Classics that are, or aren´t, a good read

Long as you're doing that, if you don't know, A2k gets a little bit of bennies if you order from Amazon off of the home page.


Here - a classic I do like a lot, reads like 16th century gossip, and the first chapter compelled me as the guy didn't want to do what his father wanted him to do --- and the a2k amazon link

http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Benvenuto-Cellini-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140447180/ref=pd_sim_b_img_1

(I've read it twice and liked one translation better, but I forget which, alas.)



To repair the matter of posting a classic I liked, I'll be back with one or more I said "nah" to.

I've read Cellini. Very good.

When I opened 1,001 Arabian Nights, at first, I tried taking each tale in succession, but, after a time, began selectively reading the ones I had at least heard of. Didn't really enjoy it that much.

Back to Steinbeck: I didn't like a few of his works, particularly the short stories. The ones I recall did not have satsfying endings.

Dang, I was hoping they'd be good. Back to Richard Burton's autobiog I guess (he did a famous translation of them - and had the most amazing life).

Among some fans of science fiction, Phillip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series of novels is considered a classic, and Richard Francis Burton is a main, arguably, the main character of that series of novels.

One problem with "The Arabian Nights" is that Burton was a competent and a dedicated orientalist, and faithfully translated the tales from the Persian. This was, however, in the Victorian era. The entire series of tales begins with the King of Baghdad discovering that his wife and her ladies in waiting are deceiving their respective husbands by their wild sexual escapades with their black slaves. All of them have huge penises, which seems to have been an obsession of the original author(s) of the stories. The versions which have come down to us are not the original translations of Burton, because they would have immediately been seized by the authorities in England, and banned.

One key to this is that Burton faithfully translated the title: The Thousand Nights and the One Night. If you see any other title, it is very likely either not actually Burton's translation, or it is a pathetically bowdlerized version thereof. If it's called "The Arabian Nights," you've got a problem right there, given that the stories are Persian in origin, and only obliquely refer to Arabs and Arabia. I had an excellent abridged edition (which grew legs and disappeared, not surprisingly) which was only abridged by shortening the tales. None of the sexual escapades had been edited out.

Western readers are going to have a problem also because Burton was faithful to the original style. The tale, in brief, is that the King of Baghdad was happy and deeply in love with his wife. He is visited by another king who, for whatever entertainments are provided, remains glum. When questioned closely about this, he admits that he had found that his wife had been unfaithful, and had killed her, and now does not trust any other woman. The King of Baghdad insists that his wife is trustworthy, so the other king convinces him to go on a hunting expedition, but to sneak back to town. Naturally, they find the Queen and all her ladies getting it off in the garden with black slaves (all of whom, of course, are hung like horses). Enraged, he kills the Queen and her ladies. He then sends his Wazir (or Vizier, as the English like to have it) out to find the loveliest young women in his kingdom. He weds them one at a time, and having consummated the marriage, he has them executed in the morning.

The Wazir despairs more and more, because his youngest daughter, Dunyazad, is accounted the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, and he is certain that some day the king will learn of this, and his daughter will be doomed. When this eventually comes to pass, he is on the point of taking his own life when his elder (and presumably not so beautiful but much more clever) daughter, Sharzad (usually corrupted into Scheherazade) tells him that he must tell the king that he can only marry Dunyazad if he also agrees to take Sharzad for a wife.

Thereafter, each night, Dunyazad asks the king to allow her sister to tell them a tale before she is bedded. Sharzad comes and tells a tale so engrossing that the king forgets about Dunyazad, while Sharzad leaves the tale uncompleted, to be continued on the following night. In that manner, she manages to postpone the consummation of the wedding for a thousand nights and one night, and the king relents, and allows Dunyazad to live.

The tales come from Persian sources, from Arab sources, from India, from the mythology of the Akkadians (usually incorrectly identified as "Babylonians") and the mythology of the Egyptians. Burton's source was the Persian, which may well have been the only complete version which followed the formal structure. Therefore, if you have the genuine Burton version, each chapter will end without the story being completed, and will be followed by the next chapter, in which the previous story is completed, but leads (inevitably) into another story which will not be completed until the subsequent chapter. This makes it difficult for some western readers, who have lost touch with their own ancient tradition of oral story telling. It is actually a brilliant structure for story telling (ensuring a competent story teller many night's meals and warm beds), as well as a means by which so many stories of the ancient middle east were preserved.

There is no sexual repression in this tradition, and that did not sit well with the Victorians. Much of what Burton translated could not be printed in England, and was instead printed in France, and in French. When he died, his wife burned all of his papers, so as to preserve his "reputation" (as though he had much of a reputation left). Such a loss.

I consider it a classic, but i also understand why others would give up the effort. When the sexual portions, many of which are satires and jokes, are preserved, the work retains more of its original interest and charm.

Burton himself was quite an amazing character. He learned the lives of the people of India and the middle east wherever he went. He was used for intelligence gathering "on the frontier," which means what we know of as Pakistan, and "Waziristan," the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. (Pakistan did not then exist.) Because Pathans (or Pushtuns as they are now often called) are basically Aryan, Burton was able to pass himself off as a tribesman by dying his skin--his grey eyes did not give him away because they are common among Pathans. Later, he made the Hajj to Mecca and Medina, passing himself off as a Muslim from Bosnia. He and Speke searched for the source of the Nile, and while Burton was laid low with a fever, Speke came near the shores of Lake Victoria, but didn't tell Burton. On a later expedition, Speke claimed the credit for finding the source of the Nile. It is generally thought that Burton was enraged, and resented Speke for this for the rest of his life.

Even if you can't bring yourself to read The Thousand Nights and the One Night, it is worth one's while to read a biography of Burton. A truly remarkable man.

I can't recall the title, as written, of the 1,001 Nights I possessed, now. Too many years have passed, and I have a less than photographic memory. Suffice to say, many of the tales seemed incomplete, for whatever reason, or else I was short on understanding.

Thanks for the added detail - I've read the Riverworld stories (I think Lewis Carroll's Alice and Samuel Clemens were central characters too), and The White Nile, I wonder what the definitive biography is - and if the unabridged version is freely available.

It is possible, EB, that the stories were butchered because they were censored--but it is also to be kept in mind that Sharzad did not complete any one story on any one night, leaving that for the following night, when that story would inevitably lead to another. When the Victorians took out all the references to sex, to farting, to shitting, and much else that they considered vulgar, they gutted the stories.

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Hinge, i couldn't say what the definitive biography of Burton would be. As for a complete, unabridged version of Burton's translation of The Thousand Nights and the One Night, i doubt that that is readily available. It could probably be found from a dealer in rare books, but it would cost you an arm and a leg. The version i had ran to over 800 pages, and it was an abridgement. Happily, though, it was only that the number and length of the stories had been reduced--there hadn't been any censorship.

Burton also translated several other works from the Farsi and the Arabic, but most of those he translated into French, because he could get them printed in France, when he could not get them done in England.

One small step to 'The Bold and the Beautiful'

The Devil Drives by Fawn Brodie is probably the most readable Burton biography, but seems about 10 pounds lighter that a definitive biography might be. I got this recommendation from a John Dunning story, by the way, and it worked for me.

Thanks, Setanta. That was one detail I was unaware of in the Burton/Speke business.

That's a good point. The "soap opera" is a lot older than television. One classic i have enjoyed since childhood, in its many, various forms, is Le Morte d'Arthur, or, more simply, the King Arthur legends. Talk about soap opera. Arthur is the son of Uther Pendragon and Igraine, who was basically raped by deceit, because Merlin made Uther look like her husband. There is a lame attempt to suggest that her husband, the Duke of Cornwall, was in fact killed before Uther slept with her, but that still makes Arthur a bastard. He screws his sister Morgause (or Morgawse), and the child of that union, Mordred, eventually compasses Arthur's downfall. Morgause had four other sons legimimately, by her husband King Lot--Gawain, Gaharis, Gareth and Agravain. Gawain finds his mother in bed with the Irish knight Marhault, and kills her, but fails to kill Marhault. Tristran is sent by the King of Cornwall (how Cornwall changed from a duchy to a kingdom is not explained), King Mark (in some versions, Tristan is King Mark's nephew), to escort the King's betrothed, Iseult, back to Cornwall. However, he falls in love with her, and so they become adulterers. Just to keep things on the boil, he marries another woman named Iseult, but continues his adultery with the Irish Iseult (while Palomides, the "Saracen," commits adultery with his legal wife). Lancelot and Guenevere commit adultery with one another, but he manages to father a bastard son by another woman, Elaine of Carbonek. That son, Galahad, is, however, pure of heart (maybe he was gay), and he manages to achieve the quest of the grail.

Talk about your soap operas!

Changing to another book, if I may .... I'm certain that Crime and Punishment is just as compelling today as it ever was ....
However, I'm not about to to check this out by re-reading it. No! Once was enough, thank you very much! :wink:
It was so compelling I took to my bed, in utter despair. "Confess, confess", I kept muttering to myself. "Get the guilt* & the agony over with! Not just for you but for the utterly traumatized reader! Come on now! You can do it! "
Honestly, it was such a relief to finish that book & join the land of the living again ... I can't tell you!







* in case you're wondering, yes, I did have a Catholic upbringing! :wink:

msolga, Crime and Punishment is one of my all-time favorite books. EVER! Powerful, emotional, compelling. Magnificent. It didn't tire me out. It inspired me. I signed up to learn Russian so that I could read it in the original. I eventually gave up. I found out I don't do well with different alphabets.

Speaking of Dostoevsky, I read The Brothers Karamozov in one sitting. Both volumes. I could not stop. I was absolutely absorbed. Didn't sleep. Just read and read and read.

I also read The Possessed and the Idiot. Wonderful books, but they didn't hit me in the same powerful way.

I would love to be able to capture that feeling again. Hooked in a book. Drawn into it by the power, the emotion, the people. Sigh.

Roberta, my dear, I fully understand your reaction to Crime & Punishment. It was/is a magnificent book! Brilliant! Engaging! Everything ....!

But, try if you can, to put yourself in the shoes of a reader who had guilt & atonement drilled into them from the year dot! It was exruciating, devastating!

msolga, My culture is famous for guilt too. Less so for atonement.

Raskolnikov's pain was palpable. I can understand your feelings (kinda). But I was too caught up in the power of the book to worry about guilt.

And, hey, I wasn't guilty. I didn't do nuttin'. The guy did the crime. And he got his punishment.

This might be one of those power-of-suggestion issues for you--the same kind of thing as when you read about an illness and get the symptoms. Works for me with symptoms. But not with guilt. So be it.

I also consider Crime and Punishment a high favorite. It's disturbing, but much too compelling to leave off reading.

I know a lot of people who were obliged to read The Brothers Karamozov who felt tormented, and were bored and uninterested. I had read it in high school, but hadn't really been mentally equipped to understand it then. Later, when i was about 30 years of age, a friend of mine was assigned the novel in a class he was taking at night at a community college. He asked me to discuss it with him, but i pointed out that i hadn't read it recently enough. So i read it again--and i found it hilarious, i was drawn in and much like Raboida, i couldn't put it down.

I then did some reading on Dostoevsky, and was much enlightened. He wrote the novel Poor Folk for which he garnered wide praise, but was then prosecuted for sedition, and exiled to Siberia. (The method was bizarre and cruel. He and his fellow prisoners, all of whom had been condemned to death, were taken into a courtyard, and left shivering in the cold wind, expecting to be executed by a firing squad. Having been left there for a long period time, a squad marched out and fired at them, but they were firing blank rounds. The prisoners were then taken back in the prison and informed that their sentences were commuted to exile in Siberia. Dostoevsky spent four years in exile.)

I think that this experience gave Dostoevsky an entirely new perspective on his society, and lead him to reject Western nihilism. He may also have become a convinced christian, and an adherent of the Orthodox faith. Many of his characters are, to my mind, ironic charicatures of members of the aristocracy and the middle class. His peasants are two dimensional, and seem to me to be props in his novels. I'm sure he took the novel The Brothers Karamozov seriously, but i was amused nonetheless. His ironic humor was a very good, and often intentional though, and i suspect that he was not unaware of the farce which exists at one of the many levels of that novel. His novel The Friend of the Family is obviously and unashamedly a portrayal of the sublimely ridiculous in life. I think that i was so amused with The Brothers Karamozov because of his acute ability to recognize and accurately portray the ludicrous appearance of peoples' behavior in life, for all that they themselves take themselves and their lives seriously.

My friend, when i informed him of how hilarious i had found the novel, was not pleased. I suspect that he had hoped i would be able to help him write a paper on the deep, psychological significance of the novel. I was not interested.

Set, I was quite young when I read Brothers Karamozov. I don't remember being amused. However, I have no doubt that I would get something entirely different from the book if I read it now. In fact it's on my Read/Reread Retirement List.

I read Kafka's Metamorphosis three times. The first time, I was in college. I thought it was strange. The second time, some years later, I found it profoundly sad. The final time, more years later, I still found it sad, but it also made me angry.

I think our lives influence what we get from a book. That's why I expanded my Read Retirement List to include Rereads.

Roberta, White Noise, by Don DeLillo, is something of a classic - a postmodernist one. Hardly a page is without something memorable or quotable. Here's an e.g. you might appreciate. It regards Alphonse Stompanato, chairman of the department of American environments at a small college, and titular head of a clique of New York émigrés.

"Alfonse invested everything he did with a sense of all-consuming purpose. He knew four languages, had a photographic memory, did complex mathematics in his head. He'd once told me that the art of getting ahead in New York was based on learning how to express dissatisfaction in an interesting way. The air was full of rage and complaint. People had no tolerance for your particular hardship unless you knew how to entertain them with it. Alfonse himself was occasionally entertaining in a pulverizing way. He had a manner that enabled him to absorb and destroy all opinions in conflict with his. When he talked about popular culture, he exercised the closed logic of a religious zealot, one who kills for his beliefs. His breathing grew heavy, arrhytmic, his brows seemed to lock. The other émigrés appeared to find his challenges and taunts a proper context for their endeavor. They used his office to pitch pennies to the wall."

Debacle, Thanks for the tip. I love that passage. I KNOW what he's talking about. Can't wait to read this.