Yeah, I caught that too. I’m thinking, “how would you know?”
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Well, this is the kind of click-bait listicle we can all get into. I half expect it was published as a rage-read, designed to make sure that no one could walk away from it without being angry. Fortunately for me, I like this game.
I love Dracula, and I am really disheartened to see a drive-by smear of Frakenstein on the way. To suggest you could get the same thing or better out of a book published in 1983 just feels super weird to me. Dracula is thoroughly baked into our culture and has been remixed a thousand ways. Reading the original gives perspective on that. Replacing it with a genuinely scary more contemporary book seems like it’s missing the point. If I thought Angels was worth reading, I’d read both (though from the description I’m reading Dennis Johnson doesn’t seem to be up my alley).
Of course that’s just a tiny fraction of how weird bringing the bible into it was. The utterly defensible alternative to reading the bible is just not reading the bible. The idea that there could possibly be any replacement for doing so is just out of this world.
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If I could read the Lord of the Rings trilogy at 12 years old (not a particularly bright 12 year old) then it’s probably not “unreadable”.
They are right about Catcher in the Rye though.
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They’re not going to make a list titled “21 famous magazines that were obsolete before smartphones became a thing”, now are they?
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I assume anyone who has never read Huckleberry Finn is the kind of person who asks “why you reading?” like the Bill Hicks joke.
Yes, I know these are more like the people who brag about not owning a television, but it goes to show you how there is a horseshoe in all ideologies.
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12, then again at 15, then again in my early 20’s, then again at 30 as a birthday present, and again in my 40’s. And new stuff appears each time. As a literary masterpiece, ok, that is a debate worth having. But as a worthwhile read? OMG, earthshaking to a young reader, and enjoyable in the 8th or so go around to a (ehmm) more mature reader. Not a bad job for an “unreadable” novel!
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Reading is such an individual thing, that I’ve never believed in lists of books that everyone “must read;” as that always seemed pretentious to me. So a listicle that disses widely regarded classics seems even more so.
Instead, I tend to prefer reccos that start out, “if you liked Novel X, then maybe you’ll like reading Novel Y.”
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Flamebait article spurs shares, clicks
Sigh.
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This list throws out the idea of reading some of these classics as a frame of reference for other works/discussions. And the bible being listed is obnoxious.
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Why not celebrate the fact that anybody is reading any books at all. Far to many people I encounter get a glazed look when I ask them their favorite read or current book.
For What It’s worth I read Catch 22 just a few weeks before being drafted in 1967. That book was so dead on right in just how stupid the military mind actually is.(military mind…ain’t that a riot) Catch 22 literally saved my soul from that damning numbing process of destroying young boys trying to make them into useful disposable tools. It also got me into a ton of trouble because I’d laugh at all the wrong times and wrong people. I once complimented a full bird Coronel for giving what I thought was the best ass chewing I ever had…shoulda kept my mouth shut.
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Notes from Underground wasn’t supposed to be enjoyable. I hated the damn thing, but I wasn’t it’s target audience - none of us currently alive are. That awful experience was meant as a counterpoint to the Voltaires of the world, and an expression of the alienation felt by people who can see the (now) classical liberal promise of prosperity and advancement but have no realistic hope of attaining it. Transpose that awful clerk into a 4chan basement troll angered at his own social impotence and immobility and it makes sense. Especially when it is clear he has no idea what to do about his own lack of hope, so is just a horrible person instead.
Its brilliance doesn’t make it an enjoyable read, it took me 3 tries and 20 years to get through the damn thing.
A lot of the really great novels can be unfun to read, unfortunately. It doesn’t mean they aren’t worthwhile.
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Assuming they’ve even heard of it. And I’d never say LOTR was bad or not worth reading. I’ve read it and enjoyed it. But Peake is way more meaningful to me. And when I was 17, Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun appeared, and that was life-altering in a way that Tolkein never could be.
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So sayeth John Rogers.
Sorry, I am a fan of attribution.
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They’re not trying to share ideas, they’re trying to get angry people to rage click the article and then rage click to the comments page.
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Possibly one of the most ignorant flame bait articles GQ has ever run, but then again, I wouldn’t expect people to take intelligent literary suggestions from a magazine about pomade and $120 t-shirts.
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I like Gormenghast too, but 1) It really isn’t fantasy – there is no magic going on 2) It really is obviously a metaphor for the events of the early/mid twentieth century – people begin abandoning the traditions of their ancestors but instead of becoming free, they end up getting a cruel dictator.
Although the Earthsea books really are worthwhile and if not necessarily “better” than Tolkien, certainly in the same ballpark.
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I highly disagree with Gravity’s Rainbow and Blood Meridian being on this list; there are absolutely no substitutions and both books are masterpieces. If the diction is too dense for an individual’s enjoyment blame the reader not the book.
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“Read this instead”?!
Why do they characterize reading literature as a zero-sum game? You can read BOTH books if you want to!
Sounds like this GQ editor didn’t make it through the second half of that book.
Honestly, the absurdity of this GQ article makes me think that the editor doesn’t actually know what absurdity is.
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Considering that most people who “read the Bible” do so in the “approved” liturgical order, which gives it to you in bits and pieces chopped up and rearranged in order to make a theological point, maybe the best approach would actually be to read the bible like you would any other book from 3,000 years ago - in order, cover to cover, accompanied by a scholarly commentary to provide historical and literary context.
Having done that for at least 50% of the Bible back in High School, I must say that it gave me a far better knowledge of what is and is not in the Bible than any of my classmates in my Catholic high school had, and provided me with a much greater appreciation for just how the people who make the biggest deal about living by the Holy Word actually have no fucking clue what the Bible says on any subject whatsoever. (hint: God is a radical socialist and takes a very dim view of capitalism).
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