Show Library: Pseudointellectual Books That, in Fact, Suck - Page 13

tdarko · #**121** 12-12-2006, 03:45 PM

NT,

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i am extremely hard pressed to give a flying [censored] about any of ezra pound's original poems. i really like some of his translations - although he took considerable liberties with the content.

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i don't think t.s. eliot wrote a single play worth two tenths of a rat turd even though his poems are pure genius.

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W/o Pound, Eliot would be nameless. Pound revised, rewrote and facelifted <u>The Waste Land</u>. Eliot's original and Pound's revised copy (the copy we buy and read at the bookstore) are so different that Eliot should have just put Pound's name on the cover.

sam h · #**122** 12-12-2006, 03:47 PM

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W/o Pound, Eliot would be nameless. Pound revised, rewrote and facelifted <u>The Waste Land</u>. Eliot's original and Pound's revised copy (the copy we buy and read at the bookstore) are so different that Eliot should have just put Pound's name on the cover.

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Yup, the pre-editing version of the Waste Land is so much worse than the standard published version.

JMP300z · #**123** 12-12-2006, 03:52 PM

This thread hurts my head.

I think rand is good but overrated.

Great gatsby, Catch 22, Heart of darkness are some of my favorite books. All of you people "fronting" can go to hell.

-JP

dibbs · #**124** 12-12-2006, 03:58 PM

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This thread hurts my head.

I think rand is good but overrated.

Great gatsby, Catch 22, Heart of darkness are some of my favorite books. All of you people "fronting" can go to hell.

-JP

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So your argument is basically they're wrong because you like these books?

amplify · #**125** 12-12-2006, 04:02 PM

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I'm still unclear why "the Aleph" is supposed to be such a major work.

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I just recently reread this and I agree totally. Borges has one little idea, writes it up competently in a 6-page story, and that's it. He does this in every story, one idea, barely even fleshed out, that goes nowhere. He isn't even close to the apex of short story writing, which is, in fact, Chekhov.

smilingbill · #**126** 12-12-2006, 04:03 PM

I hated One Hundred Years of Solitude, found it just plain boring. Freakonomics started out pretty well but ended up with a feeling of disappointment.

cjmewett · #**127** 12-12-2006, 04:04 PM

You call Infinite Jest a book that was written and is read as an exercise in pretension, then you use the word "oevre" with what I imagine must be a straight face and make reference to the literary opinions of Martin Amis.

Forgive me if I LOLed.

thirddan · #**128** 12-12-2006, 04:19 PM

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Stephen Hawkings "A Brief History of Time". It takes all of about two chapters to lose most readers - yet it is supposed to be *the* book to explain astrophysics to the rest of us.

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What?

I found it pretty straightforward. I can understand Brian Greene's books losing people, but A Brief History of Time was... not that complex a book. I guess it's been about a year since I read it, so maybe I'm wrong.

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im not sure if you are talking about the original or his revised easier to understand version...but the newer one was relatively easy for me to grasp (most of the concepts) and i don't know anything about physics/science/etc...

samsonite2100 · #**129** 12-12-2006, 04:27 PM

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You call Infinite Jest a book that was written and is read as an exercise in pretension, then you use the word "oevre" with what I imagine must be a straight face and make reference to the literary opinions of Martin Amis.

Forgive me if I LOLed.

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Whatever you may think about Amis' fiction, which I agree is massively pretentious a great deal of the time, his literary criticism is really great.

And I used "oeuvre" with a straight face, since it's the most appropriate word for what I was talking about. I guess I could have written "body of work" instead--would that be less lol-worthy?

cjmewett · #**130** 12-12-2006, 04:34 PM

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You call Infinite Jest a book that was written and is read as an exercise in pretension, then you use the word "oevre" with what I imagine must be a straight face and make reference to the literary opinions of Martin Amis.

Forgive me if I LOLed.

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Whatever you may think about Amis' fiction, which I agree is massively pretentious a great deal of the time, his literary criticism is really great.

And I used "oeuvre" with a straight face, since it's the most appropriate word for what I was talking about. I guess I could have written "body of work" instead--would that be less lol-worthy?

[/ QUOTE ]To be clear, I'm not ripping you. I just thought it was funny.