/lit/ - Literature

Wuthering Heights

I've always liked Mark Twain's definition of classics: "Classic -- a book which people praise and don't read."

The Jungle

The Grapes of Wrath was okay --- just that, okay.

Seriously op? The Catcher in the Rye is not one of those books.

>>747989

Alternatively, there's the Terry Pratchett quote: "Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book."

Everything the Toronto District School Board has ever assigned.

>>747995
>implying it's worth reading at all.

>>747995
It is only read because High School Kids are forced, otherwise it has no literary merit.

Grapes of Wrath was meh as well.

Jane Eyre...her sister was such a better writer, holy shit.

OP based an opinion off south park, well done.

Atlas Shrugged.

>>748009

Yeah i'm kind of implying that. If you can't finish it and or grasp the symbolism I recommend you go back to the ninth grade.

I just picked up Catcher and now I'm afraid to read it lol

>>748009
>>748024

Salinger is a God of prose and creating believably-unusual characters (A Perfect Day For Bananafish), which is why this is always taught. It was also a benchmark for naughty language at the time, which makes it a classic in that regards. Neither of these things make it a good book, but it's still influential enough that it's required reading, even if the plot is terrible.

>>748050
Examples and citing from the text, plox?

>>748063
As someone who's reading it for the first time, and is about halfway though it, I have to say it's okay. /lit/ makes it seem like either the pinnacle of modern literature or the 50's version of Twilight.

>>748038
I don't own/watch television.
>>748050
You can find symbolism in anything if you are looking for it, does not mean the writer was trying to create it.

>>747976
Horrible in what sense? As in morally repugnant, or just stupid to entertain?

>>748063
Fuck that, read it for your own merit/opinion. I didn't really like Catcher either, but it's not that bad of a book. I'd had people tell me Faulkner was hard to read crap, I picked up The Sound and the Fury for the book club and I'm loving the hell out of it.
Also fuck you people talking shit about Steinbeck.

>>748050
Fuck off you pretentious little shit.
>implying you understood this pile of arsegravy AT ALL.

>>748076
I assumed OP meant Horrible as in Plot, characters, symbolism and overall tone.

>>748070
Well said, sir.

>>748076
We're on 4chan dude. Pretty sure he didn't mean morally repugnant.

Catcher in the Rye is shit simply because it's about teen angst, etc.
Teen angst is probably one of the causes that our civilization has fallen.

The Great Gasbag
Though I take offense to your inclusion of Catcher

>>748083
>Implying implications

>>748127

Teens have been angsting since time immemorial, broski...

>>748070

True of a lot of classics.

Paradise Lost is amazing for the themes of good an evil it tackles, as well as it's exploration of a sympathetic Satan while being written in Cromwell's Puritan England.

But the guy can't tell a joke to save his life. I mean Jesus Christ.

>>748133
That doesn't mean that angsty teens still don't gobble it up as much as they gobble up cock.

>>748124
I agree fully with both parts of your post.

>>748027
I agree with your comparison of Jane Eyre to the works of Charlotte's other sisters; however, I think Villette is much better than Jane Eyre. Unfortunately, I find it goes unnoticed under the icy shadow of Jane Eyre.

You read Catcher in your teens and it seems so deep, then you revisit it later in life and see how shallow it was.

Still good introductory lit for teens though.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

This book is terrible because this book and 95% of it's symbolism is blatant "we poor black people have it so hard BAAWWW". But literature teachers have an orgasm over every meaningless little shred of possible symbolism so it's branded a classic.

>>748142

WUTHERING FUCKING HEIGHTS IS THE GREATEST ARGUMENT IN FAVOUR OF BOOK BURNING EVER WRITTEN.

The only reason that badly written, badly conceived, badly plotted, badly portrayed piece of crap is because people get all wrapped up in the ro~mance of those tragic, oh-so talented sisters. If it was just Bronte, singular, no one would ever remember this rubbish.

>>748124
horrible book, agreed.

>>748149

>>748124
I actually enjoyed Gatsby more than Catcher in the Rye to be honest.

>>748002
this. tcdsb here.

>>747975

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>>747973

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>>748070

I never got why people said the "plot" of The Catcher In The Rye was terrible. It didn't really have a "plot", but I don't think that doesn't make it interesting. Was Holden an unreliable narrator and a total bitch? Yes. I enjoyed the fact that there wasn't a real plot though. It just showed a weekend in the life of someone else's eyes without being a collection of diary/journal entries or through a series of letters. It was just a look into his life that weekend, and life in general doesn't have a "plot" either.

How come All The King's Men is totally not on here? An awful horrible experience.

how to kill a mockingbird

>>748189
Which is what makes it a terrible book. An interesting way to tell a story, sure, but that still doesn't justify the lack of a plot, whatsoever.
That's the same problem I had with the movie "Crash" - no plot at all. An important film, just not a very good one.

>>748297

I felt that "The Old Man and The Sea" didn't have a plot whatsoever. You could argue it did, but it was so linear that even after reading it two times and I finished it I can't understand why people praise that as a good book. It's just as an over-rated piece of shit as Catcher In The Rye, in my opinion.

Point taken about Crash too.

Great Expectations.
It must be the most boring book I've ever read.

>>748189
the catcher in the rye accurately conveys what it's like to be a teenager of that age and socio-economic class and it does a damn good job. it's borderline stream-of-conscious. it doesn't need a plot.

>>748310

I'm glad someone feels the same way about it as I do.

Are there seriously people in this thread saying that Catcher is a bad book because it's not primarily concerned with plot? Man, you guys would hate Ulysses, Infinite Jest, and 2666. And any number of other incredible books.

>>748063
Read it.

>>748311

Oh....fuck that brings back memories.

Great Expectations is not the most boring book I've ever read, but Christ it took a long time to go nowhere.


I was unimpressed with catcher in the rye as well. I saw the symbolism, and saw some meaning in the book, but I was too bored with it to give a fuck.

Jesus Christ, how could such an exciting-sounding book be so BORING?

It's not like I hate Verne either. I liked 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

But it was like someone else wrote this, while parodying Verne piss-poorly.

>>748432
I didn't have a book for a free reading period in grade 8 because if I read something I read it non-stop until I"m done. My teacher gave me Great Expectations. God that was terrible. I tried skimming it, even just reading first sentences of paragraphs and still got nowhere.

The only good classic is The Count of Monte Cristo. Everything else is merely praised out of pretension.

>>748453

FORGOT
MY
IMAGE

Salinger didn't like Catcher either.

Personally, I liked it--but I understand where one wouldn't. My own list would include: Slaughterhouse Five and Les Miserable

>>748124


I nothinged Gatsby

I loathed Catcher

>>748124

I take offense at your inclusion of The Great Gatsby.

>>748311
This. Fucking. Book.

I liked Catcher.

fucking anything by any bronte or austen is absolute garbage.

also, to kill a mockingbird.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Just kidding, I didn't get past page 20

moby dick
the plague
all nietzsche
brave new world kinda
uncle tom's cabin
grapes of wrath
um... many others

>>748720
I lol'd

>>748720
You're joking or you're retarded. Pick one.

a lot of classics are just classics because of outside circumstances, like other media. the first night of the living dead is awful but it's considered a classic because of the context in which the film exists. books like catcher and moby dick are classics not because of quality literature, rather due to shit that is no longer relevant. therefore, it is difficult to appreciate books whose contexts are obsolete.

>>748743
this may surprise you, but people can have opinions that are different than your own. it would do well to come to terms with that fact seeing as how you're in an opinion-based environment.

There were a few books i was forced to read back in school. I'd have to say that the absolute most painful was The Scarlet Letter.

MIDDLE

FUCKING

MARCH

/END THREAD

I can't stand anything by any of the Bronte sisters. I also cannot stand how many of the feminist at my uni want to gouge my eyes out when I mention that fact.

Tess of the D'urbervilles

Was he even serious when he wrote that crap

>>748786

i second this.

the first part was cute and heartbreaking and all of that.

it loses impact, it loses direction, it loses great character development

not an enjoyable last 40%

>>748822

my HS literature teacher kept elluding to some form of overarching theme/significance in that book.

and all of us in the class kept throwing out suggestions, and he kept suggesting we were wrong.

eventually, we just forced him and he said he did not have any specific idea in mind, but he just wanted us to see if there was something in there.


that book sucks.

>>748124
>>747976
Both of these were just awful.
Why do we make high school kids read terrible books. Shouldn't we be ENCOURAGING them to read?

I couldn't finish Catcher I hated it so much.

Lord of the Rings. It was just sooooooooo boring.

red badge of courage

>>748749
You seem to be confusing personal opinion with the quantifiable quality.

>>748027
that book became MUCH BETTER after I re-read it in college

Assign every student in class to read a book by an alienated loner emo, about that kind of character, and for young people of that type.

Be shocked when half the class posts about what a shitty book it is on 4chan.

Whoa, Gatsby is far superior to Catcher; although, I can plainly see why individuals on 4chan would prefer the latter.

Maybe not quite the level of bad that OP is asking about, but reading Siddhartha was really fucking boring and far from enlightening. Thank Raptor Jesus that it's a really short book or I would have tossed it aside.

>>749340
HELL YEAH YOU ARE RIGHT!

>>749340
Worst classic ever, seriously only wannabe intellectuals think this is good

>>749340
>>749367
>>749379

As foreign, I was forced to read other sorts of crap.

>>749403
I think I might know you. Did you read Sid. in Portuguese?

On the road

Oh yeah, I fucking HATED Catcher in the Rye. It was well written, but I just loathed Holden. He was a whiny prick who I couldn't stand having to listen to.

>>749664
This, pretty much word for word. I hate when people talk about how much this book changed their lives.

>>748469
Seriously? You disliked Slaughterhouse-Five?