Okay. So I decided to take precious time from my LIFE and read a "classic" novel: Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte. More like "Smothering Shites." To say this book disappointed would be a very sad understatement, indeed. About half way through the book, when a couple of the main characters died, and I felt NOTHING, I almost abandoned it. But then I thought, NO...it MUST have a redeeming quality! Look! Someone has written a lengthy introduction! It has a bibliography, for cripessake! IT IS A CLASSIC! And so, I pushed on. More minutes and hours of my life STOLEN by this piece of crap. Yeah, I said it.
The characters in this story are all mean, vindictive, hateful jerks who go around saying how well they love the other mean hateful jerks, when really, they are all inbred psychos who end up dying of the grippe or the flu or some other thing. Who cares? This book gets two giant thumbs down. Classic Schmlassic. I want the names of the good folks who say "Oh this is a CLASSIC!!" Just because a turd is 2oo years old, doesn't make it a classic. It's just an old turd.
Don't waste your time.
Next on my reading list: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
Some "criticisms" of great books are so manifestly the products of mere ignorance that offering so much as a feigned yawn by way of rebuttal would amount to an uconscionable exageration of thier significance. Prudence's "ponderings" on Wuthering Heights, however, actually fall short of being beneath comment; they are, in fact, beneath being beneath comment, which puts them in the rather strange position of requiring a refutation without actually meriting one.
ReplyDeleteBut when beholding a table so richly spread with a veritible feast of sophisms, it is not altogether easy to decide which dish to begin with. Perhaps we should start with her penetrating analysis of the main characters. Prudence's verdict? They are "jerks". And "mean". Mean jerks is what they are. One cannot help but wonder what she would say about,e.g., King Lear. "Crazy old man", no doubt. Captain Ahab? Mean crazy sailor. Achilles? Action hero. Raskolinikov? Mugger. Hamlet? Flip-flopper. Gulliver? Tall.
Imagine the time we could save if only we allowed Prudence to distil the essences of such apparently complicated personae for us! Why devout hours to Faust when the gist is that "he's a smart guy who hangs out with Satan and ends up regretting it. Well, DUH! You knew THAT wasn't gonna end well!"
There is so much more to say, but I fear it would just be so much wasted effort. Perhaps this review is not beneath being beneath comment.