More Literary Disappointments

I see that I already expounded at great length on how much I hated Faulkner's A Fable, so no point in going on about that again.  I do sort of run hot and cold on Faulkner.  While I have gone through quite a lot of Faulkner (10 novels and a handful of stories) there is still more to go.  I probably should read The Wild Palms next before tackling the Snopes Trilogy.

I do think that Hemingway's reputation will continue to sink.  There are several novels that are going to be completely off-limits in schools due to extensive and gratuitous use of the N-word (and indeed I assume The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (an infinitely better novel than Hemingway's To Have and Have Not) cannot be assigned in most classroom settings or even discussed at most universities given how frequently there are calls to fire white instructors using the N-word no matter the context).  But also so many Hemingway characters embody toxic masculinity in an uncomplicated way and are just not likely to be seen as appealing in the future.  I actually got into a row with someone on an internet chatroom over this.

I wasn't crazy about Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, though the last two chapters were quite good.  I definitely am not sure it deserves being on the Modern Library's 100 Best Books list (at #11 no less!).  I also wasn't crazy about Maugham's Of Human Bondage, which comes in at #66.   I suppose it cut a bit too deep reading about a young man throwing himself at a woman not worth his attention/affections (and at such length too*).

Joyce Cary's First Trilogy isn't on the Modern Library list, but it's on similar lists.  I have mentioned how the the portrayal of domestic violence against women in the first and presumably third novel really make them unpalatable.  And the middle novel, To Be a Pilgrim, is so incredibly boring and far, far too long.  It looks like I will finish Pilgrim in another couple of days.  I'm going to take a short detour and read Wharton's The Age of Innocence and wrap up Hornby's High Fidelity before starting in on The Horse's Mouth, which I don't think I will care for.  However, if you are only going to read one novel by Cary, it probably should be The Horse's Mouth, and it would indeed be perverse to skip it after having read the first two books in the trilogy.  But this will definitely be the last Cary that I do read, as he is just not to my taste at all.

* Now I have much more empathy recalling how I wearied some of my friends with endless emails about a similar situation I went through during my grad school days.