The Literary Blog Hop Asks: Are You Predisposed to Like the Classics? Yes. Next Question.

I'm beginning to look forward to every other Thursday and the Literary Blog Hop hosted by the lovely ladies over at The Blue Bookcase.  Not only have they introduced me to some wonderful literary book blogs, which have turned me on to some great books, but they always ask the most interesting questions.  This week's question is as follows:

Do you find yourself predisposed to like (or dislike) books that are generally accepted as great books and have been incorporated into the literary canon?

Yes (like).  Next question.

Discuss the effect you believe a book’s “status” has on your opinion of it.

Aha!  I thought we were getting off easy this week.  Ok.  Well, I'd like to say that I remain objective in my reviews, regardless of the reputation of the author or work under consideration, but that's simply not true.  In fact, I would argue that it's not human.  We're all subject to social pressures and preconceived opinions, though some do a better job than others of maintaining a relative objectivity.  For myself, I think that a book's status or reputation creates a kind of synergistic effect on my own appreciation of it.  If it enjoys a reputation as a classic, I am predisposed to like it, and I tend to be more effusive in my praise of it.  On the other hand, if I do not like it, my dislike tends to be exaggerated as well.

A case in point is our recent review of The Man Who Loved Children.  Though not widely known, the book enjoys a reputation as a modern classic and, in fact, is included in Time Magazine's list of the Top 100 Novels in the English language from 1923 to the present.  I was predisposed to like it.  I did like it.  And I was probably more effusive in my praise because the book (twice) met and even exceeded my expectations.

What about you?  Do you love to love the classics or do you love to hate them?   

The Literary Blog Hop Wants You to Consider Your Own Mortality

Debbie Nance over at Readerbuzz apparently had quite the St. Patrick's Day because she's thinking about death.  And as a green-blooded Irish-American, I can tell you that a Jameson-soaked contemplation of The End is often the unwanted byproduct of the hours of Guinness-swilling jubilation that precede it.  But I give her credit--what could be more Irish than to tie a contemplation of one's own mortality to a work of great literature?  Here's to you, Debbie.  Slainte! 

The question Debbie posed over at the Literary Blog Hop is the following: What one literary work must you read before you die?  Like everyone else that's weighed in on this topic, I'm pulled in ten different directions at once. 

If I'm recommending to others from the books that I've read over the course of my life, I think I'd have to go with Ulysses by James Joyce.  The fact that Joyce was Irish is merely a happy coincidence, but I'll toast him just the same.  Slainte!  Though it was a struggle to get through, I think I've never been as intimate with the characters of a literary work nor have I ever seen such mastery in Joyce's playful manipulation of the English language.  Ultimately, it is hands down the most rewarding work of literature that I've ever read.   

Now, if we're talking about the one literary work that I feel that I must read before I die, I'm going with Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  There's something about the decline of an entire civilization that makes your own mortality just a little bit easier to contemplate.

Thanks to Debbie and the girls at the Blue Bookcase for a great topic.

Literary Blog Hop (Hey, I Just Posted on Moby Dick--I Can Hardly Let This Pass)

The fabulous ladies over at The Blue Bookcase are hosting The Literary Blog Hop once again.  It's a great opportunity to get to know some of your fellow lovers of great literature and pick up a recommendation or two.  If you have a moment, take a look around and leave a comment here and there to let everyone know what valuable service they are providing to all of us.  And, if you're here from the Literary Blog Hop, please feel free to settle in and take a look around.  If you're looking for highlights, try our reviews of Ulysses, The Ginger Man, and Sometimes a Great Notion (our all-time favorite).     

After all that, I almost forgot to answer this week's question: How did you find your way to reading literary fiction and nonfiction?

My love of literature, like many of you, I owe to my parents and grandparents. As a young child, my grandmother would read I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, a Dr. Suess story very vaguely in the line of Homer's Odyssey, which I eventually came read myself. Between that first book and my first real taste of literature it's all a blur of Stephen King and Scott O'Dell (and even a little V.C. Andrews, I'm almost ashamed to admit). But Steinbeck's The Pearl at 12 was a real turning point, as I remember. I suddenly recognized real literary genius and the incredible connection between author and reader that can come out of it. After that, I basically put away the pop fiction (okay, I still read the occassional Clive Cussler) and became a devotee of literary fiction.

I re-read The Pearl on a lazy afternoon a couple of years ago and fell in love with it all over again.

The Literary Blog Hop, Wherein I Sing the Song of Myself

It's Thursday again, and our friends over at The Blue Bookcase are once again hosting the Literary Blog Hop--a capital idea if ever there was one.  This week, I must admit, they've unsettled me.  This week's discussion topic (from the very well-read and articulate Parrish Lantern) is "Who is your favorite poet and why?"  And like a boot to the head, I suddenly came to the realization that The Literate Man has entirely ignored the topic of poetry for nearly nine months now.  That said, there is plenty of poetry (or at least dirty limerick) in Ulysses, and it is based on Homer's Odyssey, and Joyce's prose is nothing if not poetic, so I give myself a half point for our two reviews of that book (here and here).  But that does little to ameliorate this deplorable situation, which really deserves some serious attention.  

So, there's no time like the present.

My favorite poet, hands down, is Walt Whitman.  The why of my choice has everything to do with Whitman's poem, Song of Myself, included in Leaves of Grass.  I grew up in a very small, one stop light town in Western New York, where I had a vague notion that the world somewhere out there was large and busy and exciting, with limiteless possibilities for those that were willing to dive into it, but it wasn't until I read Song of Myself that I knew it for a certainty.  Song is nothing short of a celebration of the great variety of human existence and endeavor, admittedly focused on a post-frontier America, but also universally applicable.  In Song and elsewhere, Whitman captures the harsh reality of human existence--the blood and sweat and decay--and places it in the larger context of the wonder of physical existence and the endless cycles of birth and death that bring us all together, both physically and emotionally.  If I'm honest with myself, I think that Whitman still provides at least one of the pillars of my own individual world view. 

And so, we owe a debt of gratitude to Parrish Lantern and The Blue Bookcase for bringing this glaring omission to our attention.  It shall be rectified.  In the meantime, what do you think of Whitman?  Is there a particular poet that reaches your heart or tickles your fancy more directly?  And to whom do you owe your own particular world view?    

 

Literary Blog Hop (We'll Be Having Scotch and Cigars in the Library)

Someone among our friends over at The Blue Bookcase has been taking her ginko biloba (I'm betting on Christina).  This weekend marks the first ever Literary Blog Hop wherein we snooty literary types look disapprovingly through our wire-rimmed glasses, over the rims of our scotch tumblers, and through the haze of cigar smoke in our grand libraries at all those lesser genres, which so murk the crystal clear waters of the beautiful River of Literature, which flows unbroken down the valley of time from its origins among the forests of late-medieval England and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

We're just kidding, of course.  I myself occasionally read a Clive Cussler (adventure) or Orson Scott Card (sci-fi), and I even made it through the first 50 pages of Twilight before I was forced to quit and dedicate my life to its eradication from the planet (see our Declaration of War on All Things Twilight here).  Which is to say that our tastes here at The Literate Man are not entirely or exclusively "literary," but we do generally find that we obtain the most enjoyment from works that tell an essentially human story, demonstrate growth or at least change in their characterization, endure the tests of time (exhibiting a consistent social relevance), and evidence an expert, innovative, or at least playful use of structure and language.  We also prefer beer over scotch, but that is the subject of a different post.

One of our favorites (I say speaking for myself and Aaron, but perhaps not Greg) is Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey (see our review of it here).  Kesey is much better known for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--which is a good book, don't get me wrong--than for Sometimes A Great Notion, which was his masterpiece and (arguably) the best book ever written about life in the great American Northwest.  Sometimes is a novel of freedom and independence set in a world that tends toward conformity, which is perhaps the most relevant story of our age.  Each of its many characters develop throughout the course of the novel, but none more so than the bookish and rebellious Leland Stamper, who finally comes to stand with his family against the forces arrayed against them.  The novel is as relevant today as the day that it was written and its relevance should continue as long as workers' unions continue to exist.  But perhaps the most impressive and "literary" feature of the work is Kesey's technique of multiple perspectives, whereby the thoughts and actions of several characters are presented on the same page and sometimes in the same line.  It sounds confusing, I'll admit, but somehow Kesey makes it work.  The truth is that I've never read anything like it except, perhaps, James Joyce's Ulysses, which I am convinced must have directly influenced Kesey's work.

So that's our contribution to the first Literary Blog Hop discussion.  If you're here from there, please feel free to look around.  Thanks again to The Blue Bookcase for putting an obviously great idea into practice.  We sincerely intend to participate as frequently as possible.