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When I was a freshman, I wanted desperately to throw 'A Seperate Peace' across the room-- but I was cowed by the literati into faking admiration for the book.
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There is a very nice guy in my ward that a few months confirmed that we could never, ever date by raving about the DaVinci Code.
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If you really feel the urge to read books about secret religious conspiracies and hidden truths, read Robert Anton Wilson. At least he references his work, and he's way funnier.
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If you're going to use mental energy hating a French author, hate someone deserving - like Racine.
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Oh ! Oh ! We continue the thread by having a discution on french autors ?
So, I would rectify some of what i wrote. First, Stendhal wrote with an extremly good style and his stories are very interesting BUT I hate very very much his principals characters like Julien Sorel. I have a strong repulsion.
Secondly, About Balzac, I dislike all his work without one or two books, because he was too long in his description. For information, He was paid by producing pages : more he wrote, more he earn money. And Again and again, his stories let me sleep quicker than Ether. However, his descriptions are the best. Nobody like him can do that (maybe Zola did it it).
And about Racine, I don't think he was strong to read. But his work is not to be read, but first to be played.
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Then, at our graduation party, several people (not me, as my copy had been my mother's) brought their copies of TSL from the previous year and threw them in the bonfire.
This was the same bonfire where I roasted the "American Values" chapter of our sophomore year Civics book.
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i read DaVinci code in one day while bored completely out of my brains on a holiday stuck in the suburbs so i raved about it until:
1) i realised the book was badly written and the characters were 1 dimensional stereotypes 2)i realised that it was really supposed to be taken seriously 3) the media picked it up and started all their 'controversy' documentaries 4)i read Angels and Demons and figured they were both pitched at teenage boys...
then on a holidy in Scotland we visited Rosslyn chapel and the big punch line didn't even exist... and it was the creepiest place i've ever been...
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The Davinci Code is about as good as oh say Farenheit 9/11. Both were fairly entertaining, but both were also completely and utterly a bunch of crap.
One of the oldest and esiest tricks in the book used to entertain people and make them rave about something is to give them "facts" that point to some "obvious" horrible truth. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING brings a group of people together as fast as giving them something easy to hate. It gives them a sense of purpose, and if it is twisted enough, they think they are doing the right thing for everyone.
The only problem I really have with Dan Brown or Michael Moore isn't that they make these books/movies. Hell, there are TONS of horrible works of fiction in the world. What bothers me is that they advertise their work as subtle truth, with no inaccuracies.
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Seeing as how the Hatrack literati appear to despise this book, I think I'm going to have to read it.
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Chris, I don't know if many Hatrackers would really get into the Illuminati trilogy.
By the way, anyone ever play the boxed game? I played it when I was a li'l Storm Saxon with my brother and it was pretty fun.
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I read Things Fall Apart for a seminar class and made a comment that got me despised by a lot of people for a long time. Someone was saying something about western missionaries destroying native cultures. I said, "This is a native culture where it was OK to hack up an innocent boy with a machete. I'm not convinced that a culture like that needs to be salvaged."
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I also have read "Things Fall Apart", Annie. One thing the professor said is that we had to pretend to be Ibo to 'get' the story, because that is how it was.
After all, it's not like any culture isn't cruel .
I liked the book alright. I liked it more than the short stories by Flannery O'Connor we had to read, which I really had to try had to finish. Her ideas didn't mesh with my own at all.
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As for French writers, give me Voltaire, Moliére and Louis-Ferdinand Celine, especially the latter's Death on the Installment Plan.
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One of my favorite books was "Dangerous Liasons" by Chaderlos de Laclos(or something like that)Good lord, it was as racy a book as I have ever read, and written in the 1700's.
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Oh, man! I hated Dangerous Liasons. Well, I suppose I like the way it was done - as a gossipy series of letters - but couldn't handle the depreavity of everyone involved.
Has anyone else read Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist? It's a book I loved and hated all at the same time. I loved it because it was so beautifully modernist and I hated it because it made me want to clobber Jacques. I was fairly ambivalent about the author until he launched into a diatribe about his purposeful inflammatory use of the f-word.
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I threw "The Atrocity Exhibition" recently. JG Ballard seems to think repetitive, semi-coherent descriptions of sexualised violence constitues art. There just has to be something else there.
Maybe I was just impatient after having to read nearly 100 pages roughly three or four times before I understood what was happening.
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Don't mixe Dan Brown and Michael Moore ! This last show us a part of american society with eyes of an American. When he show us the violence in Bowling for Columbine, I don't think he is so wrong : look your News at TV, and count the number of violence scenes you see. I admit he use just a point of view, but he args well. Look his work in all, not just Farenheit 9/11. It's just a brick.
But, it's clearly a long discussion we can have...
To come back to the thread, My favorite old french Autors are Maurice Leblanc, Gaston Leroux, Gustave Flaubert, Voltaire, Guy de Maupassant (except for Une vie), Jules Verne (of course), Edmond Rostant, and i certainly forget others. I don't speak about poets because my list may get very long.
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"This last show us a part of american society with eyes of an American."
Choobak, keep in mind that you're a Frenchman arguing to Americans that this depiction of American society is accurate. I submit that we're better-equipped to make that judgement. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Excuse-me but i don't arg that. I just wrote that Moore is american too. So his judgement must be considered. I reconize his method are perticularly suggestive but as many american docs. In that (in the way he use), we also have an idea of the american society.
About me as a French, I want to notice i have an exterior look of USA, And maybe it is interesting for your autojudgement. (idea of how others percept you) Don't think i am one of this French who spit on you. That's right, some things irritate me in USA, BUT i like USA more. Else I Don't go here to discuss with you... Posts: 1189 | Registered: Dec 2004
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A lot of Americans agree with the conclusions that Michael Moore makes, but I, for one, take issue with the way he presents it. His films are propaganda and they discredit the message he's trying to send.
The most difficult French literature I ever had to read was Les Batisseurs de l'Empire. I forgot the name of the author... V something. I suppose I'm just not very in tune with l'absurde.
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Boris Vian !! One of the "importator" of Rock'n Roll in France, A great autor, and a wonderful artist. I didn't make him in my list because he is too recent (50's) But he's one i like.
Good choice, Annie !
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