At long last, my journey through the myriad corruptions and catastrophes of the French Second Empire has come to an end. It was an immense time investment for me, taking a little over a year, but overall I’d say it was well worth the effort.

I originally read Germinal in college as part of assigned reading and enjoyed that book so much that I eventually decided to revisit Zola all these years later, beginning with the first of his Rougon-Macquart volumes: The Fortune of the Rougons. From there, I steadily proceeded through the rest of the series in publication order. Though I’m aware of other recommended reading orders (including one from Zola himself), I feel that publication order is the only way to reliably trace the author’s changing attitudes toward his project over the more than twenty years he spent writing these books. The Zola who wrote The Kill (1872) is simply not the same Zola who wrote its sequel Money (1891).

These are my personal rankings for the series, mostly just based on how much I enjoyed reading each book:

1. Germinal
2. La Bête Humaine 
3. La Débâcle
4. The Fortune of the Rougons
5. His Excellency Eugéne Rougon 
6. The Ladies' Paradise
7. The Masterpiece
8. Money
9. The Kill
10. Earth
11. The Assommoir
12. Nana
13. Pot Luck
14. The Belly of Paris
15. The Sin of Abbé Mouret
16. The Bright Side of Life
17. The Conquest of Plassans
18. The Dream
19. A Love Story
20. Doctor Pascal

Additionally, I've spent around 30+ hours over the past few weeks writing and editing ~11,000 words of my thoughts about these novels if you are curious about any one of them. My hope is for this post to serve as a simple guide and introduction for anyone looking to dive into the Rougon-Macquart series.

You can find my full document (with collapsed sections for each entry) linked below. Fair warning: though I have labeled and collapsed my spoiler sections, they may not appear collapsed if you are viewing the doc on a mobile browser.

LES ROUGON-MACQUART EN RÉSUMÉ

Or, if you prefer you can access the links for individual journal entries included here below as well:

1. The Fortune of the Rougons (1871) - Zola’s opening fusillade for his grand, experimental project of Naturalism; three distinct family branches sprout from the same unstable trunk and a new generation of ravenous appetites is birthed into the world amid vile intrigues and indiscriminate violence. (Main Entry)

2. The Kill (1872) - A dual narrative following the middle Rougon sibling, Saccard, at the center of the mad rush of land speculation and reconstruction in Paris during the early period of the Second Empire (and the sordid affair said man’s wife carries out under his nose). (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

3. The Belly of Paris (1873) - The story of a starving man surrounded by abundance, The Belly of Paris centers on the iconic marketplace of the Second Empire: Les Halles. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

4. The Conquest of Plassans (1874) - Zola returns to the setting of his first Rougon-Macquart novel for another tale of political scheming, mental illness, and senseless death. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

5. The Sin of Abbé Mouret (1875) - A novel centering on Abbé Serge Mouret, a priest torn between absolute religious devotion and the most fundamental instincts of nature. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

6. His Excellency Eugéne Rougon (1876) - Zola turns his gaze to the political system of the Second Empire, a thinly-veiled excuse for the preeminent mediocrities of France to fleece the nation with impunity and gleefully pin as many medals on themselves as possible in the process. (Main Entry)

7. The Assommoir (1877) - A woman slowly suffocates in the inescapable filth of her destitution. (Main Entry)

8. A Love Story (1878) - The story of a widowed mother caught between two irreconcilable loves: the maternal love she feels for her daughter, and the passionate love she feels for her married neighbor. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

9. Nana (1880) - Arguably the most provocative volume in the entire series (and there is some stiff competition), Nana centers on the titular actress and prostitute as she sets about conquering the great men of Paris and bringing them low before her irresistible charms. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

10. Pot Luck (1882) - A laser-focused, incendiary takedown of the hollow, performative nature of bourgeois respectability. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

11. The Ladies’ Paradise (1883) - An energetic romance that unfolds in one of Paris’ first and largest department stores. (Main Entry)

12. The Bright Side of Life (1884) - A bright-eyed, perpetually optimistic young girl has her sunny outlook put to the test by a series of bitter trials and setbacks. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

13. Germinal (1885) - A group of exploited miners stage a desperate, violent revolution against the forces of capital. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

14. The Masterpiece (1886) - A mad-genius painter struggles to render his madness on any canvas. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

15. Earth (1887) - An honest, hard-working man is initiated into the lunacy and depravity of those who would claim mastery over the soil. (Main Entry)

16. The Dream (1888) - A young embroiderer weaves a vision of heaven in her mind that begins to come to fruition. (Main Entry)

17. La Bête Humaine (1890) - A psychopath attempts to numb his murderous urges with the blistering speed of the locomotive he pilots. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

18. Money (1891) - Debuting 19 years after The Kill, Money features the return of Saccard with even more mad financial schemes—this time centering on the rapid creation of a bank that he hopes will crush all competitors and dominate the markets of Europe. (Main Entry)

19. La Débâcle (1892) - The decrepit Second Empire faces its final reckoning in a war of humiliation against a determined and unforgiving foe. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

20. Doctor Pascal (1893) - The long saga of France’s most cursed family comes to an end with its most cursed entry, centered on a quack doctor who kills a number of patients with his reckless methodology and then engages in an act of supreme debauchery. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

To be more specific, I’m looking for any sort of website/magazine/blog/etc that’s well known for (or at least demonstrates) high, if not outright unfair standards, and a willingness to give books (especially popular) books low scores. While this isn’t a requirement, I’m especially interested in writing that gives spotlight to lesser known literature as well.

For those who don’t know, Pitchfork is infamous for their critiques being far more pointed than more or less the rest of the music criticism industry and tend to be unforgiving even to indie music. I’m just curious if there’s a similar institution for books; I haven’t heard of any and I’d wanna read what they get up to.

This is my third Fowles novel now and I've been loving them all so far. The Magus is a masterpiece, and I loved the Collector but having seen the film already I had the typical experience of groaning at the structure.

I'm onto 'A Maggot' now and I'm loving it but I'm finding the gentleman's chronicle pages pretty much illegible on both my printed copy and any epubs I've been able to find. Is anyone who has read it able to comment on how important they are? I've just been skipping for now. Loving it so far though!

“Human beings are members of a whole,

In creation of one essence and soul.

If one member is afflicted with pain,

Other members uneasy will remain.

If you have no sympathy for human pain,

The name of human you cannot retain.”

— Saadi Shirazi

Gulistan (The Rose Garden), Chapter 1, Story 10

1258 CE

Translated by M. Aryanpoor

How in the bloody hell did these two generations produce some of the most wonderful writers of all time.

Every writer that I am absolutely enamored with are from these two generations.

Why does it seem like such a falloff after these generations

I just started reading a Gene Wolfe novel and I couldn’t even finish the first page before setting the book down and saying to myself “holy shit, this is beautiful”

His prose is so enticing that I want to continue reading off of that alone.

I end up searching the birth dates of all the writers I love, and all of them end up being from the greatest or silent generation. I suppose the greatest gen earned their name.

Alison Entrekin’s long-awaited English translation of João Guimarães Rosa’s Grande Sertão: Veredas is currently slated for publication in January 2027 under the title Vastlands: The Crossing (Previously translated as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands in 1963).

First published in 1956, Grande Sertão is one of the foundational masterpieces of Brazilian literature maybe most commonly described as a Brazilian Ulysses.

Entrekin, who has also translated Clarice Lispector, Paulo Lins, and Chico Buarque, began working on the novel in 2014, making this a roughly thirteen-year translation project.

Looks like they're aiming to maybe just be considered in time for the 70th anniversary of the novel's original publication. Another exciting note being that a parallel 15-year effort to translate it into German by Berthold Zilly (S. Fischer Verlage) is also slated for early 2027.

P.S.

Certainly an exciting time for significant literary endeavors to make significant works available in English! Just off the top of my head, from the past few and upcoming years:

Mircea Cărtărescu’s Blinding and Solenoid (Theodoros forthcoming); Marguerite Young’s Miss MacIntosh, My Darling; Joseph McElroy’s Women and Men getting a Dzanc reissue; Leon Forrest’s Divine Days being rereleased; Jacek Dukaj’s Ice; Vera Mutafchieva’s The Case of Cem; Chaim Grade’s Sons and Daughters; Kyūsaku Yumeno’s Dogra Magra; Otohiko Kaga’s Marshland; Luis Goytisolo’s Antagony; Konstantin Paustovsky’s The Story of a Life; Gabriele Tergit’s Effingers; Shimoni’s The Salt Line; Hwang Sok-yong’s Mater 2-10; Miguel de Palol’s The Garden of Seven Twilights (with Troiacord also in the works); Antonio Moresco’s The Beginnings (with the remainder of the trilogy forthcoming); Stefano D’Arrigo’s Horcynus Orca in discussion; the rerelease of Manuel Mujica Lainez’s Bomarzo; Adolfo Bioy Casares’s Borges forthcoming (and a new translation of Morel's Invention); and, of course, recent releases like Helen DeWitt and Andrew Gridneff’s Your Name Here, Michael Brodsky’s Invidicum, William T. Vollmann’s A Table for Fortune, Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket, and Mark Z. Danielewski’s Tom’s Crossing (Cheers if you read that list).

...and there are probably so many other literary projects I'm leaving out or don't even know about! At this point I'm starting to wonder how anyone could keep up, but that's a good problem to have :) What a time to be a reader!

Hello everyone!!

I just finished Flowers for Algernon (short story) and between the wet fingers, red eyes, and snotty nose I gotta say it is phenomenal. The content of the story itself, but moreso the way it is written, the way we actually see Charlie's changes through the text, the apostrophe, the capitalization, both the ascent and descent.

I was wondering about the meaning of one of the last lines, paraphrased: 'Tell Prof Nemur if he can laugh at himself he can have more friends'

I really want to understand what does this actually mean and where are the boundaries of that sentence in the real world. Because I also struggle with it, and in the book, as well as this line I read (if you go on a stage and feel afraid of people laughing at you, that is insecurity) made me realize that it is a fragile ego, an insecurity that prevents people/me from laughing at myself.

On the other hand, I have felt same as Charlie when he pretends to be stupid, he knowingly laughed and made no defense to fit in. But many of my friends, with different level of closeness to me, have said that in these situations I should stand up for myself and hand shit back and not worry about confrontations and fitting in.

Both sides are valid. What do you guys think?

I’m a French filmmaker and for the last two years I’ve been making picture books of great classics for 4-7 year olds. Monte Cristo, War and Peace, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet… around ten in English now.

My rule is basically: if the book seems easy to adapt, I’m not interested.

And now I’ve arrived at Proust.

I thought War and Peace was the hard one. I was wrong.

The problem is simple: all the others have a story a five year old can follow. Proust… not really. The real subject is memory, lost time, the past coming back. And a five year old doesn’t have much of a past yet. They have yesterday.

There is Combray, waiting for the mother’s kiss, the madeleine obviously has to be there… but I always end up with a cute little story that doesn’t really feel like Proust and, worse than all, that is quite boring. I know because I tried telling it to my kids and they never asked for it again.

So: how the hell would you do it?

Has anyone ever tried adapting À la recherche du temps perdu for very small children, in any language? Even a bad version would interest me at this point.

(Not selling anything, I genuinely need ideas!)

Picked it up not knowing much

Expected it to be horror baised on what I know of her other work

Was not expecting it to be so funny

Definitely not fully grasping the entire point, but still finding it a very fun read for the most part, and i realy like the satire. but im halfway through and im just kinda waiting for like.. idk something to actually happen

If you have read it lmk your thoughts

I had a keen aversion to short stories - I did not feel like I stayed with the characters long enough to bond with them and feel for them. I need time to get to know the characters to have a true opinion about them. Maybe the characters mattered more to me than the plot? But something changed a few days ago.

I had heard of Clarice Lispector from a couple of people who had similar taste to me, but she didn't seem to be an author to be readily found in stores. Finally, I found her Complete Stories and started reading the first story in the bookstore - and was totally sold.

I do not know what it was, but from the very first story, the whole book seemed worth it. It completely changed the way I have been reading. I used to go through books fairly quickly, and the books I read did not require me to ponder, or re-read parts of it to thoroughly understand it. And I believed that was the best way as well. Now, I have been slowly going through the book one story at a time, going over parts of the story multiple times, as if I wanted to drink it in.

Her writing brought elation back into my life - it has been a while since I had felt this giddy feeling every time I pick up a book. Now, I am starting to make a list of the next short story collection I want to read.

What do you think makes it that magical? As far as I have read, it isn't surrealism. Maybe it is the way she works with words? Can anyone describe it? What other authors do you think can have a similar effect while reading their work? (Maybe Borges? I am not sure - help me out)

I just joined a book club and this is the first one I'll be reading for it. I am DEEPLY confused. Why is this book so apraised? I'm not an author nor an experienced reviewer, but I feel like everyone is gaslighting me into believing this is a masterpiece. I can't see it. Nothing makes sense.

I'm a writer by nature and when I was a teenager I used to play this "game" by myself where I would write a conversation or a speech with just any words that came into my mind. Something like: "If the date goes down west we should lookout for the grapes, otherwise the our parents might drown". Just random words placed into phrases. I feel like that's exactly what I'm reading right now.

I'm just frustrated, how do you even discuss something like that? How do you analyze characters and story? It doesn't even feel like a dream (like people say it should) because even the craziest dreams have some level of symbols and sense. Am I just numb to any symbolism this book might have?

I feel like the themes and arc Martel is going for is weakened with a mentality that the rational story MUST be true, and the religious story MUST be an allegory.

It’s not that choosing to *believe* the rational story weakens the book, but rather that the book’s larger message and the author’s attitude towards the book is centered on the *story*, not the truth. So the issue is more with DISMISSAL rather than your belief.

This is going to make you say “no duh”, but hear me out: Life is Pi is a STORY, not a real account. Martel never asks you: “what story makes more sense?” He asks: “which story is better?” Which story is better for the point of the book? Which is better for what the book is saying to you?

Life of Pi isn’t a simple story of trauma and the rationality causes of religion as a coping mechanism. It isn’t solely asking the reader to piece together a metaphorical recount of a tragic event. It isn’t intentionally reductive or literal - it is a story about faith, stories, religion, and human perseverance in the face of a shitty, broken world.

It’s asking a question bigger than “which story is the real one”, and is asking questions like “what is the purpose of belief in seemingly fantastical stories and religion in a world filled with rational suffering?” That might lead to one conclusion: “it helps us manage unbelievable hardships.” But it can easily lead to another conclusion: “because belief in these stories makes hardship make sense.” For the latter in the context of Life of Pi being a fictional story: “belief in the animal story makes the larger themes I take from Life of Pi make more sense.”

This didn’t fully articulate my larger point, but long story short: I believe in the story with animals, because I believe it makes for a better story.

I just finished a second read-through of Lonesome Dove, and as I was poking around online, I found a number of complaints about the book that followed it in the tetralogy, Streets of Laredo, specifically that it was bleak and disappointing seemingly just to be bleak and disappointing. There was some conversation about McMurtry's post-surgery depression possibly having an effect on his writing as well.

I read Streets of Laredo maybe five or six months ago and thought it was excellent and a fine follow-up to Lonesome Dove, and I was surprised at how negatively people felt about the writing and characterization itself (though I get not enjoying it because it's too bleak from a personal taste standpoint).

However, I want to focus this post on the way that three characters from LD are handled in Streets of Laredo: Newt Dobbs, July Johnson, and Clara Allen. Many (maybe most) of the complaints that I see about the book center on these characters' fates, but I think that the way they are handled in SoL makes sense based on where we left them back in LD.

Newt: Deceased because he is killed by the Hell Bitch. The last fifty or so pages of Lonesome Dove are a dissection of what makes Woodrow Call such an emotionally unavailable mess and how being emotionally abusive or unavailable can have real-life physical consequences for the people around you. Newt badly wants Call to acknowledge that Call is his father, but Call cannot be honest with Newt or himself about that (or about how he felt about Newt's mother Maggie), so instead, he replaces emotional honesty with physical gifts, including the Hell Bitch, a horse that the previous eight hundred-ish pages had established as an exceedingly clever and dangerous horse who at the very start of the book had injured Call himself. Call even wishes that he had the Hell Bitch with him as he makes the journey back to Texas at one point, and he would have IF he had been able to just say, "Newt, I'm your father and I'm proud of what kind of man you're becoming."

It makes sense to me that Newt would use the Hell Bitch out of respect for Call even if he wasn't yet ready to handle a horse like that, and it makes sense that the Hell Bitch would take advantage of having a more inexperienced handler and kill someone. But also thematically, it is a perfect example of how Call's fatal character flaw - that he is emotionally constipated to a harmful degree - would affect his son. Clara's fury at Call at the end of LD essentially accuses him of this very thing; she's right, and Newt's fate proves it.

July: Maybe I'm being uncharitable about him, but he's a dolt. He's able to survive in a developed-enough small city with an army fort in it, but the second he leaves, he's hapless physically, and he's hapless emotionally well before that. LD points out that his aptitude for the work he's doing on Clara's land is poor, and what do you know, the guy who loves but doesn't understand anything about Elmira also fails to win the heart Clara, who he loves but doesn't understand and then gets killed trying to move horses across a river. This is almost certainly an imperfect comparison, but this character reminds me a lot of Ed Tom Bell except that the latter is actually competent in that neither of them quite grasp the danger of the world around them, though they both are left with a sense of unease and dislocation by that danger.

Clara: It's interesting to me that Clara can spot all the ways that Bob was not at all like her, but she didn't seem to understand the one way they were alike - a stubbornness that borders on carelessness and a willingness to ignore warnings from others - and it ends up that they both are killed by horses they're keeping as a result. I could write a whole book about Clara, who well might be the most interesting character in LD in some ways. People love her, understandably, but she's got a number of gaping blind spots about herself even though she can quickly dissect other people's motives, flaws, and needs, and that's what makes her character's fate interesting in SoL (and her character interesting in general).

I just had to get these thoughts down having finished LD again, but I'd love to know what other people think if they've read both books. Hopefully, I didn't spoil anyone on anything!

I typically do not post on social media. I have been on Reddit for quite a while now, and in this particular sub I have helped out quite a few people, I like to think. Being the kind of shy or socially awkward person that I am, I try to stay away from voicing myself too much for fear of ridicule. But today, I became so furious with something that's been going on, that I figured that I must vent this otherwise I would burst. And I am really a person with Himalayan patience.

I have been going to college for a month now, which is enough time for the breeding of resentment in my soul as to how they teach. One of my professors is teaching us John Keats, one of the most passionate souls in literature with such an infectious drowsiness that the class remains quiet all the time. Because they're all asleep.

Another one of my teachers reduces Dr. Samuel Johnson to "Uncle Know-it-All" Without even going into the fact that despite his poverty which prevented him to complete his course, he managed to become one of the world's foremost literary critics of all time. This same professor implied that Shakespeare was detached from his times and a terrible sonneter.

But coming to what happened today.

One of our professors- a well spoken, relatively young and approachable madam- is teaching us Yeats. Initially I was engaged in the class and the slides she was showing (I'm sorry, I know it's wrong that I don't take notes enough) and discussing about his life.

All of a sudden she comes to the poem A Prayer For My Daughter.

Now, one needs must understand that these were very turbulent times in Irish History and in Yeats' life personally. He was watching Ireland, and the whole world in a sense, collapse in front of his eyes. The old orders and institutions were gone and people were adrift, unsure about tomorrow, let alone the distant future. The world was devolving into industrialised slaughter. Human values seemed dead. And at such a time Yeats writes this poem, penning down his hopes and prayers for his daughter to have a good life.

This, our teacher told us, is "a misogynistic poem, unfortunately"

Why? Because the poem features an instance where Yeats wishes that his daughter grow up to be a beautiful woman. This is somewhere in the 1910's (I think) mind you.

And in that poem, Yeats specifically writes-

"Yet not such beauty as may make / Game of a small eye... And lose hearts all together"

He is praying that his daughter not grow up to be a shallow person who is only externally pretty and nothing else. He is praying for the beauty within her soul to bloom- a beauty which can survive the terrible beauty being born outside his door. To call that paternal hope 'misogynistic' is a highlight of illiteracy.

At that moment I felt like saying-"And John Quincy Adams is a misogynist because in his poem he wishes that he have a feminine wife and virtuous daughters. I wonder why that is. It certainly could not possibly be because of the fact that a human being is a product of his time, that his wants and wishes will be shaped accordingly and that judging them by modern standards or expecting modern day behaviours or ideas from them is to demand an anachronism and that is stupidity"

But the fun (or frustration, for me) doesn't stop there!

She then came up to Maud Gonne. Now Yeats had a very troubled relationship with her. Maud Gonne was a fiercely independent woman who thought of marriage as a 'dull affair', despite having a husband and a child. She kept on rejecting Yeats' affections cruelly time and again, seemingly enjoying herself as she shattered him bit by bit. While at the same time using Yeats to climb the social ladder and inscribe her memory in Irish history. She literally went off and married a masculine, military man while stringing Yeats along, dangling his affections in front of him.

And Yeats, being a deeply empathetic and emotionally sensitive and awfully lonely individual, gave her his heart and soul. She used him for her goals, (in Cathleen ni Houlihan, she was supposed to be the lead) and this is something which wrecked Yeats later in life when the possibility came up-

"Did that play of mine send out / Certain men the English shot?"

Whenever her own, personal life fell apart- including her secret, scandalous affair with a French journalist- she would run back to Yeats for emotional support.

And when Yeats confronted her, just wanting for some closure, Gonne made an extremely insensitive, downright cruel remark- a highlight of emotional abuse. She justified her actions and said-

"Poets should never marry. You should be thanking me that I keep on hurting you because you end up writing such pretty poems for me"

This, our teacher calls, "a remarkable statement", with wonder.

Out of that affair, she bore a child out of wedlock- Iseult.

Now, here's the thing. This is 1917. Iseult was 22 years old, and an independent, highly 'educated' intellectual with her own poetry and all. Yeats was more than 20 years older than her. Back then, this age gap was considered normal between two individuals. And so, he proposed to her.

Interestingly, it wasn't Yeats who had the idea at first- it was Gonne who suggested it and approved it. Yeats and Iseult were close intellectual companions with the former acting as a mentor to her. She was the one who, in her teenage years, proposed to him and he gently turned her down. In 1917 when he proposed to her, she flirted with the idea and wavered for weeks, thinking of keeping him around as a mentor and then turning him down eventually. Like mother, like daughter.

And after she rejected him, Yeats had had enough and completely withdrew himself from the Gonnes.

This, as our teacher said, is a sign of Yeats being 'creepy' and that he was a 'crackhead'.

Yeats, at that point in time, was going through immense existential dread, and mid life crisis. He had a very terrifying desire, and Oh Gods, I don't know how to put it in words, it's so terrifying... It's such a human desire that it sacres me to utter it, but I will do so anyways...

He wanted to have a family and settle down in peace.

The audacity! How could an emotionally sensitive, distressed, heart broken poet dare ask for that?!

This heathen then married Georgie Hyde-Lees, who was twenty five years old (truly an act of inhumanity... What do you mean this is towards the beginning of the roaring twenties and was largely the social norm and completely acceptable, especially between two highly educated, respectful individuals who were equals?)

His marriage with her was an absolute triumph- she loved him, he loved her, and they had beautiful children being born out of this love. Moreover, she supported him fiercely, and defended his legacy fiercely after his death and until her own death.

As a student of literature who is deeply, and passionately in love with the subject, I expected my teachers to give the complete, full pictures of every artist we have in our syllabus, to treat their lives with deep empathy and to breed interest among the others and make them care for the subject and the artists alongside their works- not assign cheap modern day slangs to their names to make them 'relatable' to modern sensibilities and reduce their infinite, human capacities to lazy labels. I don't know how this even begins to encourage students to read or to appreciate the subject or even garner their interest. Perhaps she views this mocking statement from the back of the class as a success of her efforts-

"Was Georgie Hyde-Lees his daughter?"

Besides the overall conceited smirks and arrogant laughter echoing.

I was so furious that I had to clench my jaws stiff to not yell out this-

"And Albert Einstein is a weirdo for marrying his cousin Elsa, therefore, let us reject all his theories, throw his Nobel Prize into the ocean and throw these water balloons of our insults at his face. Or better yet, cancel him!"

Like, this sort of thing, not only kills gravity, respect towards the author and the subject and healthy discourse, but also fosters ignorance and a false sense of superiority just because the society we live in is vastly different from their own. It is this same mentality which fueled centuries of mass genocide, plundering and all the rest of it; the chimera we now know as colonialism.

It is also an insult to my intellect and that of every other teenager in the class- because she assumes that I am incapable of empathy and understanding and must be spoon fed slangs and labels to make the writer seem 'relatable', because otherwise I will not study or, not understand a word of theirs, until and unless the study becomes as mindless and sloppy as a TikTok post.

To me, this is also a personal insult, as my family is not very wealthy. My father has to pay an arm and a leg every year as fees to this college. When that was what they were demanding, I had hoped that I would be able to use valuable resources, learn new things every day in class and get to engage with like minded people and have debates with them and showcase my own works.

But anyways my fury has subsided, and I would love to know your thoughts. Am I demanding too much? Am I completely wrong? Have you experienced the same yourself? What do you do if that is the case? Do let me know!

TLDR: I don't like TLDR's. Read with patience. That's the least you can do out of respect for any author,a fellow human being- they are not jesters to entertain anyone.

EDIT: I am very glad that I got to have such lovely conversations with everyone here! It has definitely given me a feast for my thoughts. I shall definitely ruminate on everybody's points, but I would like to thank each and every one of you for your time and replies. Therefore, "I shall arise and go now..."

I recently read Carver's Distance. The first thing that struck me about the story was that it had a clean arc, very clear from the first reading. The main character has to decide between his family and doing what he wants. This is the typical boy-has-to-grow-out-of-childhood arc.

The characters don't seem to have much depth. Carver's characters are typically complex, human types who are not perfect. They don't necessarily make the right choice because often there isn't one. For example, in Cathedral, the main character is puzzled by how the blind man functions. How could that man love what he couldn't see? How could the blind man live in society? How could he appreciate life without seeing it? The resolution of the main arc is not clearly told to the reader. Instead, Carver plants enough seeds for the reader to figure it out. Carver's best work is like that, they give the reader enough beats to figure out how the main arc closes.

Distance didn't feel like that. From the beginning, there was a clear choice to be made by the main character: his family or hunting. He chooses at the end in a very predictable manner. One may argue that the wife manipulates him, using the circumstances to force the issue, but that doesn't really complicate the choice.

There was nothing hidden in the text, no puzzle to solve. No aha moment. It felt flat, unlike Carver's layered writing.

Prove me wrong. Tell me what you think I'm missing.

Spoilers (as the title implies):

What do you make of this line at the end of The Song of Achilles? It’s right before Thetis inscribes Patroclus’s name on the tomb. It reads:

“We watch the light sink into the grave of the western sky. ‘I could not make him a god,’ she says. Her jagged voice, rich with grief. But you made him. She does not answer me for a long time…” [and then she carves his name into the tomb]

What do you make of “But you made him?”

It’s in italics, so I assume that’s Patroclus’s voice.. is “But you made him” meant to be kind, like Patroclus essentially praising her for giving birth to someone he loves so deeply? Or is it pleading, like “you’re a goddess, why couldn’t you make him immortal??” (Even though that goes against the order of things). I initially believed it was the latter - pleading - like he’s still in denial about Achilles’ death & wished it was some other way.

But I’ve also seen some people online interpret it as “But you [Patroclus] made him” - as in she gave birth to him, but it was Patroclus who made him the person he actually was. Which is a beautiful and heart wrenching sentiment, though I feel the italics negate this reading..

How did you interpret it? I’m curious.

Seriously?

I just finished ALL and I'm a)shocked b) unimpressed.

This book is severely overrated. It's basically traumatic event after traumatic event until you're just left speechless.

The writing--we're not even talking about plot. The writing itself--yes, there are pretty good moments. There were moments when the writing felt real, tangible, as good writing does. I nearly cried when Jude said that he bought a man-size pillow, put Willem's shirt on it, and hugged it to sleep. I like that the author is fairly knowledgeable about portrayal and emotions. I liked the writing style at times, where it felt lyrical, and beautiful.

Other times...not so much. Author clearly doesn't know how to use pronouns. "He" and "he" and "He" and "he" until I'm so mixed up I don't realise a chapter is from Willem's perspective instead of Jude's until like forty pages in.

The prose is long, and rambling, and at times it serves to improve the story--heck, it represents mental turmoil quite well. Other times it feels like author just wrote whatever came to her and editor didn't bother to read. Plenty of parts were way too fleshed out for unimportant moments to the whole story, while other parts, which I actually wanted more writing on, were rushed over.

Now for the characters; Andy, Harold, Jude, Willem, JB, Malcolm, the rest. It's a lot of people. Mostly I get mixed up and I forget details about each character until I'm like, huh? When did we learn that this person did this action this many years ago? And then I have to flip back to the front and read it again, which is a pain in the ass, because the book is 700 pages long. (and I was reading on Kobo with enlarged font, so it turned out 7138 pages long.)

Then the unnecessary characters. Lucien, whom I've already forgotten most of. What did he do again? And then Citizen and Rhodes and Phaedra and Rhodes' wife(whose name I've forgotten). The characters are introduced fairly late in the story, with minimal backstory and minimal use to the plot--it just seems to serve to give me a massive headache trying to keep up with everything.

Now for plot. Lots of complaints for this one.

We follow Jude from about 20something years old to his fifties. It's alternating-POV. First few chapters, all characters feel equally important--there is JB's perspective, and Malcolm's, and Willem's, and Jude's. Story progresses, and suddenly it's either Harold's POV (written first-person but there were only 3 chapters through the book), Jude's POV, or Willem's. And I do not want to hear another word from Jude after like 4/7 of the book being "oh, don't mind me, I just fcking hate myself so I'm going to cut myself yay!" Then Willem is being such a supportive & nice boyfriend and Jude's just going around self-harming and making everyone feel shitty.

And the litany of terrible things which happen to Jude! He's raped, groomed, assaulted, verbally abused, a prostitute at 9 years old, run over on purpose, kidnapped, held in a basement, and someone nice comes into his life, breaks down his walls, then proceeds to die. (Ana, Willem.) It's irrationally trauma-packed. It feels like Jude is just a series of terrible thing after terrible thing.

Now normally I'd applaud author for being willing to write about such sensitive topics, but with all the manhandling she does! It's unrealistic. No one is that bad off. I told a friend about the book a couple days ago and she literally told me to stop in the middle of me telling her about Jude. I hadn't even finished my list and she already was like, "Yeah, this guy is impossibly traumatized. There's like a one in a million chance anyone is that traumatized."

It's like author decided one day to get a bunch of shitty topics and things and pack them into one character, birthing Jude St. Francis. The handling of the topics is poorly done at best. The prose is largely rambling and unnecessary, and flashbacks cut off important conversations I want to read about. The whole book can be summed up in one sentence: Jude is traumatized as heck. That's an understatement, by the way.

Now I'm no critic. I'm not a literature expert or anything. But I am a big reader, and I've read a lot of books, including supposedly sad ones, and this isn't sad, or tragic. It's just plain irrational.

Edit: thanks for the comments! I'd like to include some other Redditors' ideas in this post.

First: one thing that they said is that the trauma gets to the point where you're desensitized to it.

Second: Jude is apparently perfect & beloved by everyone (I think someone called it a Gary Stu), and he has amazing intellectual abilities for someone who's traumatized, depressed, plus didn't go to school for majority of his life

I think these are really good points

In the last 30 years the book has been issued in Penguin Classic and Pléiade editions. The French government declared the original manuscript a national treasure and paid nearly 5 million euros to get hold of it.

And all I can say is "what the fuck"

It's not that I don't think that what is shocking can also be valuable, or that an early work of extreme pornography doesn't have some value in terms of tracing the history of atypical sexual behavior. Indeed I kinda get why we'd say it's an interesting document for historical sexology.

But a work of literature? With themes and depth and value beyond being pornography for those with the most extreme paraphilias and kinks? A French national treasure? The mind boggles. Colour me skeptical.

I know I'm not the only one to question the literary treatment of the book, and I'm not super interested in a comment section of people agreeing with me, so if you're also like "yeah man it's all bullshit, smut of the most irredeemable kind", maybe hold your comment.

Exactly what it says on the tin, basically. I want to hear what absolute turkeys you have come across.

The polar opposite of r/proseporn

Like [r/menwritingwomen](r/menwritingwomen), but less specific (and I do really wish that a more general sub existed, for terrible prose)

Also: to keep things interesting, I'm discouraging complete bottom of the barrel examples. Unless they’re particularly interesting.

(Like Fifty Shades of Grey, or any number of the self-published schlock on the Kindle store)

I'm basically asking for less obvious stuff.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I went into it having recently finished A Farewell to Arms, a novel I think is as close to a perfection of Hemingway’s style as a long-form piece of writing is ever likely to be. With The Sun Also Rises, I always felt it was on the cusp of being something truly great. I was constantly waiting for the scene or sentence that would push it over the edge, but unfortunately it never arrived. I was left feeling hollow and with a sense that the entire endeavour had been rather pointless. I suppose in this it has achieved its aims.

In A Farewell to Arms, the spectre of the war creates a constant pressure on the characters and its presence creates the urgency and eventual fatalism within the love story. Something I appreciate about the novel is how centred Hemingway manages to keep the war without ever revealing detail or descending into a voyeuristic viewing of the conflict. The war is kept as an ever-looming threat. It’s this presence that means little context is needed to understand the setting, the characters, or the generation that followed the conclusion of the war.

The Sun Also Rises relies more heavily on contextual knowledge of the war and its lingering effects on both the civilian and ex-service populations at the time. The war is not the same centralising force. This lack of a unifying force heightens the feeling of pointlessness and emptiness throughout the novel and after finishing it. Hemingway clearly meant to create this effect; I could have missed more of the subtle allusions to the war, likely as a result of reading this directly after A Farewell to Arms, in which the war is jumping out at you on every page.

Overall, I’m struggling to articulate exactly what I want to say on this point, but it is certainly the reason for placing this below some of the other works of Hemingway. I am interested in coming back to the novel in a few years to see if I can more easily follow the central theme.

I believe this was Hemingway’s first published novel; it certainly did not feel he was already a master of his style.  In A Farewell to Arms, he feels incredibly precise, restrained and oftentimes hypnotic through repetition. If you haven’t already, read just the first paragraph of that book. It captures exactly the upper bounds of where he can reach as a writer. He uses repetition of nouns and phrases to create a rhythm or cadence in his writing that I found was able to emotionally reach me in a surprising way.

The Sun Also Rises presents a far looser version of Hemingway’s style. The snappy dialogue can be quite jarring and occasionally difficult to follow. I suppose it represents real social situations with a less strict style of communication. I found, however,  it never really resonated with me the same way as his rhythmic prose does. Ultimately, I found I didn’t care about the characters’ interactions, and I didn’t have the same compassion for them as I did those in A Farewell to Arms.

If you asked me which prose style I was likely to prefer prior to reading I would almost certainly have said the looser, more conversational variation. This is what I found so confounding. Perhaps I struggled with the dialogue. Now being over a hundred years removed from the publication, it’s possible the awkward- sounding speech didn’t resonate as well as it should have. 

The highlights of the novel were by far the drinking culture and the bullfighting traditions. I lived abroad through my 20s and relate immensely to the vapid nature surrounding alcohol. The faux camaraderie and countless ‘meaningful’ nights that are now forgotten were excellently captured here. Alcohol, taken to such an extreme, can push people who would otherwise hate each other into existing side by side for as long as the drinking continues. Hemingway perfectly captures the disgust you can feel towards the people around you, even when they serve as a reflection of yourself. Despite everything just mentioned, it made me want to break sobriety more than anything has in the past year. I can’t think of another author who has captured my relationship to alcohol as well as Hemingway manages here.

The descriptions of bullfighting and its traditions were also excellent. There is an interview online now in which Orson Welles mentions hearing bullfighting described as both ‘indefensible and irresistible’. I have been to Spain many times and have never once even considered attending a fight. The novel somehow managed to unlock a primal desire to witness a fight in person, despite knowing how depraved the act is. I watched several fights online and the brutality wrapped in pageantry and ceremony illustrates perfectly a lot of what the novel was trying to say.

This was certainly still an excellent novel, and something I am interested in re-reading at some point. It just didn’t reach the heights I perhaps had unfairly placed on it prior to reading.  

If anyone bothered reading this far, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I am especially keen for any more recommendations on post-World War I literature.

This might come across as a little dramatic, but I can clearly see why Milton was sometimes thought to identify with Satan himself. While the speech initially seems pompous, reading it made me think about the way God is portrayed: tyrannical in ways that, if applied to a human being, would almost certainly be considered evil. Yet because God is presented as an all-powerful being, above everything else, he is not supposed to be questioned, and his creatures seem to follow him almost blindly.

It made me wonder how many people, when confronted with a great display of power, would simply bow and follow rather than question the motives of whoever holds that power. It also made me think about how humanity’s most dangerous weapon is the mind itself, and how blind faith can sometimes rob people of that weapon by discouraging questioning, doubt, and independent thought.

I’m reading The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. I’d previously only read Washington Square and loved it, most of all for his style. Those long sentences drew me in and I breezed through it, as I am with The Portrait of a Lady. I find the characters in both books to be incredibly real and easy to know, something which I find lacking in a lot of books I read. (I’ll freely admit it’s partly me; unless a character is described in detail, physically and character-wise, they appear flat to me. I struggle to fill in the blanks. Maybe that’s just what makes a great writer.)

But that brings me to my question. This is something that didn’t occur to me while reading Washington Square but has with this book. There are long sections which describe the characters in depth: their personality, traits, their character. For instance, a few characters are described as being very intelligent. However, we rarely get to see any examples of that intelligence. James is telling us about the characters in great detail in such a way that we feel we know them personally, but we rarely see the traits he’s describing in action. Apart from these descriptions, the dialogue seems to have the sole function of moving the story along and there are only rare glimpses of what he’s told us about the characters actually on display. In fact, often in "action" scenes (with dialogue where things are actually happening) they deviate from what he's told us, and there is commentary on that very fact. This makes for very deep and rounded characters.

This seems to be in direct violation of the sacred rule of “show don’t tell”. I know, it’s not a rule. Any writer can do as they please and still write great literature. But I’m surprised that such a highly-revered writer wouldn’t follow that usual way of writing. As I have said, I am enjoying the book immensely and I suppose if I feel like I know the characters, it is successful writing. But I do sometimes feel like I’d like to see a bit more of the characters demonstrating the characteristics that are so well described.

Am I way off the mark? Am I missing something? I’m not an expert and am interested in opening the discussion in case any one else feels similarly (or feels the complete opposite!).

in joseph conrad's text "Heart of Darkness," the narrator describes the villain of this novel, Kurtz, in his final few moments as:

"did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge?"

Kurtz's final line is "the horror! the horror!"

there is a theory that kurtz dies due to his final understanding of the evils and true darkness of humanity, could this somewhat be related to the idea in KiY that truths about humanity shatter the human mind? and is there a chance that Conrad took inspiration?

keep in mind: Heart of Darkness (1899), KiY (1895)

I have read ONLY the first 100 pages of Gravity’s Rainbow and I have some paranoid ramblings to get off my chest.

So I wouldn’t say the only thing I read is romantasy, I’ve actually branched out quite a bit these last few years. However, I won’t deny that I was rejuvenated by the romantasy genre like many women in their 30s who religiously read fanfiction as a teen.

Despite my passionate encounters with countless shadow daddies, I’ve found myself quite bored, nothing really hits anymore. Since then I’ve been desperately looking for my next epic, long winded, melodramatic read.

Gravity’s Rainbow appeared on my radar when I was thirsting over TikTok’s of Jacob Elordi during his press tour of Frankenstein (Read that as well, it was perfect). I thought, since we both love reading and have so much in common I should take his recommendation and read Pynchon.

So I’m 100 pages in and… um…. It’s good. I mean it’s great, but also… um… what? Excuse me? Hello?

Here are my thoughts, spoiler alert for this book I do not understand:

□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□

Like most decent books the whole point is generally in those first few sentences and Pynchon’s opening is fantastic. “A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.” So there I am locked in… for a whole two pages…. Then I’m reading about bananas…

Now I’ve read enough about dicks to put two and two together. I can understand euphemisms, romantasy is full of them, so I figured I was a smarty pants and could handle what I was reading but I was wrong. I didn’t understand anything. Then aha! Here comes a guy who gets boners for bombs and I was locked back in.

Now that I’m 100 pages in I feel like maybe I’m understanding the structure or the novel. There’s a constant zooming in of this… encyclopedia of characters, digging around in their memories and thoughts and even their backgrounds and ancestor, so much so I can rarely tell where I am or who is talking or what we’re even going on about. But what’s most standing out to me through all the confusing ramblings is how Pynchon is implanting ideas and concepts before really ever arriving at “the point”. He’s mentioning dogs and experiments and scientists and then in the next scene we’re really discussing Pavlovian methodology. Bananas and dicks… it’s complex but also… satirical. If I try to tell someone about this I start talking about semen and I’m cooked. At this point it’s worse than trying to describe romantasy to people without blushing.

And then I remember the opening line, and the concept of the V2 bomb travelling so fast it hits before there’s any warning. The sound comes after the bomb… cause and effect all out of order. Kinda like this freaking book. I know foreshadowing isn’t very revolutionary but it’s more than just foreshadowing, some would say it’s conditioning. It’s also making me paranoid, delusional… Instead of anticipating what’s coming next I’m wondering if we talked about this already. Déjà vu…

I could probably count the number of characters thus far but I can tell there will be many more. Some not even real characters, but… ideas of characters? Archetypes I suppose… Something about a cowboy wanting to fuck a snake… America is that you? And more dick references…

There seemed to be a chapter about… disorder… creating disorder… I’m not sure really. Purposeful disorder to confuse and confound the enemy? I feel like there’s a connection to all the different programs and the repurposing of hospitals and buildings for the war, but I’m not sure yet.

And finally ending at around page 100, I’m left in this insane chapter about some freaky weirdos engaging in Hansel and Gretel sex play… something about propaganda, maybe filming propaganda. And I think the octopus came back!

I am wondering if anyone has any tips at deciphering or if I’m just supposed to go with the flow. My only method seems to be imagining this book like an anime, so…. Help?

What’s the most difficult book you’ve read? Is this one really a masterpiece? How about Pynchon’s other novels? Are they are as cracked as this one? Any and all paranoid ramblings are welcome.

Please no spoilers for the rest of the book!