I did both with Jane Eyre at different times in my life.

Sometimes I am a little sorry that I did not read JE at a younger age, because I suspect I would have been a lot kinder to the novel if I had. As it was, I read it at 26 and savaged it mercilessly. (Even while understanding why it was a useful addition to English classes everywhere.)

I just had no emotional connection with the novel at all, so I could see through it like it was wax paper. Then again, I saw through Hard Times like wax paper too, but I was still deeply touched when Laura went to her father and [spoiler] near the end of the novel.

I can't think of a novel that I did not read on the analytical level, in one way or another; but I can think of several that I did not read on an emotional level. Sometimes, this is perfectly fine, as the novel is best that way; sometimes, it's disastrous. Sometimes, I can find a balance, and like a book even if I don't respect it (this was true of The Count of Monte Cristo ); but the best books for me are ones that make me cry and then make me think wonderfully hard about the crying.

I'm theoretically intimidated by the idea that this thread is anti-intellectual. Considering how much of it goes over my head.

My cultural illiteracy aside, Hec, where was the quashing, again? I learn more about books I'm never going to read every time a good debate gets going. So I do pay attention. But I totally missed the quashing.

Well, yeah, I was nine or ten and my grandmother(to my view at the time )was being like the aunt in it. As an adult, I found all the social comment and all of that, and really didn't see Jane in me anymore...well, ok, just a little. Like when she draws that picture of Blanche and then that picture of her to show herself how much better looking Blanche is?

Nutty, I felt like that as well. I read it about the same age and just didn't have the love for it that my sister has. She read it at 10 or 11, I think. But then, she doesn't have the love for Wuthering Heights that I do, which I read as a teenager.

I wonder if "great literature" is like a foreign language? For some, being exposed to the language at a young age makes it very easy to learn. Maybe for some reading THE CLASSICS at a younger age, when they are more open to things and not so set in ways, would enjoy them more as adults because it's a love they have had for quite a while.

OK....how many times would anyone here attempt a difficult book before they admit they are getting nowhere fast?

Hmm. I'm not sure. The Grapes of Wrath probably would have been like that for me, but I had to finish it for school- later I tried Cannery Row, and hated it, but finished it. Travels with Charley which I liked, so I tried Of Mice and Men which I hated, but finsihed, then tried Tortillia Flat, but didn't finish because I found something better to read.

What about books where you liked the story, but hated the writing style- this is probably more true with non-fiction. There's a book called "Rising Tide" about the Mississippi River and power and racial politics that decided what got saved and what got decimated when it flooded. Loved the subject matter and found it facinating, but I hated the writing.

So, Hec, assuming there is a canon, do you really think it can be made independent of social agenda? Or is it a mistake to even try? Cause some critics get really freaked by attempts to adjust it.

Well, that's their issue. Canon always changes and always reflects its time. And there are counter-canons, and sub-canons (gay literature, Western fiction, modern poetry.) It's always going to matter to somebody because what you assert as meaningful will often challenge what someobdy else thinks is important. It's not supposed to be resolved one way or the other - it's necessarily in tension and up for grabs. Else your culture is dead.

Ya know what makes me angry and what I resent? That just because the conversation wasn't going in the way you might have wnted it go, you felt the need to blurt as how some of us were wrong and then take a swipe at Susan. That's how it felt to me.

Bullsheet. I can scroll back up and find the quotes if you like. It was absolutely no different than me bitching about cat talk and astrology. I had to learn scroll on or participate. The responses people had to the discussion were resentful and took the stance that very nature of the discussion was wankery.

But I want the same respect I offer. And when I'm accused of stupidity or anti-intellectualism because I do not give a single flipping hell about structure or canon? The line of disrespect has been severely crossed.

I don't say anybody's stupid, nor is that my opinion. I do still believe this thread has a strong anti-intellectual bias and always has. I apologize if you felt I was disrespectful. As a matter of record, I will note that I consider you to be intelligent, well capable of deep research and thought, have no doubt you were an interesting lecturer at Oxford, and you are an accomplished writer. To my mind, you are suis generis and beyond comparison or generalization.

So no disrespect to you, and none intended to anybody else.

I respect that people read for different reasons. (Just as Deb stated herself.) That's fine. Honestly, I am very cognizant that genre work, even things which are considered "low culture" can produce work of subtlety and sophsitication. I mean - I've worked for a comic book company and written about the most critically reviled pop music of the last fifty years. I'm glad to know that Georgette Heyer is distinguished among the regency era writers, and that Jennifer Crusie's writing is particularly witty.

But the responses to the critical discussion that happened today were so defensive, resentful and derailing that it pissed me off.

And I wasn't the only person that took it that way either, as hayden's first post indicates.

he digressions annoyed me no end -- which is also my problem with Dostoevsky.

Now this is very much a matter of you like. There is a whole category of writers who might be called, for lack of a better word, encyclopediasts. For example I remember a Thomas Mann (and damn my memory I don't reembember which Thomas Mann) where a character checks into a hotel room. And we are treated to five pages on the art of being a hotelier. And some of it actually proves relevent to later plot. But most of it is there becasue Mann found the intricacy of what it takes to run a hotel fascinating. And, as a reader so did I. I enjoyed the hell out of it. And I enjoy the fact that Mann does this all the time. But I can totally see how someone else might not enjoy that kind of digression (or just not enjoy Thomas Mann's digression, while reveling in someone else's) and be driven totally bugfuck crazy, and hate the author for ever.

Maybe for some reading THE CLASSICS at a younger age, when they are more open to things and not so set in ways, would enjoy them more as adults because it's a love they have had for quite a while.

I don't know. I loved Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead as a kid- but I now snicker at my younger dumber self. I blame Florence King.

And we are treated to five pages on the art of being a hotelier. And some of it actually proves relevent to later plot. But most of it is there becasue Mann found the intricacy of what it takes to run a hotel fascinating. And, as a reader so did I. I enjoyed the hell out of it.

I haven't read Mann, but this is definitely how I feel about Melville. I think it's one of the radical innovations of the book. If he just told the narrative of hunting the whale you'd have maybe a novella. And would make an interesting anecodote for most people, but would only really be meaningful for people who had been 19th century whalers. So he immerses you in that world, tries to educate you so that you understand not just what happened, but why it's significant. The weight of things.

I wonder if "great literature" is like a foreign language? For some, being exposed to the language at a young age makes it very easy to learn.

I think the younger the age, the lower the comprehension (generally), but the more you have under your belt when you start reading at a high comprehension, the less like a babe in the wilderness you might be. Heaven knows, I started a campaign of reading "great books" -- it started as books I'd "read" (skimmed) in college -- when I was 25, because I felt like I hadn't really read Bleak House and wanted to. And in the process of reading, discovered how many books I haven't read, and how possible it is to despair of ever "catching up". This year, I discovered the works of Elizabeth Gaskell, of whom I'd never heard despite taking a 19th C. Brit Lit course in college.

Whereas, I had read a great deal of mythology as a young child, so when I read retellings or versions of myths as novels, or epic poems, or even as plays, I have a solid grounding in the facts of the matter, and do not feel like a contextless goof. Sometimes my reactions change, between childhood exposure and adult exposure, but I'd far prefer to have read D'Aulaires Book Of Greek Myths at age 9, and then watch the Oresteia on stage at age 25, than watch the Oresteia cold.