/lit/ - Literature

Maturin's 19th century gothic epic, described as the "crowning achievement of the Gothic Romance", which has held major influence on the writings of such prominent figures as Balzac, Baudelaire, Poe, Lovecraft and perhaps most famously on Oscar Wilde who took on the name of Sebastian Melmoth after his release from prison and his subsequent travels and wanderings around Europe. And so with all that, this was one of the books I looked forward most to reading this year, however, it seems it really was not meant to be as it's also the first book I just couldn't bring myself to finish this year.

The first 50 or so pages were honestly quite enjoyable, and remained by far the best part of this book for me, with the young John Melmoth leaving his studies and travelling to attend his uncle's last hours. The atmosphere here is rife with a gothic grotesqueness, best showcased through the servant's of young Melmoth's uncle and the uncle himself, whose extraordinary miserliness even in his dying moments even the greatest skinflints in literature could probably only aspire to, and did get a chuckle or two out of me to be fair. This, the discovery of the ancestral Melmoth's portrait, the scene of the storm and the first of many tales within a tale of this book, the fragmented account of the Englishman Stanton and his encounter with the immortal, diabolical Melmoth the Wanderer, did have me following the story with intrigue and expecting to carry on so.

That's as far as my enjoyment of the book goes however, as with the following story within the story, as we move onto the shipwrecked Spaniard Alonzo Monçada and the story of his upbringing and his forced existence in a monastery, his many attempts to prevent and later escape it, both alone and subsequently with the help of his younger brother, and his own encounter with the titular Melmoth while held in a cell by the Inquisition. It was during the course of this lengthy tale, which for me felt tenfold longer than it is in actuality, that reading the book became beyond the slog, reading began to feel like my eyes and my mind were slowly sinking into quicksand every time I tried to enter the book, all the atmosphere and gothic mystique was gone, and apart from the one aged monks deathbed confession of his internal hatred of the monastery and monastic life to the young Monçada, there was nothing I felt like gave me any reason to desire reading on. I did read on past the end of the Spaniard's tale and my feelings and the change in story being told did nothing to change my feelings towards the book as a whole. In the end, I decided it really wasn't worth me spending anymore time with Maturin's work and threw in the towel.

While I can certainly see the kind of reader that this book would be ideal for, that most definitely is not me, at least not right now, there's plenty books I just didn't get or outright disliked that coming back to at a later point I ended up feeling the complete opposite towards.

1/5

>>9432061
Paradise Lost
Or, Melmoth the Wanderer.

>>9403213
Pic related. Next, Considerations on the principal events of the French Revolution.

Melmoth the Wanderer

Never actually met anybody who read it

Could not get Melmoth the Wanderer. It guessed Dracula and Dorian Gray

>"Melmoth The Wanderer"

I've been really into classic Gothic literature as of late. Just finished Ann Radcliffe's "The Italian" and before that I read Lewis' "The Monk", both of which were phenomenal especially the latter which I couldn't put down.

Any suggestions /lit/ bros?

>>3885094
>Monmouth the Wanderer
>Monmouth
>the middle-ages

With Gothic literature experiencing a revival, how come this book has been throw by the wayside?

Melmoth the Wanderer