h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The summary seems rather boring. Now, I'm not against boredom, as long as it's done right. If the book itself is boring, I can enjoy te boredom for the very long time it take me to read the book.

I can't tell if I'm being serious, but someone will eventually help me figure it out....

I doubt it. They'll probably be too bored...

The text here isn't a summary. It's an excerpt from the book itself. So if you found it boring, I don't recommend reading the book.

I have a friend who used to teach literature to undergraduates. He says that they pronounced the name "Goeth." "The sorrows of young Werther" has long been on my list of books to read, but I could not take the plunge because the title seemed so gloomy.

This one sounds less gloomy....

Less gloomy, but very chatty. Werther is rather James Dean-ish.

There's a street in Chicago called Goethe Street. It's pronounced 'Go-EE-thee'.

One of my favorite Mozart songs has lyrics by Goethe. The title is "Das Veilchen."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OTWdQtQqKA

It doesn't hurt that it is sung here by Elie Ameling.

Dmitri, I fear that I have made a mistake. I've read about 80 pages of "Elective affinities," and wish I had settled for what I thought was your synopsis .

I will finish reading it eventually, but will probably lump it with other old books like "War and Peace" and "Madame Bovary" that don't speak to me. Is it possible that many old "classics" have lost their ability to speak to new generations?

Or that Goethe's novel was always aimed at a niche market? I did warn everybody....

Stop and think, though: when this novel was published, there were no radios. No MP3 players. No televisions or internet. This affects people's willingness to read very slow novels, I think.

I don't mind the slowness. I managed to read 800 pages of "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell," as well as numerous books by Charles Dickens. I notice that J K Rowlings (who wrote some very long Harry Potter books) has a new James Galbraith book ("Lethal white") that runs to almost 700 pages.

But I can't think of any reason to care about any of Goethe's characters. They seem to float in midair as abstractions. Their biggest challenges seem to revolve around landscaping the footpaths on their property. I guess "War and peace" is full of characters whose biggest worries are that someone will resent them enough not to invite them to any more parties if their coaches go past their rivals' palaces without stopping long enough to pay their respects. And what exactly did Madame Bovary have to offer any body? She wasn't much of a cook or seamstress or literata or anything. Unlike Anna Karenina, she snuck around rather than asserting her right to love someone inappropriate.

I grant you that the feminist movement has changed my eprceptions, and there is no going back. Still, even in the 11th century there were novels ("Tale of Genji") that featured interesting characters who risked everything to follow their hearts -- doing things in their own way, of course.

De gustibus non est disputandum, or that's why there's chocolate and vanilla.

Personally, I loathe the writings of JK Rowling.

I'm currently re-reading Robert Nye's novel 'Faust', which I think is a work of genius.

Like I said, chocolate and vanilla.

I like both chocolate and vanilla, but draw the line at buffalo....

But, yes, I knew that you were the best possible person to discuss literature with. Never once did you ask, "What were those books again?"

If I have problem with J K Rowling, it's that she wrote under a male pseudonym for her suspense novels. Surely we should have moved on form the days when women authors couldn't read unless their pen names had "George" in them somewhere (George Eliot, George Sand, etc.). Even the more recent Colette was told (by her husband) that nothing she wrote could be published because the public would only read men authors.



Nowadays, it is said that 80% of the fiction is read by women. I'm looking into the question of whether this is squeezing men fiction writers out of the market. Or whether men read a lot of nonfiction, which I suspect is the case. There's probably nothing to worry about, except that Amazon is squeezing profits out of writers of all genders.

I agree about Amazon. And it's not only authors who suffer. The business model is sound - we just have to keep a sharp eye on them that they don't cheat the small vendors.

My problem with Rowling has nothing to do with gender. I just don't like the 'Harry Potter' books.

Interestingly, a lot of male writers of fiction used to use female pseudonyms to write genre fiction aimed at women. I suspect Robert Silverberg - who must have had 100 pseudonyms, at least - had a few female ones in there. It's sort of branding....especially if you use three names, like 'Mary Letitia Wigglesworth', which would indicate a certain kind of romance novel.

Anne Rice used a pseudonym for her erotic fiction, which is pretty hot stuff... I think it was more a question of labeling than trying to hide. I just looked her up, and her birth name was Howard. Her first name, I mean. Which is the oddest name I've heard for a baby girl since First Lady Frank Cleveland.

I don't think the Harry Potter books will still be popular a hundred years from now. Not that I will be around to be proven right or wrong .

That's interesting about men who use female pseudonyms for certain fiction genres....

Here's what Wikipedia says about Lawrence Block:

'His first novel was a lesbian fiction titled Strange Are The Ways of Love, written under the name Lesley Evans.[2] In 2016, Block reissued this novel with a new title Shadows, under another of his pseudonyms, Jill Emerson.'

Block is a prolific writer with a varied style. He's written the Matthew Scudder novels - kind of hard-boiled, with a recovering-alcoholic detective. He's also written with Donald Westlake. He wins Edgar Awards. But he's also written under several female pseudonyms, as far back as the 1950s, so it's not part of this 'current trend' they're touting.

Strange are the ways of the book world.