Books That Let You Down as You Get Older.
 

Went through a period recently of re-reading some books that I loved in my teens, and now wish I hadn't bothered. Some things are, it seems, best kept to the enthusiasms of youth.

Camus' The Outsider, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Sartre's Nausea. To think that I'll never enjoy them in quite the same way again.

Because of this, I haven't re-read Kafka's The Trial because I'm fearing that the same might happen with that.

Any books where that's happened to you?

Faulkner's Noise & Fury.

I think it's due to the fact I later read Joyce who seems more subtle.

fiction.
I've lost interest in reading. I used to be a big reader.
And do you mean camus' the stranger?

this book was written between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. all I can do now is think of all the ways it breaks cannon. :(

it was so much better when I was 10.

Yes, I understand that in the US it goes under the proper French title. Us silly Brits get stuck with The Outsider. It must have something to do with our in-built Francophobia.

oh, yeah.
Forgot about that.

Agree with the Satre "Nausea" mention - it seems a bit lame next to the barrel-chested misanthropy of Celine. I'd also mention some of the fiction put out by Creation Press in their early days, especially the "De Sade for morons" stylings of 'Raism' by James Havoc.

Any of the Hardy Boys. They just don't hold up for me.

Bukowski definitely.

Seemed like a revelation as a teenager, a load of old wank as an adult.

Same goes for Henry Miller.

I'm reading it right now, first time, and I gotta say... it's good, but it's kind of bland. I love his short-stories, however. Fantastic writer.

I enjoyed the posthumous A Happy Death a little more than The Stranger. Camus, although better than many, is still overrated as a novelist and thinker; the same goes for Sartre to a lesser extent.

I've read most of Kafka and he's fairly tedius. The Metamorphosis, of course, is the exception, since it's easily one of the best novellas ever.

Your swipe at Dostoevsky is preposterous...and your loss.

I agree, although I have never really cared (even when I was younger) for either of those authors. Both do write better books than most though, and the grittiness often equals page-turning entertainment, but writers of classics they're not.

Gustave Flaubert (friends with Turgenev, admired by Sartre) and D.H. Lawrence are two writers of classics that deal with many of the same sensual themes and similar satires of society, although each's seminal works are from the point-of-view of female protagonists. Of course, Lawrence also wrote plays; his pale in comparison to masters like Ibsen and Chekhov though.

I recently saw the most hilarious production of Ghosts at my local theatre.

You have never seen such bad acting, and seeming complete lack of understanding of a play, by both cast and director.

The Bible

Not a book in itself as such, but I was wildly impressed with the "Apolcalypse Culture" anthology when I were 20, but having re-reasd it many years later, felt it to be somewhat mannered and contrived in it's desire to shock/annoy. Still, it's memorable for GG Allin ranting, "I'm not going to die a miserable junky death" (ha, and once again, ha), and for the first airing of the comical-in-retrospect "world's most evil horrible person" persona of Miss Peter Sotos.

Perhaps the Vatican could issue a "Bible out-takes" or "Bible bloopers" volume - fun for all the family, both believers and heathens.

Or a Manga Bible?!

^^^That's more like it - see Christ roundhouse kick Pontius Pilate's head off his shoulders.

On the Road seemed phenomenal when I was 20. I can barely get through one paragraph of it now without wanting to throw the book across the room.