I was reading some William Faulkner, and it reminded of our talks about English language and literature.
How do you like Faulkner compared to Hemingway and Jack London?
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I was reading some William Faulkner, and it reminded of our talks about English language and literature.
How do you like Faulkner compared to Hemingway and Jack London?
I've studied Faulkner and read most of what he wrote. He's definitely one of my faves. Sound and the Fury and Light in August are in my top 10 fave reads ever. When I taught in Germany, I used to teach Faulkner and Hemingway. Faulkner's just too much for my writing students at the community college where I teach now.
Of course, Faulkner's style is more overtly complex than Hemingway or Jack London. Faulkner sets up an obvious labyrinth whereas Hemingway SEEMS to put everything out there on the surface. However, Hemingway wasn't just bragging when he used the ice berg metaphor for his writing--you only see the tip of the iceberg above the water, but there's so much more of it not visible. This semester, my students are doing research papers on The Sun Also Rises, and I've been surprised at how some of them have been reaching successfully below the water and seeing what's there.
Perfect analogy, the iceberg.
I myself never deemed Hemingway's writings shallow.
Hemingway hooked me from the beginning, but as I got older, I understood his writing better. I reckon he's like a guitar star to me. I don't agree with all of his views but still agree with a lot of it.
I want to re-read For Whom the Bell Tolls. It was a real page turner for me, and I read most of it in an overnight wait for a girlfriend at Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports (long story). I also remember reading it in the library of the Universite de Caen. I read it in the perfect environment.
Just about the best ever written:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...eFuryCover.jpg
Funny story and somewhat related.
I did an unofficial English lit minor in university. Unofficial as I didn't declare it but took a lot of lit courses as electives so I could spend my summer study terms reading books in the park and writing a few papers. Did everything from Native Canadian poetry to Victorian classics. My senior year, I took something called "20th Century American Fiction". I was stoked since I thought we'd be reading Hemingway, Faulkner, Stephen King...:ola.
But no. The prof was a third wave postmodernist feminist and we studied largely from the corpus of critical feminist literature. Should have figured this out early on in the course as I was one of three males in the class...and probably the only straight one to boot. We read stuff like Daphne Marlatt, Sapphire, Armistead Maupin and, get this, several episodes of the "Ellen" sitcom. Yikes. I had no idea.
I ended up with an A+ in that course. Could have been that, being the only straight guy, the prof gave me kudos for sticking it out. Or my other hypothesis, everyone int he course got an A+ as this prof (sessional lecturer, actually), had a reputation for run-ins with the dean. I never got the full scoop as I got my marks well after my last day of undergrad classes. I didn't set foot on that campus until five years later when I started graduate studies.
All that to say, I didn't get a chance to read any Hemingway until this past summer when I found some random e-books on my iPad that included "For Whom the Bell Tolls". Pretty interesting read - esp. after my deployment to Afghanistan, the descriptions of the terrain were eerily familiar - although I didn't find Hemingway to my taste. I tend towards non-fiction these days.
Never read any Faulkner - where's a good place to start?
I love 'em both...especially their short works. "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" is for me one of the finest, most economical and evocative short stories I've ever read. And Faulkner's "The Bear" is a great example of his (relatively) short fiction - although he's not really known for brevity in any of his writings.
To those, I'd add Ray Carver as a great example of a relatively modern American writer of short fiction that really created something thought-provoking. OTOH his work is somewhat depressing, so proceed with caution.
My fave Faulkner and among my list of the 10 best novels ever written.
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Originally Posted by redisburning
I think the best way to get into Faulkner is Light in August--it's more accessible than Sound and the Fury. The key to Faulkner is that he uses "stream of consciousness" and the time line isn' linear. He said that "The past is not dead. It is alive in the present." So he intertwines the times, sometimes jumping from one time in the past to another and back to the future. Once you get the hang of Faulkner, then the rest of his books make sense.Quote:
Originally Posted by dirtdog
He's a master in ways that go deeper into culture than Hemingway, though I think Hemingway is a master writer about personal struggle.
Carver is a good read. I also like Hem's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" and have felt like the old man before. I especially love how the older waiter implies the wife of the younger waiter might be cheating. Hemingway shows that iceberg principle in that story. So much going on when you finally see that which is perfectly visible but which requires critical accumen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rickenjangle
Right on, thanks willie. Having read Finnegan's Wake in my youth, pretty much anything after that is penetrable!Quote:
Originally Posted by ch willie
dirtdog, I wrote an essay about the fart jokes and images of shit in Finnegans Wake. I had to read it before a hardass Irish lit scholar-prof and my co-grad students. After I finished reading it, there were three seconds of heavily silence. I fully expected to be ripped, but he said, "Eloquent." It did get into serious issues of manicheism, Joyce basically saying that god made shit and light, put us in the shit, and left us there.Quote:
Originally Posted by dirtdog
Joyce is one of my favorites. I used to teach Ulysses when I taught grad courses in Germany. It was so much fun to turn people onto that book and it's wonderful complexities--and jokes. Joyce was funny as hell. In the Cantos, Ezra Pound called him comedian Jim.
I'm so happy that we have some readers on this forum of some really incredible books.
That's awesome! Without really knowing anything about it, I think I've invoked manichaeism in many other disciplines. I remember being ripped pretty hard by a TA on an economics term paper (yes, an economics term paper) doing just that within the framework of Hogan's Heroes. I was one messed up "scholar"! These days I like to mix my Popper with Bayes.Quote:
Originally Posted by ch willie
dirtdog, I used to shop publications for my scholarly pieces and had modest success. But I've come to hate literary studies. The publishing game is bullshit, and the discourse out there is circular. I remember being a grad student and being horrified to hear a prof say she reads the literature, not the literary criticism. She saw the academic paper chase as a useless enterprise. I wouldn't go that far, but I've developed a distaste for it. The last essay I published was an essay on Sgt Pepper, published in a book called Reading the Beatles (lots of really good pieces in the book). That's my last academic piece, and I think that will be the last academic work I'll ever do. We have a terrible library where I work, and real research is impossible anyway. Even if I had the stacks of Harvard's libraries, I wouldn't publish.
Oh, I love Marx, Benjamin, Adorno, Barthes, Camus, Satre, Derrida, and Foucault. But I see these more as philosophy than literary theory. They're primary works.
I live to get essays like that out of my students. I am an old hippie, and I push them to develop their imaginations and to use them in real-life situations, including writing and problem solving.Quote:
Originally Posted by dirtdog
Hope shop talk isn't bothering the hell out of you guys.
I remember a lively discussion the day we read ACW-LP - especially the "our nada which art in nada, nada be thy name" part. At the undergrad level at a local Wesleyan college, it was of course an affront to most of our sensibilities to see the Lord's Prayer turned on its ear in that way.Quote:
Originally Posted by ch willie
I went to a rather strict Church of Christ high school, and we never read anything worth a damn. When I got out of there, I began to read the greatest books in the world on my own, things they were afraid to turn us onto--Camus, Salinger, Hemingway, Faulkner, Philip Roth, Sappho, HD, etc. It was if the world shook itself and gave me these great books to read. I couldn't believe there were other people out there who were educated and had thoughts similar to mine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rickenjangle
So, I never take good books for granted. Sure "good books" is an uber-subjective term, but I think that skilled readers know what I mean.
I had some pretty - uhhh - progressive profs at college - so I was fortunate. But I didn't get to the more "modern" American Lit until I co-designed my own independent study course - but that was an amazing experience.Quote:
Originally Posted by ch willie
Years later I dug into Vonnegut and Rand and John Irving, just for fun...well, the Rand wasn't much fun...but as I read (especially) Irving I couldn't help but think that they'd have tarred and feathered the man at Roberts Wesleyan College. :D
But A Prayer for Owen Meaney and A Widow for One Year were among the finest novels I have ever read, IMHO. And of course, Slaughterhouse 5 and The Sirens of Titan were amazing. And though I name-drop Rand, I only read Anthem (mainly because of Neil Peart's lyrics for Rush's 2112) and The Fountainhead, I never made it all the way through Atlas Shrugged.
Cool! The world needs more profs like that. I've had my share who have had thier asses stuck so far up Marx's ass for so long that they speak fluent Prussian! :olaQuote:
Originally Posted by ch willie
(Sorry, just saw you like Marx, not a personal criticism)....
Another one I have read a bit of and enjoyed (for pleasure, not critical analysis) was Updike. Any thoughts on his writing?
I'm a government scientist who is generally commissioned to do applied research and write up studies in my field, so shopping things around not part of my challenge. They call what I and my peers do "academic writing" - peer reviewed - but not published in the scholarly journals for the most part (I work on defence and security issues). I might only have two or three people read my research or more often the abstract/exec summary before making policy decisions. I'm OK with that.Quote:
Originally Posted by ch willie
John, your taste parallel's mine with Vonnegut, especially Slaughterhouse and Breakfast of Champions; Irving--Owen Meaney is only one of three books that has left me a weeping mass. The last lines of Owen Meaney really got to me. I love a lot of Irving's books, but my favorite is Cider House Rules. A friend just sent me his latest, and I'm going to start it over T'giving holidays.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rickenjangle
Quote:
Originally Posted by dirtdog
Well, I see your kind of academic writing as important and not superfluous. In fact, I should limit my disdain to humanities publishing at the moment. I see scientific and medical studies, political study as still important and necessary.
I saw a post of yours on facebook a while ago, you were mentioning a book about fixing motorcycles but it wasn't really about bikes, it had to do with philosophy or something like that.
I tried to reach that post to check if I could identify the book but you know how facebook is, sometimes it's kinda hard to retrieve a single piece of content (plus I thought it would be cool to discuss it here too).
What was the book? What's it about?
*edit
I've never read it but I knew instantly what book you were talking about
https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motor.../dp/0060589469
Thanks a lot! I just bought it and loaded it into my e-reader.
Can't wait to start reading!
That's the one. Right after I finished it, I felt a bit lukewarm. With a little distance now, I realize that it's a great book. It stays with you.
Zen and The Art of Archery is another great book! Even if you don’t shoot a bow, the lessons still apply
Yeah, I don't ride bikes either, these books are about life and perspectives.Quote:
Originally Posted by chuckocaster
btw I started reading and man, I couldn't resist: I ordered a real book.
It's barely about Zen and motorcycle maintenance, but it's a good read. As a veteran long distance motorcyclist, it did resonate with me. The things that go through your mind when you're going fast on a bike on a long stretch of road with nothing to distract you but your thoughts!
Did you guys identify some Kerouac in it? I mean the style.
Thankfully, no.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sérgio
Quote:
Originally Posted by Offshore Angler
You don't like Jack?
I don't know if he was influenced by Kerouac, but it's definitely a road novel of someone trying to figure himself out. I'd put it in the same genre.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sérgio
Speaking of literature, I just picked up Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" to give it a second read.
I selected a quote I remembered from that book to my GF (Valentine's day and all) and that made me want to read it again. What did you guys think of that one? Willie?
It’s in my top 10 Hemingway books. It’s a good novel. My faves are
1. The Sun Also Rises
2. For Whom the Bell Tolls
3. A Moveable Feast
4. The Old Man and the Sea
5. Death in the Afternoon
6. Farewell to Arms
7. The Complete Short Stories
8. Islands in the Stream
9. Garden of Eden
10. Green Hills of Africa
pretty sure I've read 5 of those
sun also rises
for whom the bell tolls
the old man and the sea
farewell to arms
and I think death in the afternoon, for school and I can't remember a damn thing about it
One of my faves too!!!Quote:
Originally Posted by ch willie
Sergio, you should check out D H Lawrence (or however you spell it)! I LOVE Son’s and Lovers, great great book. Also, I forget who wrote it, but A Thousand Years of Solitude is another amazing read. I believe it was originally written in Spanish or Portuguese? I of course read the translation and was amazed by how well the imagery and subtext came through. It’s set in South America and I’m sure it’s way better in its original language
Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Yes, a very good one!Quote:
Originally Posted by chuckocaster
I read 100 years of Solitude this past summer. Great book.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sérgio