Ain't got time for hate

This week at the SFF Seven party-in-a-blog, we're talking about books that we loathed, specifically those classics that teachers or mentors forced upon us and threatened us on pain of Fs until we read them.

I studied literature in college, so yeah, I read quite a few things that I didn't especially dig. But I was also a stubborn and spiteful child, so fairly often I'd choose to write papers on the worst fictional offenders, the books I initially loathed. Which meant I had to read them again. And again.

And you know what happened sometimes (most times)? On about the third reading, I'd crack the bitter nut, peer inside to the meat, and realize the deep parts of that book were actually delicious.

I remember specifically that happening with a a half dozen Russian tragedies (hello, Anna Karenina), everything I had to read by Goethe, and E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News. The thing about literary classics that suck superficially is that there is subtext. So if you dig deep enough, you will find something else, especially if the author has done a good enough job layering to have a book join the literary canon.

These days, no one is forcing me to read, so I read what I want to. Sometimes it's layered, high-protein, literary nuttiness. Sometimes it's deep-dish genre pizza. Sometimes it's birthday cake fluff consisting mostly of icing and sugar flowers. Sometimes it's just a snack, a cookie, a lollipop, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get confectioner's sugar joy ride.

Because these days? I don't have time to read a book twice or thrice before I see its beauty. And I sure don't have time for hate.

The Classic that Wasn't

Catcher in the Rye.

I read it. Even finished it. Not because I wanted to. Not because I liked anything I read. I finished that book solely because I had innocent, blind faith that it HAD to get better. Somewhere. Somehow.

It didn't. Ever. How the ever living hell do you write 300 plus pages of some dude whining? I swear to all the gods, Salinger was paid by the word for that piece of kindling. I was (and still am to this day) vastly disappointed that Holden Caufield never DIED in that book.

I get there are people who love this story and this character. Maybe teenage angst wasn't my thing even when I was a teenager.

The other one I loathed and still do is A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Again. Had to finish it. It was on the final. But ye gods and little fishes. Did you know that all of these so called 'classics' by angst-ridden (and now dead) white guys could have been hundreds of pages shorter with just a little Prozac?? Why are despicable characters without any kind of hope of redemption worth any amount of my life energy?

All I can say is these two books totally justified the speed reading course I'd taken in 8th grade. I could not quit those books fast enough and still comprehend enough to write the papers on them that were required. Bleh. Even after all this time, I want to go scrub my hands clean after recalling those stories.

I far and away preferred The Color Purple. And To Kill a Mockingbird. And The Plague. And Wuthering Heights - though how Heathcliff came to be a romantic icon is beyond me. Wrote him up as an illustration of the concept of evil in literature for my English AP exam. All while singing Kate Bush in my head. How did you cope with reading books you disliked for required courses? And do you still force yourself to finish books you don't like?

The Classics: Fie on the Establishment!

Once The Establishment insisted I read a book where the dog dies, I seriously questioned anything they considered "a classic."  When they did it to me twice and followed up with a dead mouse chaser, I became that kid in school. The one who could talk "around" the book without having read the book. Yes, it was back in the pre-internet dark ages. Grapes of Wrath, Lord of the Flies, never read them. Beowulf didn't happen either. Don Quixote, Moby Dick, and Call of the Wild...I read the comic book versions. What? Classics Illustrated comics saved my sanity and gave me the time to read the books I actually wanted to read (Hello Victoria Holt, Agatha Christie, and Morgan Llywelyn).

Never fear, I atoned for my sins by getting a Bachelor's in English. Aka, The Sexton, Plath, and Woolf Will Haunt You Forever degree.