Comments on: Read what you like

By: Donn

Donn — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 00:15:02 +0000

“Reading, at its core, is about exploring your own interests, losing yourself in the words, the story and the characters. It’s not about peeking over your book to see who can see what important work you’ve chosen or comparing yourself with others.”

What a wonderful sentiment.

By: EDWARD

EDWARD — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 13:53:06 +0000

Thorton Wilder (whose name appears on the Nodern Library’s list of 100 best novels) once wrote a hit play, BY THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH. It opened to wide acclaim and was on the verge of winning a major award. A young Joseph Campbell, later to become famous for his work in mythology, was dragged to see the play by his friends, perhaps by the skin of his teeth. Upon seeing the play, campbell realized that the plot had been stolen from FINNEGAN’S WAKE. There were even four pages of dialogue lifted directly from FINNEGAN’S WAKE. When confronted with the accusation, Wilder smugly shrugged his shoulders and said, “Let people read Joyce’s novel and my play and let them decided for themselves.”
Wilder knew perfectly well the typical consumer of his plays was unable to do this and felt qiute safe on his morally bankrupt perch. The unknown Cambpell published an article which was haughtily flicked aside by the famous playwright. Campbell’s publisher’s, Random House, were worried about their nascent author being sullied by a famous playwright, so they contacted a celebrity of their own: T. S. Eliot. Eliot, a longtime admirer of the recently deceased Joyce, sided with Campbell and told Random House to publish Campbell’s book. Although stealing didn’t hurt Wilder as much as the audience would have liked, the prize he was poised to receive was withdrawn. All because of a few people who had actually read FINNEGAN’S WAKE.

By: Kevin A. Lewis

Kevin A. Lewis — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 20:48:46 +0000

Right on the money, D.C.; my favorite instance of this was a mom who told me in Borders a couple of years back about her local schoolboard who got into a hooraw with a bunch of concerned local parents when a teacher decided to spare her class the utter tedium of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and give them the option of Bram Stoker’s Dracula instead-the Catholic parents thought Dracula was too Satanic, (should we capitolize that? He’s supposed to be one of God’s most succesful projects) the born-again crowd thought it was too Catholic, and a small group of atheists who joined in thought it promoted a superstitious belief in God! So Dracula got booted off the reading list and Frankenstein is safely back…This was such a great story I included it in the book I’m shopping around now, and I hope the people who did this recognize themselves-by the way Rachel-you’re totally right about James Joyce, in particular-if I was an evil dictator I’d use him to torture political prisoners with………….

By: D.C. DaCosta

D.C. DaCosta — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 22:16:29 +0000

Very amusing essay!

What makes a book “great” is very subjective and due, in large part, to the times and conditions under which it is published. Would anything by James Joyce have been published at all, had it not been so different from anything else at that time? Would anything by Gertrude Stein have ever been published, except that she somehow bamboozled Bennett Cerf into thinking there was something there, there? The kids today read “Catcher in the Rye” and hate it; they see nothing in it relevant to themselves or anything they know in society.

I believe that books like those were the “Fifty Shades of Gray” of their times: flashes in the pan that succeeded commercially because they contained something original and different…and not necessarily valuable or timeless.

Yes, I, too, scoff at most of the entries on those lists. Life is too short to spend time reading junk.