I was just in Borders (the coffee’s better than at Amazon), enjoying an outing on a brilliant sunny day, and I saw a ‘recommended by the bookseller’ book that brought back all the boredom of reading it.
I have hardly ever given up reading a book part way through – in fact I can only think of two of them. This one – Luke Rhinehart’s The Dice Man and Joseph Heller’s Catch 22.
I know the are both classics, loved by many, but I thought they were both intensely boring awful books.
I feel about them much as I do about caviar. Other people make a fuss of it, but to me it’s like a mix of salty water and eggshells. Disgusting.
If they’re your favourite books, or you love caviar – forgive me. I’m sure it’s my failure. But nothing will convince me that these ‘classics’ are anything but dire rubbish, popular purely because they were the in-thing at the time.
I am with you on “Catch-22” and have not even heard of “The Dice Man”.
I don’t agree at all about Catch-22. I enjoyed it immensely – it’s funny (something very rare in a book) and has a great streak of madnes through it which, amazingly enough, was captured pretty well in the movie (but then I am a big fan of Alan Arkin).
But each to their own: my wife hated it. A book that I couldn’t finish was Ben Okri’s Booker-Prize-winning The Famished Road. I got turned off by about page 12…
Bron – you’ll find some woffle about it on Wikipedia – it was supposed to be deep and meaningful (and funny) because one (or more – I can’t remember) of the characters decided what to do in life on the throw of a dice. It was very popular in the 1970s.
Stephen – I did expect this sort of reaction, as several people I know and respect think Catch 22 is very funny. Personally I think the ‘humour’ makes Benny Hill look sophisticated. Wow, someone called Major Major is a Major. Whoopiedo.
Yes, I know, I’m missing all the nominative determinism and deep insights into the agony of being in the position of the key characters (or something). Sorry – for me it was dire, and so self-knowing with it, which made it hard to forgive.
But, hey, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is my all-time favourite TV programme. What do I know about culture?
Buffy the V….!? (Gasps for breath) You do realise this is a public forum Brian? People can read what you’ve written… I have to go and lie down now.
Hugh Fernleigh-Whittingstall’s Escape to River Cottage is the best thing on TV. So sue me. I have never read Catch-22. I could never get beyond the first paragraph of The English Patient before falling asleep (though I did enjoy the film).
I was talking about fiction on TV really, Henry. Actually, come to think of it…
I remember a huge tome called Goedel, Escher, Bach that everyone was reading when I was in my 20s. I was scared off by the title and the size, but it was certainly the “in thing”.
Another one I never read so don’t have a clue if it is scientific is “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance”.
In fact Waterstone’s has a whole table of these, called “Cult Fiction” or some such — probably all unread and bought as fashion accessories by people who want to look cool.
I have to admit I quite liked Catch 22 when I was very young, about 15.
Ah! Memories. I read Goedel, Esscher, Bach when I was a graduate student. I thought it was fantastic. These days I’d probably read Figments of Reality by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, which covers a lot of the same ground but without the arithmetic.
Both Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance and Goedel, Escher Bach were books of their time. Remeber a time when popular middle brow books included “The Ascent of Man” and “Civilisation”. What are their equivalents now? How about a coffee table version of Wikipedia!
As to novels, well Catch-22 is a great book; I read it as a teenager and more recently. It is both funny and a bit cringeworthy in places but both times I could not put it down. Gravity’s Rainbow is my great unread book, I have tried it twice and both time lost interest about 50 – 100 pages in. I think I have read the Life and Times of Tristram Shandy but I can remember little about it, however that maybe was its point.
My favourite cult book of all time is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson. I read it when I was too young to understand a word of it, but I loved it on an instinctive level. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, a follow-up, was also very funny in a sporadic way.
Brian D – I’ve just realised I may know the answer to your question. All the “young persons” I know seem to regard Douglas Coupland’s “Generation X” as a landmark. Another one unread by me.
I confess I am an unreconstructed fan of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I read it as a student and loved it and then read it again 20 years later to see if it had the same appeal and it did! There’s not really any science in it but there is some stuff about motorcycle maintenance which is used as a jumping-off point for a discourse on the importance of the experience of quality (mixed in with the story of the author’s road-trip with his dis-affected son).
I fear I may be terribly middle-brow…!
@Stephen – I am sure our brows may always be more middling than we wish. In the 70s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Goedel, Escher, Bach were perceived as counter-culture or at least slightly off-mainstream. I must admit I have never been able to get deeply into Zen… but then I have always had a more literal view of things. Of course neither of these examples are perceived as “difficult books” (unlike Gravity’s rainbow), I just found Pirsig’s style irritating.
Necromancer is another one (unread by me — as you are probably beginning to tell, I am not a “cult” reader!)
Yes, I have read Necromancer. I only read it last year on a long flight to somewhere. It wasn’t too difficult but I am not sure what all the hype was about. So Maxine, I don’t think you have missed anything on that one.
Is that really Ne*c*romancer you’re thinking of or Ne*u*romancer ? If the latter (as I suspect) I rather liked it, though I wouldn’t call it a favourite.
If you don’t see what the hype was about, I think you’re missing the point of how ahead of its time it was. It was written in 1984 (unlike 1984, which was written in 1948).
It’s hard to remember now, but back then, networking was really unusual. Bear in mind that when Microsoft launched Windows 95, 11 years after Neuromancer, the internet was still considered relatively unimportant, and Microsoft launched a private network (MSN) to compete with the likes of CompuServe and AOL, rather than provide internet access. Similarly Apple had their own private network in the mid-90s.
Whoops – Neuromancer it is. Sorry, I did not pick up Maxine’s intentional (?) slip. OK, Neuromancer may have been one of the first of its genre but networks (e.g. Darpanet) had been around for 5 or 6 years by then. Still it is a ripping yarn (well not that ripping really) rather than a “great work”.
Sorry, of course you are right. As you surmise, I was uncosciously thinking of necrophilia due to all this “cult”.