Well, and even those -- Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, in a weird way Snow White -- are stories that have ambiguity in them. I mean, sure, on a first pass, Evil Stepmother/fairy bad, innocent twidget good...

But I think of Rapunzel's stepmother's loneliness, that she would demand a child from her neighbors rather than any other price. She locked Rapunzel up in a tower to protect her, after all; and Rapunzel pretty well disobeyed her parental figure and had sex on the sly by hook and by crook. And, after some hardship, got away with it! It was the boyfriend that was punished.

With Sleeping Beauty, I always wondered why making everyone sleep for 100 years was a gift. So it seemed like cruelty on cruelty, and the nicest thing the prince could have done, on arriving inside the castle, would be some kind of time-travel spell to send them all back 100 years. Or, you know, kill them all and put them out of their time-warp misery.

Snow White is hugely ambiguous, because the evil stepmother was so helpless in the grip of her obsession. It reminded me of that Bathory woman who was rumored to have bathed in the blood of virgins, desperately attempting to retain her youth. When I acquired a picture-book version of SW, it was the image of the stepmother I cut out and kept.

I read a lot of myth and old-style folk tales as a kid, and a lot of them were kind of WTF the first time I read them. But when I come back to them now, I find all sorts of contradictions in them, and I'm glad that [the originals, not the Disney versions] are chock full of the ambiguities and confusions of which their cultures are made.

PC do you have an edition/translation of Crime and Punishment you'd recommend. I've been trying to read it but I didn't get far in my first attempt and then later I found an older translation and discovered the first translation was so passive and that's why I hated it. I did a sentence by sentence comparison of Translation 1 vs Translation 2 and the first took paragraphs to say what the second said in a few sentences. I threw out the first book because no one needs to be subjected to that.

I was pretty clearly disparaging the tendency which some people show hereabouts to write off a work of literature because it's difficult or unpleasant. Did I name names? No.

You know, it doesn't really matter if you "name names" because if you describe behavior, self-aware people can tell if they've done the behavior or not. ANd paranoid people assume you're talking to them, whether or not they've done the behavior. And oblivious people don't care either way, so you might as well not bother.

IJS.

I read Middlemarch last summer and really enjoyed it. I can't get into Jane Austen though. And a few months ago I gave To the Lighthouse one last shot and for whatever reason it just clicked and I ended up staying up way too late reading it out loud.

I was pretty clearly disparaging the tendency which some people show hereabouts to write off a work of literature because it's difficult or unpleasant.

And the responses were pretty clearly disagreeing with you that "difficult" is the reason said books get put down in favor of other ones.

I think that's more than a bit of an overstatement.

I wouldn't. This thread has always had an anti-intellectual, anti-academic, pro-populist slant. People are actively hostile about critical reading and defensive about reading for pleasure. And it's never simply championing genre or the pleasures of reading, but there's a weird defensive/guilty/angry whipcrack of resentment about difficult literature, the way literature is taught in colleges and critical theory. And it's layered on with self-congratulation and reverse snobbery.

I'm not talking about a slight tendency either - but by far the dominant tone in this thread. Endless loops of Jennifer Crusie, Lord Peter Whimsy, Austen, Georgette Heyer. And the funny part (to me anyway) is that people loved to indulge in deep critical discussion about Buffy and Angel once a week for years and years, but it's nearly impossible to have that kind of discussion in this thread.

My heart sinks a little when I read a post saying the poster doesn't like one of my favorite authors. I don't know why, and it's cool everybody's got different tastes.

I think it's perfectly natural. Usually, an author becomes a favorite because they do to you what Deb wants an author to do to her: echo in you, touch you on a personal level. And so, when someone disparages them, it's like they're disparaging you personally. I totally understand it.

PC do you have an edition/translation of Crime and Punishment you'd recommend.

I think I read the most popular translation. Hold on, let me see who it is. Constance Garnett. That's the one I read, and the one I own, I'm pretty sure.

I was pretty clearly disparaging the tendency which some people show hereabouts to write off a work of literature because it's difficult or unpleasant. Did I name names? No.

Who has ever on this thread written off a work of literature because it's too difficult? I've never seen it done, unless it was situational, along the lines, of "I just tried to read Great Work, but because of Situation X that's happening in my life right now, I set it aside and picked up Brain Candy instead."

And as for unpleasant, well, why should I read something that actively makes me unhappy? And by that I don't mean a story in which sad or shocking things happen and I feel those emotions while reading. But why read a book that makes me want to scrub my brain with bleach, or one where I actively hate all the characters, or one where the author isn't just challenging my beliefs and values but deliberately insulting and stomping upon them? What's the point?

Not really trying to change the subject, but not really caring if I do-

Barbara E(mumblecan'tspellherlastname) of Nicke and Dimed is subbing for Tom Friedman while he's away.

resentment about difficult literature

Gee, there's that word again.