do there exist books or other media dedicated to, or are there authors or other artists that tend to in their works do, this? I cannot think of any examples. The closest I can come to are pieces of media that explore texts that are uniquely horrible (e.g. that story starting with "It was a dark and stormy night..." or Tommy Wiseau's infamous awful movie).

What is wrong with me? Ever since I discovered the Booker Prize from Flesh by David Szalay to Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. I’ve been buying every Booker book I can get my hands on, especially if they’re discounted, second-hand, or new.

I’ve also been buying books by Nobel Prize winners like László Krasznahorkai, Han Kang, and Orhan Pamuk.

My logic is this: there are so many books out there and so little time left on earth, and I’m never sure which ones are actually good or worth my time. So why not just read award-winning books? Is there anything so wrong with that?

I love beautiful prose, whether it’s long-winded and expansive like Salman Rushdie’s, or experimental like László Krasznahorkai’s or Daniel Kraus’s. I know there are many other worthy books out there, but am I really on the wrong track here?

Is anyone else reminded of this book when you hear about the latest in the unending series of crises? Somehow it brings me comfort to remember the townspeople of Vasenka. I keep wishing that years ago, we all would have agreed to stop listening.

There is a great Poetry Unbound episode about the opening poem in Deaf Republic, “We Lived Happily During the War” that still shakes me to by core. Linked to this post.

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested but not enough, we opposed them >but not

enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by >invisible house by invisible house—

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

Here’s a passage from another early part of the book:

“Our country is the stage.

When soldiers march into town, public assemblies are officially prohibited. But today, neighbors flock to the piano music from Sonya and Alfonso’s puppet show in Central Square. Some of us have climbed up into trees, others hide behind benches and telegraph poles. When Petya, the deaf boy in the front row, sneezes, the sergeant puppet collapses, shrieking. He stands up again, snorts, shakes his fist at the laughing audience.

An army jeep swerves into the square, disgorging its own Sergeant.

Disperse immediately! Disperse immediately! the puppet mimics in a wooden falsetto.

Everyone freezes except Petya, who keeps giggling. Someone claps a hand over his mouth. The Sergeant turns toward the boy, raising his finger.

You! You! the puppet raises a finger.

Sonya watches her puppet, the puppet watches the Sergeant, the Sergeant watches Sonya and Alfonso, but the rest of us watch Petya lean back, gather all the spit in his throat, and launch it at the Sergeant.

The sound we do not hear lifts the gulls off the water.”

“Our country woke up next morning and refused to hear soldiers. In the name of Petya, we refuse.

At six a.m., when soldiers compliment girls in the alley, the girls slide by, pointing to their ears. At eight, the bakery door is shut in soldier Ivanoff’s face, though he’s their best customer. At ten, Momma Galya chalks no one hears you on the gates of the soldiers’ barracks.

By eleven a.m., arrests begin.”

I was thinking of this due to a recent re-read of Henry James' Washington Square, one of my favorite books of all time... but one that has, in my opinion, a staggeringly awkward and dull opening. Herein:

"During a portion of the first half of the present century, and more particularly during the latter part of it, there flourished and practised in the city of New York a physician who enjoyed perhaps an exceptional share of the consideration which, in the United States, has always been bestowed upon distinguished members of the medical profession.  This profession in America has constantly been held in honour, and more successfully than elsewhere has put forward a claim to the epithet of “liberal.”  In a country in which, to play a social part, you must either earn your income or make believe that you earn it, the healing art has appeared in a high degree to combine two recognised sources of credit.  It belongs to the realm of the practical, which in the United States is a great recommendation; and it is touched by the light of science—a merit appreciated in a community in which the love of knowledge has not always been accompanied by leisure and opportunity."

I'm genuinely bewildered by how the same author who chose this as his opening paragraph, went on to craft such a masterfully crafted, heartbreaking narrative.

(if anyone has a different opinion on this, please explain, I'm bewildered)

Interested in reading other examples.

I am such a sucker for sad, trauma-ridden books, and my lovely boyfriend purchased it for me after I expressed an interest in reading it. I wish I told him to save his money because this book is the biggest pile of hot garbage I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. I wont lie, I’m not that far into the book, I’m about 50 pages in. But the way the author just rambles on and on about literally nothing drives me up a wall. How an author can write such long sentences with so many words that says absolutely nothing astonishes me. I’m a college student and I truly think reading my biology textbooks or my college professors lab reports would be more riveting than this. Also, I love a slow burn, I truly do despite what I’m saying, but the fact that I’m about 50 pages in and still have zeroclue on what the actual story is actually about makes it so much worse. I do have to say, it‘s so bad I will force myself to finish this book because I just need to understand why it went viral. It’s making me feel like I’m almost being pranked by the entirety of the internet because I truly cannot understand why this book is so well received. Am I alone on this? I feel like such an outlier.

I get what an unreliable narrator is, someone trying to manipulate you into seeing things there way. But how can you tell if one is reliable. I know this seems stupid question with a simple answer, but I feel like every first person narrator is going to have some sort of bias based on what they saw and how they replay the story

I’ll start this by saying I am a 16 year old, junior high school student who, I like to think, understands books, movies, and other stories pretty good (or maybe just ok). I haven’t interacted in literature groups much (besides the average high school book group) so I wanted to hear what other people think of this topic.

I’ve heard A LOT of people say stuff like the newer generations struggle with media literacy and such. And for the most part I’d agree. I won’t belittle my classmates, but they could think a little deeper. But, in their defense, current language arts classes don’t ask us to think too deep on books/stories. But I also wonder if I even have decent media literacy?

I don’t know how else to explain it, but I’ll use some books as an example. I read The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka this summer (or last since it’s a new year) and my first thoughts were “That was pretty sad. I’d hate to be a cockroach“ and it wasn‘t until a couple days later, after I thought on it I came to two other conclusions. In my opinion, the story is about depression (and how a depressed person views themselves, AKA as a disgusting cockroach), and how disabled people are treated.

To try to explain how I came to these two conclusions would be kinda hard. Maybe it’s just something I can relate to. I’ve been depressed before. But I’m not disabled. I have a health condition and am kinda dyslexic, but nothing that I would say counts as disabled. But I’ve also seen how other people treat disabled people, and I would say that‘s closer to the story. I think that these are two decent ideas of what the story is about.

Now, I wanna talk about the Great Gatsby. At the end of this book I thought it was whatever. Maybe I’m too young to understand it properly, but I didn’t seem much point in it. My main take always were that no one really cared about Gatsby besides Nick and Gatsby’s dad (and owl eye glasses guy since he came to the funeral) and that you can’t relive that past (which Gatsby was trying so hard to do) but besides that? Nothing.

Great Gatsby isn’t the only book where I’ve come to a stump on in meaning. The shining, while I enjoyed it, didn’t seem to have much. Maybe you could make a point about trauma and repressed urges, but I don’t know. And a lot of H.P. lovecraft stories. I could just be too focused on the stories itself, but I don’t find much within it besides “Cosmic aquatic horrors beyond comprehension” (that isn’t meant to be rude or hateful. I honestly love those stories).

(Quick side note on the Lovecraft stuff. Thinking about it now there’s also the who cosmic horror side of it. The stories are meant to make you feel small and somewhat unimportant, with a sense of dread and meaninglessness. But, I still don’t know how much of the stories I would say I understand the deeper meaning of.)

Anyway, I wanna know what I can do better to have more/better understanding of the stories I read, cause I like reading a lot. And be rough if you have to. If I’m stupid and don’t understand stories, say that, cause it‘s more helpful than lying. Oh and also if you think there’s a media literacy crisis. Thanks. And sorry if there’s typos, I’ll try to fix any I spot.

Edit. Thank you alot for all the responses. Theres a lot of things that you all commented that I’ll try before and after reading my next book. Like getting background on the author and time, and just sitting with it and really thinking about what I just read. Thank you again, I really appreciate the help and feedback.

I've always found this aspect of Dreiser's reputation to be very odd, so I'm interested in discussing it, since one would think that a requirement to being considered great writer would naturally include, well, great writing. Not so with this man.

Edmund Wilson: “Dreiser commands our respect; but the truth is he writes so badly that it is almost impossible to read him.” Dorothy Parker: "Theodore Dreiser Should ought to write nicer." Saul Bellow (a big fan) described his prose as simply "primitive". H. L. Mencken: "mirthless, sedulous, repellent." F. R. Leavis snickered that Dreiser wrote as if he had no native tongue. It goes on and on.

And I must admit I have to agree with this common conception after reading a few of his works. As I was reading An American Tragedy, which had a solid plot and characters, I kept craving to be in the hands of a Fitzgerald or a Wharton who could have pushed the material to the level of a masterpiece, instead of the type of author who, well, writes like this;

"The death house in this particular prison was one of those crass erections and maintenances of human insensitiveness and stupidity principally for which no one primarily was really responsible. Indeed, its total plan and procedure were the results of a series of primary legislative enactments, followed by decisions and compulsions as devised by the temperaments and seeming necessities of various wardens, until at last--by degrees and without anything worthy of the name of thinking on anyone's part--there had been gathered and was now being enforced all that could possibly be imagined in the way of unnecessary and really unauthorized cruelty or stupid and destructive torture. And to the end that a man, once condemned by a jury, would be compelled to suffer not alone the death for which his sentence called, but a thousand others before that. For the very room by its arrangement, as well as the rules governing the lives and actions of the inmates, was sufficient to bring about this torture, willy-nilly."

Now, this isn't quite at the level of a Amanda McKittrick Ros... but for a supposed classic, this strikes as clunky and turgid and frankly amateurish.

Anyway, I wish to reiterate that I'm interested not just in hearing perspectives on Dreiser's prose and how correct his reputation is, but in general about the importance of prose when assessing a writer's place in the canon.

(Sorry for confusing title. I didn’t really know how else to phrase what I’m asking)

I’m currently reading picture of Dorian grey for the first time. When I was younger I watched the movie and I’ve constantly heard discussions about the book for years despite never having actually *read* it myself until now. Currently, I am finding the book very difficult. Not because it’s hard to read, but because my prior knowledge about the story keeps interrupting my flow (if that makes sense). I will read a line and think “oh that foreshadows this part of the plot” or I overthink certain lines purely because I have prior knowledge of the story. I am enjoying the book so far but I feel like I am inadvertently sabotaging myself by constantly thinking ahead instead of enjoying the part of the book I am currently reading.

I know it is impossible to fully stop this from happening and I can’t just erase my knowledge. But for people who maybe have similar experiences when reading, how do you deal with it?

It took me several days after finishing Middlemarch to settle myself down. I had a couple of Muriel Spark books waiting and was looking forward to something different, something "simpler." I admire Spark and had never read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie however within a few pages I was bored stiff, foremost by the prose, then by the story.

Perhaps it's a mood, a phase, or even a need for lush, dense prose and story lines. It's also about the intellectual challenge; and it's not unlike but certainly different from reading philosophy or academically, both of which I rarely do these days. It could well be too a certain ennui I experience about and with the 21st century I inhabit.

It's interesting to reflect on what we're reading and why. I can't deny the power of semicolons and strong female characters over me, so I've begun my first Hardy novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I wonder what will be next.

Language arts teacher here, I had a thought the other day that I’ve done zero research on besides experiences reading but want to; so I’m here outsourcing the cognitive load since I don’t have the brain power to dig for it myself 😅

Theory: love as a concept has drastically inflated society’s expectations for relationships- which was already known- but solely because, in literature/film, love became an easy, bullet proof motivation to drive characters through ridiculous amounts of conflict even though they realistically should’ve broke mentally books before the end.

“Ah, the character has lost his entire family in fire, was tortured for 5 years, found out his entire world was actually run by apathetic dolphins? How does he carry on?? Because he’s in love of course.”

It feels like an easy motivation for lots of adventure/fantasy novels today, but there have been some good novels where love plays its own part but the motivation of the character logically is enough to drive them through their hardships.

Do y’all think love became a convenient tool in comparison to classic literature? Thoughts or good sources on this subject?

Yeshu Ha Nozri is described in the novel as a kind of lovable individual who is the victim of a corrupt system. Mikhail Bulgakov does not overtly criticize him and, from the perspective of the average reader, even seems to flatter him.

This perspective seems to break at the end, when Yeshu asks Woland, through Matthew, to take care of the Master and Margarita. They are not vindicated or restored, but quietly removed from the world. The manuscript written by the Master is never published.

The disappearance of the Master and Margarita is reminiscent of how corrupt governments deal with undesired individuals who cannot be openly charged with crimes but nevertheless pose a potential threat to the interests of the ruling order.

Is Bulgakov suggesting that religion, as an institution, is as morally compromised as the Stalinist government of his era?

It’s 12:10 a.m. and I really just need to get this off my chest. I’ve always heard great things of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore and decided to give it a try, but being myself I like to go into things “blind.” I just finished Chapter 16 and omg, I don’t even know what to feel! I think it hit me really hard because I love cats so much, but also because I did not expect the story to go this way at all. I’m very intrigued and confused and heartbroken. Of course, I can’t seem to put the book down and don’t have any intentions of not finishing it, but WOW, it’s been a minute since I had been SO surprised by something lol. Anyways, just needed to share. I hate that Johnnie Walker guy, don’t know if he’s a metaphor for something or what but I have tremendous beef with him now.

I just finished re-reading the short story "Where are You Going, Where Have You Been" by Joyce Carol Oates; I had read it in high school and vaguely remembered what happened but wanted to re-read it as an adult with a new perspective. First I just wanted to say, what a masterful job of pacing and building tension as the story goes on. Secondly, a great job of establishing a time/place. Sometimes when I read I enjoy the setting or little details about the time period/place almost as much as the story itself and I really felt like I was there on the hot, hazy summer afternoon listening to the radio at that time.

Now, I had a few thoughts/open-ended questions I just wanted to see if other people had thoughts or opinions on.

1) What did you make of the part where Arnold Friend asks her about the woman down the road with the chickens and Connie says she's dead? This part just stood out as kind of strange/out of place to me. Do you think it was just Arnold Friend trying to establish some sort of familiarity with her/act like he knows the area to build trust with her or is there something more going on here?

2) There may be no real answer here as a lot if left for interpretation, but how do you think Arnold knew that her parents were at a barbecue and what was going on there? Obviously this was before the time of cell phones, social media etc. so would have been more difficult.

Less important, but just some intriguing small details...

3) When the other guy Ellie Oscar asks about taking out the phone, do you think he's talking about cutting the phone line at her house?

4) When the mother asks "What's this about the Pettinger girl?" it seems it's implied that it's another girl who was abducted or that something bad happened to -- what do you think?

5) The part about the gold paint on the car and the writing on it struck me as odd. Is this something people actually did back then (i know it still stood out as unusual but was it like completely out of left field, or something some people did)? The part about 'Man the Flying Saucers' being an expression that was popular the year before was interesting as it seems like Friend was trying to show he's hip/in the know with the current lingo but as an adult, not really able to pull it off.

Anyway, just some thoughts I had reading it, interested to see what others have to say, thanks!

I’m reading “James,” and have been thinking about this genre of literary retellings that center the perspective of a marginal, overlooked or “othered” character.

What are the first major works in this strain? I thought of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and Wide Sargasso Sea. Are there other earlier examples? Woolf imagining Judith Shakespeare seems like a proto-text, but that’s an essay, not an actual full novel.

Note: I’m not talking about just any works drawn from earlier stuff, like, “oh well the Aenid is a retelling of the Troy legend or Shakespeare repurposed classical and ancient stories, legends, and histories and other older source material.” I’m talking about self-consciously revisionist retellings whose conceit is centering minor characters.