awful classics

[Anonymous No.13465520]

post the worst "classic" you've read

[Anonymous No.13465526]

White Noise and Master and Margherita are terrible novels that should have ended after part 1 in both books

[Anonymous No.13465527]

>>13465520
100 years of solitude

[Anonymous No.13465550]

>>13465520
I finished that last week.

It wasn't "bad" but it was hard to get into because of how ADHD the author is. I had a hard time visualising or processing anything because there's 50 things going on in one page and he's writing like you're already supposed to know what the fuck he's ranting about at 500 words a second.

[Anonymous No.13465551]

>>13465520

[Anonymous No.13465576]

>>13465526
Agree on White Noise, it was just so tedious

[Anonymous No.13465581]

>>13465550
This. I've reread the first bit about 5 times, and it's only now since reading into accelerationism am I forcing myself to continue reading it. Also I don't have the cool cover version.

[Anonymous No.13465582]

>>13465520
If you can get through the awful characters and dialogue it has an alright ending.
>>13465526
I might agree with this. Master and Margarita is one of the few books I've dropped this year.

[Anonymous No.13465587]

>>13465550
It's actually pretty slow if you've read any of William Burroughs' cyberpunk stories. It feels like a generic pulp story (on subjects he didn't even understand) dressed up in stolen style

[Anonymous No.13465595]

>>13465581
You don't need Neuromancer to understand Land

[Anonymous No.13465622]

>>13465587
His style is heavily influenced by Burtoughs, but Burroughs didn't write any cyberpunk stories

[Anonymous No.13465651]

>>13465622
Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, Nova Express)

[Anonymous No.13465669]

>>13465520
>be me
>wanted to borrow Neuromancer from the library
>check the online cataloque
>only 1 copy
>date of return something about 9 years ago

lmaoo

[Anonymous No.13465676]

>>13465595
I know, but I own neuromancer, I'm too lazy to find copies of nick land's work.

[Anonymous No.13465681]

>>13465551
>woman's struggle to
stopped reading there

[Anonymous No.13465689]

>>13465527
Really boring. I dropped it after reading only 20%.

Although all my friends love it. There may be something wrong with us bro.

[Anonymous No.13465690]

>>13465551
>female author that's from the 18th century or beyond

What did you expect?

[Anonymous No.13466157]

>>13465689
Yeah my friends too, but I'm pretty sure its mainly because of the sex storys, which they most likely find exciting but in my view these are just horrible, stupid, dead. '100 years of personalty disorder' fits better.

[Anonymous No.13466576]

The Lady with the Dog by Chekhov, it didn't have a single interesting idea and the characters were inhumanly boring.

I actually like Necromancer especially the degenerate aristocrats at the end but it does feel unpolished.

[Anonymous No.13466607]

>>13465520
>The Catcher in the Rye
god, what a cocksucker

[Anonymous No.13466636]

>>13465550
Shit, this kind of thing really messes with me. Having a hard time visualising shit as I get older, and I'm literally just about to go read this book. I'm gunna push through and hope it strengthens that part of my brain or something.

[Anonymous No.13466799]

>>13466636
There's nothing to get from this book. It's science fiction written by someone who doesn't know what rom or ram is

[Anonymous No.13466806]

*listens to dub once*

[Anonymous No.13467581]

Most things written by "philosophers" because their characters are by design often not written like real characters but more like one dimensional takes of representations of certain ideas.

Also that stupid Dostoevsky book, I think it's Brothers Karamazov, the one where the dude's like "lmao no god that means I can kill anyone." Like what the fuck that shit ain't deep, it's just stupid.

[Anonymous No.13467621]

>>13465689
I didn't like it either. And I read it in Español bc I'm a bad hombre.

[Anonymous No.13467634]

death in venice, stupid fag shit

[Anonymous No.13467765]

>>13465576
>>13465526

White Noise is brilliant.

[Anonymous No.13467778]

>>13466607
couldn't agree more and very blandly written too

[Anonymous No.13467779]

>>13467581
>>13466576
>>13465526

>Can't into Russian lit

Please leave this board.

[Anonymous No.13467783]

>>13465520

Tender Is The Night. Such incredibly bland, soulless characters.

[Anonymous No.13467787]

>>13465520
0/11

[Anonymous No.13468420]

>>13465520
>ok
>kind of cliche, but in the same sense as Robert E. Howard, having defined a genre, so it's whatever
>he rolled her cybernetic nipple between his thumb and forefinger
>immediately thrown in the trash

Why does cyberpunk always have to out itself as trash and abandon all pretense of seriousness with a gaudy, wish-fulfillment literary sex-scene?

[Anonymous No.13468449]

Brave New World. I could smell the virginity off the author

[Anonymous No.13468450]

>>13465526
>Master and Margherita

Agreed

[Anonymous No.13468462]

>>13465689
>not reading the most kino final chapter in all of literature
Shame. Pleb confirmed.

[Anonymous No.13468490]

Anything philosophy

[Anonymous No.13468497]

Liked it, I felt the way information was presented fit how a character like case would perceive things.

[Anonymous No.13468505]

>>13465550
low IQ

[Anonymous No.13468525]

>>13467787
Wow, straight up brain-dead

>Native Son

Not even racist, but this book really isn't that good. Cane by Jean Toomer and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison shit all over it.

[Anonymous No.13468533]

>>13465526
Completely agree with both of these.

My own suggestion... pretty much any sci-fi classic

[Anonymous No.13468538]

Brave New World is a terribly written book and I distrust anyone who praises it. Also, both 1984 and Animal Farm are simplistic and juvenile books that largely own their fame to being used as propaganda tools by the US.

[Anonymous No.13468543]

>>13467779
>pretending to enjoy Russian lit

What people have to remember about Russian lit is the context. In 19th Century Russia, the literacy rate was about 5%. Literature, especially novels, were for the Russian aristocracy, whose basic ability to read made them better than the unwashed masses around them, and when they wanted to read, by God they wanted to read lots of stuff.

This is why all those great Russian novels we all pretend to have read and enjoyed are so fucking long, and so unbelievably fucking boring. You're not reading a story or even a moral lesson, you're engaging in the socio-economic masturbation of the privileged few, long dead, in a situation that doesn't exist anymore.

[JN !!vXXhA/qzhjm No.13468639]

For me it's Dickens: the reality TV of the 19th century.

>>13465520
That's one of the worst books I actually finished. Usually I quit a bad book early, but I liked Gibson's creativity.

He tries to set the scene by just talking about a new world and letting the reader figure out what's going on. Like A Clockwork Orange or maybe Shadow of the Torturer. But he doesn't provide enough information and just becomes confusing.

The token black guys/gals are the worst, especially in Count Zero; you can tell he's never met an afro-american and is just dropping them in to be weird and different.

>>13466799
>It's science fiction written by someone who doesn't know what rom or ram is
IIRC he actually wrote it on a manual typewriter and had never used the internet or even owned a computer.

>>13468543
>when they wanted to read, by God they wanted to read lots of stuff.
Kind of like a literary version of Bollywood movies LOL

[Anonymous No.13468661]

>>13468639
JA MON I AN' I BE THE ZION LION

[Anonymous No.13468711]

>>13467581
>Also that stupid Dostoevsky book, I think it's Brothers Karamazov, the one where the dude's like "lmao no god that means I can kill anyone." Like what the fuck that shit ain't deep, it's just stupid.
Fucking bait, that wasn't the point at all!

[Anonymous No.13468715]

>>13468543
Maybe you have to pretend to like it but you don't speak for everyone. There are actually people that enjoy it for what it is.

[Anonymous No.13468730]

Great Expectations is hands down the worst book I’ve been forced to read through

[Anonymous No.13468753]

>>13468420
Please give a source for that.

[Anonymous No.13468796]

>>13466799
Because Gibson didn't give a shit about the science. He cared about subcultures, drugs and motorcycle gangs in particular, and was far more interested in how a subculture might arise in a new world of technology than he was in the actual details of the tech.

[Anonymous No.13468820]

>>13468538
massive agree on that anon. dystopian fiction in general is a garbage genre

[Anonymous No.13468829]

>>13465520

[Anonymous No.13468854]

I really disliked The Picture of DorianGrey and 1984.

[Anonymous No.13468956]

>>13468715
>There are actually people that enjoy it for what it is.

Keep telling yourself that

[Anonymous No.13468970]

>>13468543

Stop projecting anon. YOU don't like Russian lit but it doesn't mean we can't appreciate it. The Brothers K is my favorite novel next to Moby Dick and the Lady with the Dog is an amazing short story in how it gives what I believe to be a realistic, and somewhat curt representation of reality. It's not hard to get into. My girlfriend read and loved Anna Karennina when she was like 18. We don't need to invent some grand reason on why people are pretending to like it when you can just admit it's not your taste in literatue.

[Anonymous No.13468997]

>>13465520
It's a difficult (tiring) read but if you read it as a bunch of vignettes it's really cool. But the speed at which it moves seems to capture the current world (and the future) in a reasonable way.

[Anonymous No.13468999]

Zzzzz...

I don't give a shit about your garbage problems.

[Anonymous No.13469317]

>you are sharing a """literature""" board with """people""" that think Neuromancer is a hard read
It's shit but so is your reading comprehension

[Anonymous No.13469326]

[Anonymous No.13469342]

After I finished it, I was like "that's it?"

[Anonymous No.13469538]

>>13469317
I don't think it's an easy novel, in the sense that it postulates some complex and interesting but against the representationalist and cartesian images of the body and the world so embedded in our way of understanding.

Give us some insights, what's your analysis of the novel?
Could you give us some meaningful excerpts that serve to better grasp some of the figurations and paradoxes cointained in the novel?

[Anonymous No.13469592]

>>13468829
>The "enjoys Moby-Dick because of the symbolism" Virgin
>The "Likes Moby -Dick because he thinks whales are neat and enjoys Melvilles' observations about them" Chad

[Anonymous No.13469725]

>>13467779
I love Russian literature though
Just not Master and Margarita.
Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bely’s Petersburg, Lermontov

[Anonymous No.13469755]

>>13468449
That’s why you should stick to Orwell instead, he actually involved himself in the Spanish war, to gain rigid experience to write about, he enjoyed seeking truth, he went in battle, got killed 40 men, got a sniper bullet through the neck, and returned home.

[Anonymous No.13469758]

>>13467787
>>13467787
James is based, you tasteless retard.

[Anonymous No.13469771]

>>13468999
The poor guy lost his cock in the war

[Anonymous No.13469777]

>>13469342
You went in with too many expectations

[Anonymous No.13469793]

>>13465526
i can't help but think that the book would have been slightly better if he'd written it actually hoping it would be published

[Anonymous No.13469816]

and the making of americans is 1000x worse

[Anonymous No.13469833]

/lit/ is fucking dead. No taste. No attention span. No sense of depth or anything required to enjoy let alone understand good literature.

[Anonymous No.13469838]

>>13466576
>getting pleb filtered by a short story
lmao

[Anonymous No.13469922]

>>13468533
Arthur C. Clark's works are all very cozy, true classics for autists.

[Anonymous No.13469940]

>>13465550
>visualizing
this meme is real?

[Anonymous No.13469949]

[Anonymous No.13469956]

>>13465520
This book has a laughably shallow understanding of psychology. There is much more of an interest in squeezing people into dated psychoanalytical freudianisms than in just observing how people actually behave. It's like the book exists just to validate predetermined theories rather than say something interesting about people.

[Anonymous No.13469976]

>>13465669
>Borrowing from a library.
What kind of socialist dystopia do you live? Borrow from a friend or family FFS.

[Anonymous No.13470005]

>>13465690
>female author that's from the 18th century or beyond
I fully agree with you that 99% of it is crap, but there’s a solid, worthwhile 1% that you’re a fool to dismiss. Jane Austen and George Eliot from the 19th century are obvious examples, and of course there’s more.

[Anonymous No.13470016]

>>13465526
Master and Margarita has always been THE pleb filter. I'm sorry you had to be weeded out, anon.

[Anonymous No.13470018]

Heart of Darkness can eat my dick, Conrad is shit.

[Anonymous No.13470047]

>the essential is invisible to the eyes
Wow, really? I didn't notice that, it must be so evident it passed through my knowledge, please tell me more.
Actually go fuck yourself. Stupid book.

[Anonymous No.13470055]

I had to drop camus' the stranger cuz it felt just poorly written. It might've been the translation too.

[Anonymous No.13470065]

>>13470047
great book, fuck yourself

[Anonymous No.13470076]

>>13468730
Yeah i had to drop it too. Shit got so fucking boring

[Anonymous No.13470086]

>>13468538
I used to think that way about 1984 until I did my own reading on propaganda independently of Orwell and realized that there was a lot more depth to the ideas expressed in the book than I initially realized.

[Anonymous No.13470101]

Had to drop Hamsun's the hunger. It wasn't bad bad but it felt like i wouldnt gain anything from reading it. Same thing with Mysteries
Maybe i'll try growth of the soil one day

[Anonymous No.13470304]

>>13468462
felt kinda cheap tbqh

[Anonymous No.13470562]

>>13469949
brainlet

[Anonymous No.13470577]

>>13470005
You realize that's male authors to lol

[Anonymous No.13470585]

>>13469342
Yea I also thought it was kinda meh. Meursault was so ineffectual and wish-washy that it was hard to read without wanting to slap him in the face and shake him in hopes that he'd wake up. When he finally came to life in prison he was still an annoying twat who kept rattling off annoying new atheist talking points. Maybe the point of the story was to pity Meursault and to see some reflection of ourselves in him, but I could not connect too deeply with him.

4/10

[Anonymous No.13470753]

>>13465520
Catch 22. Some soldiers do stuff, the end. It's not bad, but I don't see the greatness.

[Anonymous No.13470782]

I don’t see the appeal

[Anonymous No.13470815]

Farenheit 451 is a shit book, I don't get the hype behind it

[Anonymous No.13470881]

>>13470782

This is so Kafkaesque

[Anonymous No.13470905]

>>13470577
>You realize that's male authors to lol
Nope, male authors are superior. They put out only 98% crap.

[Anonymous No.13470945]

>>13470753
Too bad for you. Heller’s use of language is unique and entertaining, and the book is quite humorous.
>Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.

[Anonymous No.13471003]

>>13470782
>Eye don't see the appeal

[Anonymous No.13471040]

>>13470585
Meursault seems more like a character meant to illustrate certain aspects of society than a character meant to be sympathized with on a deep level. Try reading The Plague, I find the characters much richer and more relatable.

[Anonymous No.13471042]

>>13468543
t. never heard of chekhov

[Anonymous No.13471092]

>>13466576
I have no idea why this one story in particular is elevated in western circles. Pick basically any other random short story he wrote and it will be miles better than this. They think modern readers can't relate to late 19th century Russia? Only reason I can think of.

Read Peasants, Sleepy, The Steppe, Nervous Breakdown, just anything other than "Lady with the Rat".

[Anonymous No.13471155]

>>13469940
you don't do that? it's the only way I remember anything I read

[Anonymous No.13471211]

>>13465651
That's not cyberpunk

[Anonymous No.13471221]

>>13470815
t. PewDiePie

[Anonymous No.13471244]

>>13471211
>literal punks use computers to fight a totalitarian government

[Anonymous No.13471248]

>>13465526
>>13465582
>>13468450
>>13470016
>mfw currently reading Master and Margherita
I'm nearing the end of the first half. Is it going to go downhill from there?

[Anonymous No.13471279]

>>13470782
The book became pleasant once I dropped the bureaucracy/totalitarism angle. Think of it as an allegory of inner judgement.

[Anonymous No.13471285]

>>13465550
You missed the point, it's supposed to make you feel disoriented like you're experiencing technological sensory overload. IMO the schizophrenic technobabble prose is the best part.

[Anonymous No.13471409]

>>13465527
100% agree. Would put 1984 up there as well but it's more accurate to call it overrated rather than "worst"

[Anonymous No.13471609]

>>13470945
Maybe I was just desensitized because I had read and laughed like a madman to Hitchhiker's Guide 8 years earlier.

[Anonymous No.13471648]

ITT: plebs

[Anonymous No.13471679]

>>13470304
Yeah for real. I liked the book a lot, but the ending was a bit disappointing. Despite the pretty nice execution/imagery of it

[Anonymous No.13471986]

>>13468543
t. seething anglo

[Anonymous No.13472018]

>>13468543
>in a situation that doesn't exist anymore
>prostitution, povertyin cities, political instability and aimlessness among young men don't exist anymore
Nice anon, nice.

[Anonymous No.13472035]

>>13468956
You know anon, if he enjoys it he enjoys it, you don't need to be angry about that. There are people who have enjoyed having their dick cut off so Russian literature is hardly a stretch.

[Anonymous No.13473430]

>>13471648
yep

[Anonymous No.13473588]

>>13465520
I have a friend who really enjoys this book, now i'm not so sure if I should read it considering everyone here is shitting on it.

[Anonymous No.13473869]

Siddhartha
Glass Bead Game
Hell, almost any Hesse. I do not at all get why he is considered a classic writer. He is nothing compared to the other greats from the same period.

[Anonymous No.13473980]

only people who haven't read this will say its good

[Anonymous No.13473998]

>>13466607
worst book I have ever read. American lit is a big shame

[Anonymous No.13474000]

>>13468999
nice trips anon
is it at least an enjoyable read to entertain me while my wife locks me in the toilet while she is in our room with a tall ugandan man?

[Anonymous No.13474015]

>>13470815
great book. you are probably a gay man who denies his love for the poo poo holes

[Anonymous No.13474018]

>>13473980
>people hating on a fun quirky horific romp
So it goes.

[Anonymous No.13474019]

>>13468999
pleb. thats the very reason you read literature. to live another man's live and empathize with him. fucking zoomers.

[Anonymous No.13474024]

>>13473980
It's good. I like its structure.

[Anonymous No.13474086]

>>13465520
This tortured me through year 8

[Anonymous No.13474179]

V by Thomas Pynchon

[Anonymous No.13474201]

>>13465526
I loved every single paragraph. I'd say the translation of your copy is probably shit

[JN !!vXXhA/qzhjm No.13474290]

>>13473980
I suspect that this is famous because a lot of people were not aware of the bombing of Dresden when it came out.

I didn't think it was his worst book, but most of his books are unfortunately more like Slaughterhouse 5 than Cat's Cradle.

[Anonymous No.13474305]

What is the point of threads like this other than to expose ourselves as pseuds or piss everyone off with a shitty contrarian opinion?

[Anonymous No.13474309]

>>13473980
It is one of the lesser Vonnegut. I don't get the praise.

[Anonymous No.13474337]

>>13465526
>Master and Margarita
Truly the highest tier of pleb filters. It's been consistently the most-read school compulsory book in Poland, the only one with a chance of being read by gamers and has been recently translated three more times to respond to its popularity. Politicians even mention it sometimes as their favourite book (i.e. the only one they've read) to get safe and most likely approval points. Mentioning literature, and Russian literature in particular, to an absolute non-reader is most likely to produce a response containing M&M as their favourite novel (i.e. the only one they've read), because that's precisely what is considered high literature in a non-readers mind. I disregard anyone who mentions it as their favourite, especially those who read it in butcher's English translation, which is orders of magnitude worse than already flat original or its Polish translations.

[Anonymous No.13474338]

utter state of /lit/

[Anonymous No.13474348]

>>13468820
>genre
pseud

[Anonymous No.13474363]

>>13474337
Classics are classics for a reason. If pseuds like it it doesn’t mean it’s not good anon.

[Anonymous No.13474365]

>>13469342
>>13470585
That was exactly what Camus is going for though.

[Anonymous No.13474394]

>>13473980
It's true that it's overly hyped and not really representative of most of what Vonnegut wrote. I read 7 other of his novels before going into Slaughterhouse, and by that time, I could see that it was pretty meh compared to his more true masterpieces like Cat's Cradle.

Of Mice and Men was probably the worst classic I was forced to finish for school.

[Anonymous No.13474494]

>>13474363
How does that change the fact tha M&M is a weak novel that doesn't reach the standards of hundreds other classics from Russian and foreign writers? That's the whole point of this thread.

[Anonymous No.13474497]

Cat's Cradle is YA tier