Benny Bunter
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Hate Allen Ginsberg and Kerouac
Writers you hate
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Benny Bunter
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I love all the other romantics, but think I hate Byron, need to read a bit more of him to be sure though.
version
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Once I actually read Blood Meridian, I loved it.
entertainment
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This is too easy to hate isn't it? The fireplace storyteller pageantry, the naivety of it. It's like hating Jimi Hendrix or someone
Benny Bunter
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I loved blood meridian and a few others by him but couldn't get into suttree at all, it put me off him
entertainment
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What didn't you like about Suttree?
I really like it apart from constantly having to look up all these old objects and names of river plants.
entertainment
Well-known member
Thomas Bernhard annoys me. Thomas Mann as well. To my great dismay I'm increasingly finding my taste aligning with the American canon.
Benny Bunter
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I think cos I started with BM then his later ones that are a lot more sparse and stripped down in style, then went back to suttree and found it far too dense.
Benny Bunter
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Enjoyed Outer Dark though
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I've not tried Ginsberg but I started reading On The Road once and was distinctly whelmed by it. I've probably said so here before. And while we're at it, the Ballard I've read did nothing for me at all, but maybe The Atrocity Exhibition is a bad one to start off with for him, I dunno.
Benny Bunter
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I think everyone in dissesnsus hates on the road, it's come up before several times. All the beats are really dated (Burroughs doesn't count obviously)
Benny Bunter
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First time I tried reading Walt Whitman I thought I hated him, but then one day I read Song of Myself in the right mood and was absolutely blown away.
Benny Bunter
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Atrocity exhibition was the only one I didn't like out of the Ballards I've read, not very representative, I don't think. I bet you'd like Drowned World.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
I'd hazard that not even a third of the sentences are confusing, since I've read about a third of the book and I don't recall being confused by it on a sentence by sentence basis. And, as Luka never tires of reminding us, I'm thick.
I read On the Road as a teenager which I think is essential to enjoying it.
I also read Catcher In The Rye as a teenager but I suspect that book might still be great even when you're a bitter old husk.
I wonder if Catch 22 would still strike me as good now I'm a bitter old. I was 19 when I read it and thought it was hilarious, genius
Something Happened would be the book for you now.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Read a big chunk of Don Juan for university and enjoyed it a lot.
Where did I read about Byron recently? I can't remember. The writer was saying he was this gigantic phenomenon at the time, a cultural type, but that he was mostly famed for his worst poetry. (Borges, I think it might have been.)
And recently was listening to a podcast, talking about Keats who was a very short man (so was another, De Quincey?) and patronised by the tall poshos Byron and Wordsworth. Shelley too maybe? The posh beanpoles with their classical educations and polar bear skin dressing gowns. That was the general tenor.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Really unlikable characters too.
Plus you read about Kerouac's innovative spontaneous style and that, but the result just doesn't live up to it. It must be good on some level because so many people were inspired by it, but it was beyond the time barrier for me.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Yeah he was like the first rock star poet wasn't he.
Haven't read much by him, but that thing he did (maybe in Don Juan?) slagging off Wordsworth just seemed really smug and mean spirited to me.
Willing to give him a proper go at some point though
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I read it again a few years ago, prompted by the new TV adaptation that was on at the time, and it's still great, I reckon.