It seems most simply to me that if this is honestly not where you can get your crit on, get it somewhere else.

My beef is that I was having a discussion here and it was derailed by the usual chorus of hatin' on serious books. I wasn't trying to force deeper discussion - a discussion about canon was already happening. And then as individual names came up, people made one line comments about what they hated, or expressed their dislike of critical discussion.

Which, to me, is not that different than rolling your eyes forever when people talk about how cute their cats are. Our community standard is that if you don't want to participate in a conversation you do not try to undermine it either.

So I'm surprised that you're surprised people got all up in arms.

I'm not surprised - I knew I was being critical and some people would take it personally (and how could they not?). I don't think I would've broached it if Hayden hadn't spoken up first, but his complaint was the same thing that had bugged me not only today, but previously in this thread, and I agreed with him.

But things I particularly liked about MM were the so-hated omniscient voice

Is the omniscient voice hated? Man, no wonder I'm leary of over-identifying with the characters, in my heart of hearts I think first person singular is cheating. (Yes, I realize that's indefensible and I'd have my own handy list of exceptions. That's just my bias and I'm copping to it.)

Hec, I'm sure you didn't intend to, but your post could be read to suggest that we Must Love and Respect the Canon.

I don't see how you could possibly extract that from the quote you referenced. Here it is:

However, resentment about canonical good books, and being beaten around the head with Must Read and Must Respect has fostered a vibe in here such that poor, whiny, weak Mme. Bovary gets kicked in the teeth, and punched in the kidneys every time she wanders into this thread.

My tone and word choice are pretty indicative that I understand the complaints of the people who were "beaten around the head" and were forced to read things they didn't like, and were sneered at for disliking what they were forced to read. I don't know how you could possibly construe that to mean I was endorsing "you must love and respect the canon."

Thousands of books, one show per thread. Occam and Soul Coughing suggest that Correlation is not Causation in this case.

I do think that is a factor, perhaps the biggest factor. However, plenty of people on the other side of the argument from me have expressed both their defensiveness and their distaste for literary criticism. I don't think my initial charge is baseless or unsupported by all the many posts that have happened since. To the contrary.

Anyway. I got no more corpsified horses to whomp. I'm as clarified as butter. The drift of the conversation here over the last 100 posts or so is...nice. Don't mean to drag things backward.

Jacqueline - City of Literature, Castle of Shakespeare...?

you're not a poseur unless you acted like you had knowledge you didn't and I guess if you buy into the notion that unless you've read the canon you aren't smart.

Since I am familiar with Columbia's take on the West Civ canon, I would suggest if you wanted to dive in, but do so with some sort of guide, maybe pick up David Denby's "Great Books" and read the books he discusses in there at the same time. Huge chunks of stuff woudl be missed and glossed over (specifically women and more modern stuff), but it would be good if you want to just start atthe beginning.

(which should NEVER be split in half. Yes, Mr. Gibson, I'm looking at you):

Oh HELL yeah.

Jilli, if I were to recommend a "classic," my rec would probably be Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.

you're not a poseur unless you acted like you had knowledge you didn't

No, not that; I just thought I had adequate knowledge compared with my peer group, and I hate that I don't. It's totally an ego thing -- I love being a smarty-pants.

if you like Barbara Gowdy, have you already read her latest ( The Romantic )?

Yes. I didn't think it was as good as Mr. Sandman or the one with the three sisters, but it was still an excellent book, though there were parts where I wanted to shake the heroine until her teeth rattled.

Jilli, if I were to recommend a "classic," my rec would probably be Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.

Okay. Wanna tell me why?

(The book that I'm going to use as my 'what Classic to read next' guide is Gothic: 400 Years of Excess, Evil, Horror, and Ruin. It's lying around the house, so why not?)

I love being a smarty-pants.

well, I suggest shifting discussion to where you have a base of knowledge. We're all smart about something.

Plus, rubbernecking, it's true.

Hee! Hi all. I was here, eatin' popcorn and wonderin' if somebody was gonna bite another person's ear off.

I noticed in JZ's West Literatureopolis there were no gleaming Condos of the Future of Sci Fi, no brutal shadowed alleys of Cyberpunk. No lush tree-shrouded elven 'burbs, no dirt-street saloons of Western Town.

I need to draw a map.

I'm woefully unread in the classics. I will cop to a "Pfft. BO-ring!" attitude twenty years ago. I'm trying to catch up now, but have to go to the bookstore and not stop at the "Graphic Novels" section.

Hi.

Someone up thread asked for recommendations for the lazy reader. So here's a quick list of short works (or collections of short stories) that I think kick ass:

1. _Notes from Underground_ by Dostoyevsky. The angst train's a-comin' and you're tied to the track, and there's no gallant knight to swoop in and save you, but damned if you aren't fascinated by the chugging rhythm of the train anyway, and the pounding of your own heart.

2. _The Little Prince_ by Antoine de Saint Exupery. Overread? Maybe. Overtaught? Maybe. But surely one of the most touching books I've ever read. Si vous comprenez francais, lirez Le Petit Prince en francais.

3. _The Snows of Kilimanjaro_ by Ernest Hemingway. Worth it if only for "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." Hail nothing, full of nothing. Nothing is with thee.

4. _At the Bottom of the River_ by Jamaica Kincaid. Living in the silent voice, I am at last erased. This one's not a quick read--there's a lot to it and the language isn't usual--but it's lyrical and lovely.

5. _Candide_ by Voltaire. Oh, the sarcasm. Oh, the viciousness. Oh, the funny.

6. _Lust and Other Stories_ by Susan Minot. You begin to feel like a piece of pounded veal. Bitter, so very bitter, but wise and written with a precision of diction that makes me want to go to her house and beg her to write poetry, too.

7. _Cowboys Are My Weakness_ by Pam Houston. I recommend this with hesitation, because honestly I can't ever get over the feeling that all the lead female characters are Pam Houston and that this isn't a work of fiction at all, but the writing is excellent.

8. _Short Shorts_, edited by Irving Howe and Ilana Weiner Howe. A collection of the shortest short stories by some fantastic authors like Tolstoy, Chekov, de Maupassant, Joyce, Lawrence, Kafka, Porter, Borges, Marquez... It's a gem.

9. _The Life to Come_ by E.M. Forster. But only if you like his other stuff (_Howards End_, _A Passage to India_, _Maurice_, etc.). This is Forster at his Forster-est--restrained, understated, and devastating.

10. _A Relative Stranger_ by Charles Baxter. Baxter has a gift for writing about you even when he's writing about a middle-aged man from Michigan. He'll put words in your mouth and you'll find that they fit. He writes about the random collisions of people in life and the far-reaching ramifications those collisions have on everyone.

11. _The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction_, edited by R.V. Cassill and Joyce Carol Oates. A first-rate collection of short fiction. It contains works by Alvarez, Cisneros, Dybek, Mukherjee, Atwood, Beattie, Carver, Marquez... It's single-handedly responsible for getting me to read fiction again after years of reading pretty much only poetry. There's still one story in there that I can't read without crying ("In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" by Amy Hempel).

12. _The Things They Carried_ by Tim O'Brien. Upsetting, gut-wrenching, and visceral. Set in Vietnam, but it's not a book solely about the war any more than Moby-Dick is a book solely about a whale. A book about the way stories can save lives, and about how subjective the truth is. A book about love. A book about death. A book about keeping the dead alive. These stories pull no punches, and left me gasping. Sometimes crying. Always moved, and grateful I'd read them.

Holy crap! 600 new posts?!? How the heck am I going to read all this before dinner? What happened?

Gothic: 400 Years of Excess, Evil, Horror, and Ruin

It's also really really boring. Which is impressive, given the topic.