The Emperor Has No Clothes

I’ve always loved reading. I don’t know why; I’m just boring that way, I guess. Even as a kid I read a lot, sometimes even preferring to read (if it was a really good book) rather than play outside with my friends.

I have no idea how many books I’ve read over the course of my life. 2,000 maybe? I’m guessing, obviously, but that’s probably somewhere in the neighborhood.

While that doesn’t make me an authority on literature by any means, I do think it allows me to make the claim that - when it comes to books - I have accumulated a fairly decent body of comparison by which to judge good from bad.

And when it comes to bad, there are two novels that have made the Top 10 of my all time “hackers” that I wanted to warn you about. Why these two? Because they have somehow gained the status as being “classics”, and are both also considered to be part of a group known as the “Best 100 Novels of All Time”, which I think is a travesty and an insult.

I was recently reading William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. The key word here being “was”.

What an unbelievable piece of junk. If you’ve never had to read The Sound and the Fury, consider yourself lucky. I’ll share a brief insight into what reading it is like with the below example, which, while not taken from the book (I made it up), certainly could have been:

I walked to the edge of the cliff Sweet corn and looked faraway at the don’t go there don’t go there I must you can’t and mama turned to look at me “Got to get yo feet out’d mud boy” before she faded into a door that was black and then it wasn’t black and then I made the noise again
what
are you going to the dance
maybe
well you should ‘cause you dance nice
says you
says me
but the lights came back and I went away the watch the watch why isn’t it ticking she smells like grass because you broke the hands off of it and cut your finger smells like grass and bled like grass on the new white tablecloth.

Now let me ask you: Was that enjoyable to read? Does it make any sense? Would you read 350 pages of that clap-trap without someone holding a gun to your head? Would you believe that I actually read 140 pages of it before coming to my senses?

Now, I don’t profess to be the sharpest tack on the bulletin board, but I had to go to Wikipedia and read the synopsis just so I could discover what the story I had been reading was actually about. It blew my mind. It also didn’t resemble anything that I read in the book.

Faulkner was credited with writing this novel using the “stream of consciousness technique”. Ooooooo, that’s so Avant-garde! I’m sorry, but I’m not impressed. I’ll give William credit for trying something new, but at best it was a bad idea and at worst it was just plain annoying and stupid.

The “stream of consciousness technique” reminds me of that period of years back in the 90’s when every commercial and TV show suddenly was filmed with “shaky-cam”. Do you remember that? The camera is bouncing up and down, zooming in and out - even going in and out of focus – as if the cameraman was either drunk or a 12 year old child.

Have you realized that the Avant-garde “shaky-cam” era has passed? Do you know why? Because it was a BAD IDEA. Just like The Sound and the Fury. Don’t waste your time.

The second book of jaw-dropping dumbness that I want to point out is The Catcher in the Rye. This book starts nowhere, ends nowhere, and doesn’t do anything of any importance in between.

If you enjoy reading about a teenage boy with nothing to be upset about that is dead set and determined to be upset about everything anyway, then you might enjoy this waste of paper and the innocent trees who gave their lives to see it in print.

My guess is that The Catcher in the Rye probably got its undeserved attention & acclaim because it deals with teen angst punctuated with a continuous barrage of foul language, both of which would have been considered “shocking”, “ground-breaking”, and – dare I say (yes! dare! dare!) – “Avant-garde” at the time of its publication.

It's notable to me that J.D. Salinger only published this one book. My guess is that his daddy used up the only favor his friend at the publishing company owed him.

I know that some of you may cry foul that I would pan both of these books, but reading should be a pleasure, not a chore. It should not require in-depth “study” to figure out what is going on or what it means. I didn’t have to ponder the concepts & themes that Dickens relayed in David Copperfield; they were transferred inherently. I didn’t even notice.

And before someone says that I just don’t understand or appreciate “classic” literature, let me set the record straight: I do. Very much so. Just not these two. I’m sorry, but with The Sound and the Fury and The Catcher in the Rye, the emperor has no clothes, and I’m not going to say otherwise, no matter how many other people insist that he’s dressed in grand fashion.

As an antidote to the above, here’s a few “classics” I’ve read this past year that are worth reading:

Silas Marner by George Elliot – I can understand why high schoolers would not like this book - the sentences are much more complex than what we see today and the vocabulary that Elliot uses shows how much our language has degraded over the years – but she penned a great story.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins – A nice little mystery delivered in a clever manner. The passages of the story told by the self-righteous church lady are, by themselves, worth the price of the book.

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper – Requires a little bit of concentration, but a wonderful story that leaves you feeling as if you lost a good friend.