Why are the Classics... Kind of Boring?

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I don't get The Stranger, I mean he shoots someone because the sun is in his eyes and then he's convicted because he didn't cry over his mothers death. Should I read it as Kafkasque or am I just missing it?

 

You're not missing it, you're just looking for something that can't be found and that is the key: life is meaningless. There is no meaning to be found in life or even death. Camus wrote novels but he was first and foremost a philosopher. His novels deal mainly with the Absurd. The narrator is a loner who is alienated from the world, from others but more importantly from his own self. The quest for meaning in life is doomed because there is no absolute meaning to be found. Man's desire for significance can't be fulfilled.

In the Stranger Meursault doesn't pretend, he doesn't lie, he doesn't cheat. In fact we can go as far as saying (like you did) that he is being acted upon by the sun (thus being denied the very idea of volition itself). The only valid option when facing the absurdity and meaninglessness of life is to revolt (the other alternative being suicide through renunciation or surrender). Meursault is condemned because he didn't cry over his mother's death which means that he refuses to play the game and thus in the end it could be said that he ultimately dies for Truth.

You're certainly not off the mark when you liken it to Kafka's work. From an Existentialist point of view there are many similarities but Camus himself wrote about Kafka in The Myth of Sisyphus and pointed out that Kafka failed as a writer of the absurd because there was still some hope to be found in his writings.

Last but not least, regarding the translation of the French title, L'Etranger, it is significant to point out that this word can be understood as meaning the stranger, the outsider, the foreigner and the alien. It may open different interpretations and readings of the novel. In the end, it is not the murder itself that is relevant, but the alienation from the world and from the word.

 

Thanks, I need to reread the book with that in mind.

 

I've only read Dubliners, I think, which IMHO is a fantastic set of stories. I still believe that "The Dead" is the perfect short story.

 

Dubliners is great indeed. I like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man even more. There is one sentence from this book that I can't seem to forget: "The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails."

 

At the risk of being labelled a Philistine, I found L'etranger (my translation had the title "The Outsider") to be an enormous piece of pretentious, self-indulgent, unbelievable crap. I hated it when I was forced to read it.

Just because something is labelled "classic" doesn't mean that it will inspire everyone. I tried really hard to be open-minded about the book, I did, but I just found it to have no redeeming qualities.

 

Obviously you can't appreciate a book if you're forced to read it. It's always a bad start.

That being said, at the risk of sounding pretentious myself, I have to point out that the mere fact that it doesn't "inspire everyone" is in itself a sign of quality.

I don't believe in democracy as far as literature is concerned. If the definition of classics depended on fads and what most people can read then Harry Potter, the Twilight stuff and the latest book by Dan Brown would all be classics.

 

I used to wonder what was going on with the Harry Potter fad, but I admit that compared to Twilight is really is high quality and classic stuff. Let's leave it at that and not even go anywhere near Dan Brown

 

This is true across the board imo, for music, movies, etc. ...

Even 'good,' as opposed to 'classic,' is in doubt here - Lady Gaga and Iron Man 2 would be the height of quality if we based that determination on popularity.

 

I don't believe in th"fad" approach to classics, but I also don't believe in the "Ivory Tower" approach, either. Just because something was written in a certain year doesn't make it a classic (though it does take time to reach that classic status). Just because someone with a PhD. says it is a classic doesn't make it one either. The criteria used to make that determination are extraordinarily difficult to nail down. I mean, is it number of books sold? Not hardly. Impact on the world?* How the hell do you measure that? Staying power? Maybe a little easier to measure that, but still bloody difficult.

Case in point, Harry Potter. I'm sure that Harold Bloom's critiques of the series have been printed on these boards before. I remember him saying that the writing was terrible and would make the children who read it stupid. he offered "The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Graeme as an example of what children's literature should be. I have read that little gem. It did nothing for me. I did not consider it to be orders of magnitude beyond HP. That's not saying that I think HP is great literature, mind you.

Going back to l'Etranger, I guess that part of my problem with it was that I come from a totally different worldview than that of Existentialism and Absurdism. But that's not all -- I am a mature enough reader to recognize the value of works that posit a worldview or philosophy different than mine. But I just didn't find it well written or believable. It lacked any verisimilitude, and in addition it lacked any of the charm that makes unrealistic fiction worth reading. I had zero sympathy for Mersealt(sic) and found his situation to be unbelievable past the point of my ability to suspend my disbelief. I just cannot buy the idea of "the sun got in my eyes, so I shot the guy" to be at all credible -- it's just silly. I couldn't take it seriously, or the mindset it represented.

Perhaps I got a poor translation.

 

I agree about the ivory tower to a certain extent, if you take both extremes you end up with absurd positions. A book nobody has read is not a classic (or even a good book) because only one man with a PhD. somewhere has read it. By the way, I don't put too much stock in degrees. I've met silly ***** with PhDs and interesting and brilliant people with or without a PhD. so it's certainly not a criterion.

What fascinates me in relation to the ivory tower idea is that Kafka wanted his manuscripts to be destroyed and yet they weren't. I can't help thinking that many incredible novels (as good as Kafka's) must have been destroyed throughout the ages because their authors didn't want to publish them. I find this idea fascinating.

I don't know if you had a poor translation, I can assure you that the French version is deliberately written in a very simple language and that is a stylistic choice on the author's part. Meursault the narrator is a very simple and unsophisticated character and the simplicity of the language makes it easier to convey its philosophical message (that is expounded in the essay The Myth of Sisyphus). By the way I use the word simple, not simplistic as it is quite profound and not its meaning is not that easy to grasp.

Perhaps it is indeed easier for a Frenchman to relate to the particular philosophical content of this book. After all, it belongs in our Zeitgeist and must have somehow permeated our Collective unconscious. I know that on a personal level, I can relate to the deep sense of alienation that is at the core of this novel.

I certainly don't see it as unrealistic (quite the opposite). What you point out as being "silly" is in fact the Absurd at work (read Ionesco's The Bald Soprano or Beckett's Waiting for Godot for other examples as the Theatre of the Absurd is close enough to what Camus intended by his use of the term Absurd). The Stranger is meant to depict the arbitrariness and the meaninglessness of life (and death). This "silly" idea that you "cannot buy" is appropriately the turning point of the novel.

When you say that you have "zero sympathy for Meursault" it seems to me that you're seeing this as a flaw in the novel and if indeed that is the case then it proves to me that you haven't realized that it is not a flaw but that it is how it is meant to be. We are expected to have this reaction as Meursault shouldn't attract any sympathy. In other words, we are to be alienated from Meursault otherwise the novel wouldn't serve its purpose.

 

Well, it sort of does. That's kinda like saying, "Just because that guy is a doctor, he can tell me I have the flu." I believe that someone who pursues literary studies as his life's work, has a certain amount of say in the matter, not entirely, but he can suggest, based on a lifetime of study, why something should be considered within the canon of serious literature.

Even within the Ivory Tower there is not agreement. For instance, Bloom was despised by many in the "Ivory Tower" that I studied literature. He is a very conservative critic of literature, as is someone like John Gardner, a critic and writer whom I really admire, but still considered to be somewhat conservative in his literary approach. When Bloom and Gardner speak of Shakespeare, or even Chaucer being the foundations of English literature, I tend to agree, despite the carping from some others within the tower that I am only approaching the subject in a largely, male, medieval, Eurocentic, manner.

But it doesn't really matter anyway because many "observers" consider all of those within the "Ivory Tower" to be a bunch of liberal, elitist snobs anyway, since they bothered to study literature in the first place. And now they have the audacity to talk about what they studied? What a bunch of snobs those guys are. I'm glad I'm not one of them.

 

I've studied literature as well, and of course I have my opinions about the relative value of many pieces thereof. One who has studied a topic of course has a more credible position than someone who hasn't. Yet your point about the Ivory Tower not being a monolithic entity is well taken. I like quite a lot of what Bloom has written in other contexts, but he is a PhD, not a God. He is fallible. Sometimes people who have his mass of credentials forget that distinction.

As for Meursault, I always got the feeling that we are intended to see him as a victim of a callous, cruel, random world. A sort of "he's not evil, just different -- we should all be more understanding of the differences of others and not so shallow" sort of thing. Maybe that's not what Camus was intending, but it sure came across to me that way.

My personal feelings aside, determining the greatness of the book is not just a matter of my opinion -- I don't claim Godhood either! Your comment

tells me that the book appealed to and influenced a large number of people. That element makes a very strong argument that the book belongs in the classics section of the library, my own misgivings about it notwithstanding.

 

As you are well aware literature is an art form, it's not just a subject to be taught or learned (and I did study literature by the way).

There is a huge difference between suggesting and telling. Suggesting is fine, telling is something else -unless it is substantiated and not presented as a judgement from the all-knowing elite.

It also depends on the type of PhD. as a guy who specializes in medieval literature will probably not be the man to talk to about Joyce, Eliot or Pound. He may have interesting things to say about them but his specialization in medieval literature will not be that useful and if he is honest he will recognize this fact and not pretend to be an authority on modern or post-modern literature.

EDIT: good points by LKD, having a degree doesn't make anyone infallible (and that applies to medical doctors as well).

 

Oh, I wasn't directing that comment towards you in particular, only the notion that PhDs should just "stay in their towers and shut-up" about the subject they have bothered to study.

So are other "experts" on a wide variety of subjects (like plugging oil spills). Part of Bloom's problem is that he comes across as such an obnoxious ass that he loses his readers before he even starts commenting on his subject.

Really? Poor choice [within the framework of your comment] that one is, Cara, regarding the "medieval tradition" in lit.

 

Eliot studied Indian philosophy and Sanskrit so I guess a specialist of the Upanishad would perhaps be even more appropriate regarding all the intertextual references in The Wasteland.

 

Cara - Maybe, but one still has to place the references to Chaucer (the opening lines) and the Fisher King and the Ruined Chapel (What the Thunder Said); not counting the themes of betrayal and decline (Arthur and Camelot). And we still have not even started on the presence of Dante in The Waste Land yet....

Edit: I've never read Joyce's Ulysses but somehow I get the feeling that having read the Odyssey may be helpful (although, agreed, it's not medieval).

 

Many of the references were made popular at that time by Frazer's The Golden Bough and to be honest it doesn't take a medievalist to get something out of classics like The Canterbury Tales or Arthurian legends (even if not everyone has read Le Morte d'Arthur).

If we get to the subject of Dante, Blake and the Bard we would have to mention The Sacred Wood as well. To be frank I've always thought that TS Eliot (spelled backwards it's funnier) relied too much on intertextuality (he faced accusations of plagiarism for that very reason).

Anyhow, it is my opinion that any self respecting student of English literature should be able to recognize the lines you've mentionned... let alone someone who has a PhD.

 

Of course. Most students are going to get a shot of the CT at some point in their college careers. There is a reason for that: More than likely because a bunch of PhDs, more than likely Oxford dons, at some point, thought that CT was important enough to be studied. The point is that there is a literary tradition, which has grown over the last 2800 years, probably going back to Homer. And along the way writers and poets(such as Eliot) keep crafting that intertextuality in their works to other writers and poets to which you are referring. That the Middle Ages occupies about 1000 years of that time makes it important, even to modern literature.

My concentration was medieval and Renaissance lit, and I did the history components with it as well. THAT is why I have an interest in Eliot's The Waste Land. But I'm still not a specialist, or even a "Medievalist," since I did not go much beyond undergraduate work. Still, I've read the Golden Bough, and Jessie Weston's, From Ritual to Romance, which also influenced Eliot in TWL. Obviously Eliot drew deeply on the MA in his own work, which is still, as you point out, profoundly modern [even with its Medieval themes].

But, Cara, it is not the point that any self-respecting lit student can recongnize that Eliot has turned the opening lines of the CT on their heads, so to speak, in the opening of TWL, but why he does it, and what it says about both Chaucer as a poet of the Middle Ages and Eliot as a Modernist. Also, how are the themes of renewal and redemption, as well as the Grail Quest treated differently? When one looks at some modern work, one sometimes still sees the Middle Ages in the background for good reason.

But, as Bloom would be the first to point out, how many people really give a damn? I mean, how many people actually read the TWL, or even the CT, outside of college and who are not literary students? By contrast, how many people were concerned that there was a gay guy in Harry Potter?

 

Identifying intertextual references is only the first step (that goes without saying)... It is utterly useless to stop there and to be frank I thought we took this point for granted.

The reasons behind the references (mainly how and why) are what make analyzing a literary work interesting -if you just scribble down references then you're treating literature like jeopardy (the game show).

You must be familiar with the concept of the palimpsest in literature (i.e. all the words we use when we write have been used by others before us, hence we only borrow language and words from our predecessors -obvious link to be made with the notion of Alterity and Otherness). Gérard Genette defined the notion of "transtextuality" (I'm translating in English as I type since I don't know if the English terminology differs regarding the translation of Genette's works), a notion that goes beyond intertextuality to study the implicit and explicit relations between textual discourses (it's virtually impossible to sum this up in a sentence).

The fact that most people don't care doesn't make literary analysis less interesting. I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't care about a literary analysis of Harry Potter either.

Let's face it, most people don't bother to find out how things work. They use cars, TVs, computers, micro wave ovens, refrigerators but they don't give a thought about how these things work (at best they have a very rough idea of the principles involved). In many ways modern technology is like magic, we press buttons instead of waving wands but the result and the process are the same for the majority of the population.

So there is no reason why most people would bother to try to understand how language and literature work. And sadly, in our modern society there isn't much need (outside colleges and universities) for people who question these things.