r/literature

What do you think about J. D. Salinger? I remember when I was a 15 year old first reading the Catcher in The Rye getting hooked, like someone understands me, like I'm Holden like he's literally me and I was laughing at his sarcasm and how miserable he is.

Hundreds of years later and I'm still like that wretched book. Lately I'm thinking more about Salinger and what his words meant to me back then and my spirit is longing to read him again, like coming back home or something.

I know that many dislike The Catcher in The Rye and have their reasons for it, while many like The Catcher in The Rye such as myself.

Salinger did wrote a few other books before disappearing from the public in 1965 and wanting to be left alone

Started Man's Search for Meaning expecting to finish it in a weekend.

Instead I've been reading it a few pages at a time.

The writing is pretty straightforward, but What caught my attention was how much of the book is spent observing human behavior, not just describing events.

I wasn't expecting how much of the book would focus on observing people's responses to the same circumstances rather than only describing those circumstances.

That's probably what's slowing me down more than anything else.

I'm interested in how other readers interpreted that aspect of the book.

I had big expectations. But oh my. The dialogues are terrible, characters do not feel like people, the women especially. The lyrical descriptions are banal and oftentimes feel like a word salat some edgy teenager would write. As a bonus you get the worst kind of underlying sexism and homophobia - the arrogant, dumdum kind.

And yes, I can see what he is trying to achieve with this novel, but great intensions cannot justify poor writing.

The drop in quality after reading some Ishiguro novels is unbelievable.

(edit: I am only mentioning Ishiguro because I went from his book directly to Norwegian wood.)

I am a bit sad, was really looking forward to this book! Especially since I quite enjoyed 1Q84.

I finished reading never let me go by Ishiguro which got me into the mood of emotional / deep thinking books. The Road was subsequently recommended to me.

I was in a keen mood to get into the book based on the premise. But it unfortunately felt flat to me. I didn’t love the writing style. Nor his way of describing the scenery. The story and simplicity of it was nice but felt a bit let down. I was ready for an emotional rollercoaster which never happened.

I just finished Steppenwolf by Hermann Hess. It's a recommendation from a redditor for its unusual relationship (late in the story).

I see a parallel with Wuthering Heights regarding the nested narrative situation of the books: both start with a narrator who meets a stranger, then the stranger takes over the narration, and at some point the latter reads a long passage which gives the mic to the third narrator, from an in-story written document.

The main character's posture assessment was done a bit repetitively. And this same layer is further "refined" in the first half of the book (I'd rather say "hammered down"). Okay, I understand that his contempt for normies runs deep. My question is: is there anything subtle here that I'm missing? I'm not always the smartest and I can miss clues, but I don't need to have it spelled twice or more. And we get this twice from the framing narrator, then right away from the main narrator, the subject himself, and it goes on like this. He is making sure to explain that this is not contempt while painting the different facets of what contempt is.

By today's standards, this deserves a trigger warning here, as the protagonist and his new friend often think or talk of ending their lives. Well, not as often as the previous point, but this idea gets a fair share of passages in which it's presented as a sure "option" in the future.

The "wolf of the steppe" imagery is explained early on, but I'll have to check it again. Our protagonist is a kind of misfit, and I assumed he is like a wolf that has little to hunt and little purpose in the steppe, but the wolf of the steppe is actually a subspecies, so he has his role in this habitat. Maybe it's just a more specific way to refer to a wild animal.

The philosophical parts didn't resonate much with me, I had to force myself through those passages. Unless I missed something, the thesis was clear and I understood its surface points. No need to repeat it. Ah. Again. Never mind.

The protagonist's new friend has a very distinctive voice, lively and well-crafted, but at the same time her mindset, ideas, and interests are surprisingly well aligned for the converstation with the protagonist. I get that this is the encounter of two kindred spirits, in a way, but I couldn't help feeling a gap between the character herself, her voice (convincing), and the way she responds to the protagonist. I guess saying it's "contrived" would be too harsh.

Reaching the middle of the book, I was delighted that the promised asymmetrical relationship started (promised by the redditor, not foreshadowed). It was honestly described, convincing, and I liked the unusual mood.

The late-introduced third protagonist stayed in the background for a while, but once this musician gets a major role, he suddenly starts to speak in a precise and complex way, a style far from what we were prepared for, and similar to the narrator's and his friend's in its depth of reasoning. We, as readers, could go with the flow, but still, I couldn't help noticing and finding it strange and forced.

Despite all this the story succeeds in instilling a distinctive mood during the first two thirds.

Then the last quarter. Whoa! I got caught in a maelstrom, such a page turner. From the last ball to the special theater. Quite the surprise. I couldn't put down the book.

In the end I don't know what to think of the overall experience, which is in itself a very good point. I mean, if it provokes that much reflection, it's already a success. Reading a bit about what the scholars say about the book might help, and then rereading it too.

A worthy read for anyone who'd like to broaden their reading horizon.

One thing that struck me after finishing The Great Gatsby is that maybe Gatsby 's greatest strength is also his greatest weakness : hope .

No matter how impossible his dream becomes , he never stops believing . Even when everyone around him seems to understand reality better than he does , Gatsby keeps convincing himself that tomorrow will finally bring him what he's been waiting for .

It made me wonder if the novel is less about the danger of dreaming and more about what happens when hope becomes stronger than reality .

Without that hope , Gatsby would never have become Gatsby . But because he never lets go of it, he also loses everything .

Does anyone else see Gatsby as a tragic symbol of hope taken too far ?

Hey y'all

Since I've had just about the hardest of times trying to find books like The Tunnel or The Recognitions in original language copies, I'm thinking of downloading them on my Kindle.

I'm just afraid reading them on an e-reader is gonna lose some of the physical aspect of reading such dense works... I like to hold the thing in my hand when I read.

Are you pro or against e-readers when it comes to big books like these?

I just finished reading it, and my brain spent the first 100 pages completely short-circuiting.

The Lincoln-era Republicans are the ones pushing for massive federal government control and progressive social upheaval, while the Southern Democrats are the ones screaming about small government and traditional values.

It literally feels like reading a sci-fi novel about a parallel dimension, except it’s just actual history. Has anyone else experienced this weird brain-lag when diving into old literature?

Making lists is a bit of a weird hobby that I have when I'm bored. I have a list of what I consider the fifty greatest works of literature, with the caveat of only ONE entry per author. Thought I'd post it here to see what people think of it. For the record, I tried to be fairly objective, however there are some instances in which my own personal biases poked in a bit. For instance, I'm aware that my list has a pretty noticeable preference for novels over poems and plays, as well as a noticeable affinity for 20th century fiction. Is it fairly similar to what you would have? Who are the most glaring omissions, in your opinion?

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Don Juan by Lord Byron
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
White Noise by Don DeLillo
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Tales by Nikolai Gogol
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Odyssey by Homer
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Ulysses by James Joyce
Stories by Franz Kafka
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Plays by William Shakespeare
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Also, for good measure, here are a few others that almost made it:

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Stories by Flannery O’Connor
Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
The Aeneid by Virgil
Candide by Voltaire
The Prelude by William Wordsworth

SPOILERS!

I just finished Saul Bellow’s Herzog. It is a tale of a man’s divorce/midlife crisis/bad investment, and it basically describes his ruminations on his life and how he got to where he is. (The influence of Proust is clearly evident.) He writes lots of letter, to both acquaintances and celebrities (and deceased historical figures). Most remain unsent, but not all.

The plot is basically him reflecting on his life and his most recent ex wife. He is also trying to come to terms with what it means to live in the modern world.

As much as I would like to praise it, I feel like there is something wanting. It reminds me of Dostoevsky but without a clear resolution at the end. (The protagonist’s main triumph is making his ex wife look briefly foolish.)

I would love to best other people’s opinions on this novel to help me try to make sense of it.

Personally, I feel like the most important parts of a book are plot and characters. Everything comes secondary, including how the book is written. If plot or characters are bad, I probably won't enjoy the story even if it is well-written.

I wonder if it is possible to meaningfully appreciate literature without going deep into prose. Most literacy analyses I've read often have a part where they discuss some specific aspect of prose like hidden nuance of a word or something. Are prose essential for analysis? How much I can get out of a book if I don't care about prose?

What are you reading?

Okay I was watching the secret level, Specifically the episode called "new world", and as you could guess I was fascinated by the story. But as I thought about it more, i kind of realized there was two other versions of it, one was from YU-GI-HO GX and the other was that one animated thor movie when thor was young. (And I believe it had to do with the sword of flames)

Anyways, when I thought about that, I begin to wonder what was the original tale? Like, given how there's three, i'm probably more versions of this premise of a king, who believed himself to be skilled at everything, only to wind up being bad at everything all because the servants feared what would happen if they win so they deliberately lose just to make the king believe he was everything.

I got a feeling it came from somewhere, but I have no clue of what the original tale was. So I wanted to ask you guys, if any one of you know what idea it originated from. I kind of want to hear the original tale.

I'm on page 80~ of the book. I like the prose but my god are the names and terms disorienting. Had a 2 week break from reading due to life, and I forgot all the terms, and have little interest in rereading stuff. It's nice ig that she doesn't spoon feed info but also when I'm reading fiction I want to relax somewhat.

All these names with little explanation like brr brr patapim from ir buk buk doing kerer merek are starting to piss me off 😭, and I'm just wondering if they'll click soon or nah.

(Couldn't find proper flair)

What do you think about the book Martin Eden? It's about a tough young sailor educating himself etc and is quite different from London's other works. Apparently very popular in Russia and Türkiye but less in United States. Already after a few pages where Martin has a conversation with Ruth about Charles Algernon Swinburne poetry, Ruth says some interesting things about what poetry and writing really means:

"Every line of the really great poets is filled with beautiful truth, and calls to all that is high and noble in the human. Not a line of the great poets can be spared without impoverishing the world by that much.”

Sounds quite different from the London of White Fang and Call of The Wild. He wasn't just the Dog Guy, he wrote lots of other stuff too. And I feel like Martin Eden should be just as famous as White Fang and Call of The Wild.

Tree of Smoke is a masterpiece where any age has brilliant unique dialogue and description.
Nobody Move is awful
Already Dead is Pynchon-wannabe
Jesus Son is classic
The Laughing Monster is amazing in a Robert Stone way
Train Dreams is a masterpiece
Angels is derivative and cliched
The Stars at Noon is poetic

Anyone have any top tier Johnson?

A follow up to this recent post about Orwell's canonical status.

I actually don't disagree with some of the criticism of Orwell. As a novelist, I think he does have a tendency towards heavy-handedness, towards prioritizing the communication of sociopolitical message over nuance or characterization.

But for me, and for a lot of people, his best work is his nonfiction. Down and Out in Paris and London, Homage to Catalonia, and especially his essays.

As an essayist, I think he is absolutely canonical, one of the greats. Whether he's analyzing the ideological subtext of schoolboy fiction or imagining the perfect pub, he's always interesting, always clear. "Politics and the English Language" might be the most influential (English-language) essay of the 20th century; it's really shaped not just how writers approach writing, but how a lot of people think about politics and communication more broadly.

What do you think? If there is a literary canon, is Orwell the essayist in it?

I finished this recently and found it life changing in a number of aspects. I’m reading Hesse’s Demian now and I’m left thinking about a specific scene in Steppenwolf. Towards the end of the book when Hermine and Harry are at the ball, and she’s dressed as a man, the two of them both flirt with and dance with the women at the ball, all while still being in sync with each other. While dressed as a man she resembles, almost exactly, his childhood friend Herman for whom he had a love that it’s clear even he doesn’t understand. He describes himself and Hermine, and I’m paraphrasing, as hunting together. It’s this beautiful sequence that to me acts as a cipher for the rest of the book and his work at large. All of his work is attempting to have this moment. Past, future, man, woman, human and beast in one synchronized dance, attempting to feel something.

What a book.