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Topic:
Modern Classics of World Literature (currently disc. "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck)
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alavda_corre
Registered:
Sep '05
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Date Posted:
11/18/07 8:11pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Tess of the d'Urbervilles)
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Hammurabi posted:
In a modern context, Tess seems very silly. Naming her daughter 'Sorrow'? Come on, Hardy. I read Tess, but couldn't get myself to like or care about the protagonist.
By all logic, I should agree with this. And normally I would. But for some reason, Hardy's dark take on life lessons is morbidly appealing. I cared about the Protagonist because I cared about what Hardy had for her.
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Padawan to Ender_Sai
"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Lewis Carroll
“Realism...has no more to do with reality than anything else.” - Hob Broun
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
11/19/07 2:21pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Tess of the d'Urbervilles)
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Hardy is very downbeat at times. But you certainly get an idea of how people were trapped by societal and economic and emotional circumstances.
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NYCitygurl
Title: Manager of SFFBC, C&G, and NSWFF
Registered:
Jul '02
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Date Posted:
11/30/07 12:08pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Tess of the d'Urbervilles)
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Sometimes? Always. I am a huge un-fan of his. Yes, life can be dreary, but some people are happy; it's not dismal all the time.
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"Not till the moon falls. Not till the world ends."
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
11/30/07 12:26pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Tess of the d'Urbervilles)
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"Far From the Madding Crowd" had a semi-happy ending...
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Katana_Geldar
Title: Former CR Tasmania, AU
Registered:
Mar '03
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Date Posted:
11/30/07 8:34pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Tess of the d'Urbervilles)
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So does Tess, but for Angel and Liza-Lu thought.
It's the only book that makes me cry.
Anyone want to join me in smacking Angel over the head?
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Jacen and the two Vergeres http://swfanon.wikia.com/wiki/User:Katana_Geldar/Jacen_Solo%2C_Vergere_and_the_Force "They press some bum button and out comes the beams." - Excellence Aliena nobis, nostra plus aliis placent. SWC Senator for Alderaan
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alavda_corre
Registered:
Sep '05
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Date Posted:
12/1/07 5:39am
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Tess of the d'Urbervilles)
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I'm in for an Angel smacking!
Though Tess couldn't get away scot free.. *shakes her head* silly silly girl
-----signature-----
Padawan to Ender_Sai
"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Lewis Carroll
“Realism...has no more to do with reality than anything else.” - Hob Broun
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NYCitygurl
Title: Manager of SFFBC, C&G, and NSWFF
Registered:
Jul '02
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Date Posted:
12/8/07 6:04am
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Tess of the d'Urbervilles)
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Much as I love the name, yeah, he was a jerk 
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Controversial in its time, this is the story of a young boy, Huck, who runs away from his abusive father and meets up with Jim, a runaway slave. They travel down the Mississippi River on a raft, meeting up with two con men, the King and the Duke, beautiful, orphaned girls, and finally a nice family who are relatives of Huck's best friend, Tom Sawyer.
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"Not till the moon falls. Not till the world ends."
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Hammurabi
Registered:
Jan '07
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Date Posted:
12/8/07 10:02am
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing The Adventures of Hucklebery Finn)
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I read Huck Finn around the time Borat came out. The parallels are fascinating. Both are picaresque stories of outsiders (Borat/Azamat, Huck/Jim) who travel through the American South. In both stories, the characters are mere observers: the real focus is on American society. To make things interesting, the protagonists of both novels are generally at odds with 'sivilized' society - although both stories question how 'sivilized' our society really is. Both stories are characterized by deception: Cohen's deception in Borat, and the nearly non-stop use of aliases in Huck.
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and i know no one can sing the blues like blind willie mctell
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
12/8/07 1:54pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing The Adventures of Hucklebery Finn)
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This is Twain's undoubted masterpiece.
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KissMeImARebel
Registered:
Nov '03
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Date Posted:
12/8/07 9:21pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing The Adventures of Hucklebery Finn)
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I love Huck Finn. I've always wanted to go down the Miss. in a raft with him. Screw the brilliant satire.
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Waru's Sword of Truth
RebelMollom of The Kind
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General Kenobi
Title: Comms Admin
SW & Film Music
Classic Trilogy
Registered:
Dec '98
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Date Posted:
12/8/07 9:39pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing The Adventures of Hucklebery Finn)
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"Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? ... ain't that a big enough majority in any town?"
So many great moments in this journey down the Mississippi. A journey that takes place on many levels.
This is the "great American novel", not Moby Dick (19th century, at least  ).
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Palpateen
Registered:
Apr '00
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Date Posted:
12/8/07 10:54pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)
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Huck is one of the best novels ever, of course. Everytime in the last few months when I hear the name of Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, I think of Huck Finn. Strange.
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Whatever happened to Yareal Poof?
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darth_frared
Registered:
Jun '05
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Date Posted:
12/9/07 2:00am
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)
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i love it.
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illegalise stupidity.
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
12/21/07 6:55am
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)
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Here's what I wrote for the Top 100 Books thread:
"When I first read this book, I was maybe ten years old, and I was put off by the difference from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” to which it is a nominal sequel. It is, however, very different in style and quality. “Tom Sawyer” is told in neutral third person, and is a genre piece; “Huck Finn” is told in colloquial first person, and is a masterpiece.
Huck is the son of the town drunkard; his father is missing, his mother dead. He lives on the streets, and is a total outcast. At the end of “Tom Sawyer”, the local wealthy widow decides to adopt him. Happy ending, right? Wrong. Huck hates ‘sivilization’, as he puts it. The only thing he fears more is his father, Pap Finn, who reappears in the story, and is the main villain of the piece.
Pap is a member of the ‘undeserving poor’ (in Wilde’s phrase). One of the best bits in the book tells of a new Judge in town that doesn’t know Pap and imagines that he will reform him. Pap, being Pap, plays along, and signs a temperance pledge, and vows change in floods of tears, to the delight of the Judge and his family, who have allowed him to stay with them. According to Huck, he then sneaks out of the Judge’s home, trades his new coat for a jug of whiskey, gets royally drunk, and destroys the Judge’s spare room.. Reports Huck laconically: “The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the ole man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn’t know no other way.”
Twain based Huck on a real person, Tom Blankenship, whom he had known in his youth. Huck is perhaps 13 years old (the book neither tells his age definitely nor describes his physical appearance), and an odd combination of naif and cynic. He decides to shed both the widow and Pap, and runs away down the Mississippi in company with the runaway slave of the widow’s sister. They have numerous encounters, one of the most famous being two con men, the Duke and the Dauphin. These two put on a Shakespearean play, “Romeo and Juliet” (the Dauphin playing Juliet), to very indifferent response; so the Duke decides to play down to his audience, and on the next playbill, he prints: “LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED. “There,” says he, “If that line don’t fetch them, I don’t know Arkansaw!” It does indeed ‘fetch’ them.
Several incidents in the book were missing from the edited version I first read: they usually cut the feud episode, since it involves the death of a child, and the Col. Sherburn one, as it involves lynching. (Try to get the original version, before idiots who imagine that this book is for children got their mits on it.) But we see that Huck abhors violence, and though he comes to dislike the Duke and the Dauphin, their fates utterly depress him. The book shows that Huck not only resists the evils of his father, he resists the evils of the society in which he lives: that is, group think and (most importantly) slavery. In the moral high point of the book, he decides to assist Jim, even though he is sure it will mean he will go to hell for it.
At the end of the book, another kind women decides to adopt Huck. He is not enthused: “But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”
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NYCitygurl
Title: Manager of SFFBC, C&G, and NSWFF
Registered:
Jul '02
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Date Posted:
1/26 7:36pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)
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Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Caroll's masterpiece is full of symbols and allusions. It The tale plays with logic in ways that have made the story of lasting popularity with adults as well as children" (wikipedia).
Alice falls down a rabbit hole into Wonderland, where she meets all sorts of strange creatures, shinks and grows several times, attends the Mad Hatter's tea party, and plays croquet with the Queen of Hearts.
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"Not till the moon falls. Not till the world ends."
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