[ SECRET POST #2197 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2197 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 048 secrets from Secret Submission Post #314.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[ex_valour601]

I wouldn't phrase it the same way, but I fall into either camp depending how saturated I am. I read a lot of modern fiction in school and tend not to like it, but I also take a lot of Children's Lit/YA Lit classes and get saturated there (and then there's being online, too). I just finished a Modern Brit Lit class last semester and wanted to violently throw the majority of the books once I was done with them.

Honestly, at this point I'll read anything that interests me and doesn't show its seams on the first go. I still pick genre fiction first over modern or contemporary fiction, but I do find awesome stuff in the latter thanks to crazy professors and my friends. Murakami's my kind of weirdo, as long as I don't read too many of his books at once.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm curious what value of 'modern' your Modern Brit Lit class was. Who did you end up reading?

Iiii have yet to figure out if I like Murakami. Kafka on the Shore was weird and wonderful. South of the Border West of the Sun was TERRIBLE. I should probably read a third some time to try and balance my exposure to him. Any recommendations?

[ex_valour601]

We used the more traditional understanding of Modern, I believe, so it was mostly post-WWI texts by authors born in the late Edwardian era--Woolf, Joyce, Lawrence, etc. To be fair, we read mostly comprehensible works (Dalloway, Portrait, and Passage to India, as some examples) but they were NOT my style. I think my least favorite was definitely Women in Love and the only one I had fun reading was Well of Loneliness. I'm not a "proper" English major, so if I mangled the definition of what my class studied, I apologize in advance for my ignorance.

Oh, but I really like Joyce's short fiction, so I was pretty disappointed I was turned off to Portrait, as well as the other authors. It's probably a common view, but I wanted to enjoy them.

Yes, I have a couple! Kafka was my second read, but Norwegian Wood is good for an almost traditional narrative with his weirdness, and the one I ripped through in one night and think might work for you would be Sputnik Sweetheart. Was South the one with the long monologue about the narrator liking fat legs? I read the Kindle sample of that and thought the same as you. IQ84 seemed to have a solid start, so there's also that.

If you're interested in non-fiction that still comes across as very experimental, his after the quake is fascinating from what I've read of it. <--Sorry for the random italics, but I'm pretty sure the title is lower case and didn't want it to get lost in the sentence.

The only thing I'd say not to do is read any of his short story collections--I own one and read it and then couldn't read him for a while, since he definitely has a sort of formula he works by, and I saw too much of it in that.

This got kind of long, but I hope it helps you. He's not for everyone, but you could always have a couple of works you like from him, and it'd be a shame not to find them. That's how most of my author approaches tend to be, so I like to help fellow middle-grounders out when I can.

[(Anonymous)]

Aaaah and that's most of the brit lit I'm fond of :D Although I feel like a failure (especially AS a proper English major) to admit that I haven't read any Woolf ever. Or, come to think of it, any Lawrence. Though I have Sons and Lovers on my Kindle. Waugh, Forster and Maugham are my babies, tbh. I will have to look into Well of Loneliness, I had never heard of it! And it sounds like the proper and fascinating foil to all the male homo-eroticism of Waugh and Forster.

Thank you for all recommendations! I will seek them out. And I totally hear you both on authors and their formulas, even if you like them (GAIMAN, I am looking at you) and giving authors a chance. My first flirtation with Waugh was TERRIBLE (seriously never read Decline and Fall it is the devil) but a co-worker convinced me to read a novella of his, and then I fell head over heels.

(also my question about 'modern' was totally just because 'modern' is such a subjective term. I had history classes with the word "modern" in them that went back to the 1500's. Although I guess if you had been reading current stuff, they probably would be 'contemporary' rather than modern.)

[ex_valour601]

Haha, no worries on the modern question. I actually knew exactly why you were asking since it differs between the practices as is and has apparently been under a lot of change in the last decade or so, according to what our professor said. I DID take a Brit Lit class for current stuff that was labeled 'contemporary,' and overall I much preferred that, although the sheer amount of oddness my professor subjected us to! I think a lot of the undergrads wanted to give up after The Passion of New Eve.

As for the recs, you're very welcome (AND OH BOY, DO I FEEL YOU ON GAIMAN)! It's how I feel about Lawrence since I first read his short stories and really liked those, and then read Women in Love and wondered what changed (same for Joyce!). I think I'm being a little hard on Forster since I did finish Passage and also chose it for the dreaded group project, but I think I will have to read something else of Woolf's if I like her (I'm also in your boat--I mostly took this class to catch up on stuff I had yet to read, since my undergrad lit classes were largely focused on one author).

Well of Loneliness is QUITE infamous in some circles, from what we read in class, so I hope it gives you a good read, even if I don't know how you'll react, nonny. It was a very nice foil by comparison to some of the other stuff. I even did my final paper on it.