cread Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 As a potential graduate student in English, what literary works are you embarrassed to tell people that you haven't read? We all have 'em, and I'm curious what yours are. Mine is Moby Dick. And they gave me a Masters degree! I tried to read it the summer between my M.A. years, but I didn't finish it and it fell by the wayside once courses started in the fall. Starlajane 1
marlowe Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 Oh, I haven't read plenty of books. I'm working on correcting that now; I am really weak on the Americans.
Grunty DaGnome Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 Ha ha! I'm finishing a paper on Moby-Dick right now. Even though I am hating writing this paper, I do think it's the greatest book ever written. Hopefully, you'll pick it up again or take a random American Lit class someday just because it's on the syllabus. Be careful though, because people tend to fall into two categories; people who have never read Moby-Dick and people who re-read Moby-Dick about once a year. Moby-Dick is kinda like potato chips. Once you start, you can't stop. My area of total ignorance is anything new or trendy...to an absurd degree. No Cormac what's his face, nothing from that guy who left the Oprah book club, then returned to it, no books with the word "tatoo" in the title, nothing about "soup" or "Maury" or "ashes" of any kind or "Speaking Pretty." No Joan Didion, whatever it means to be Joan Didion or to read her. I just can't ever bring myself to read more than 2 pages of anything on those very appealing tables in book stores. Friends sometimes give me books for gifts and at this point, I usually give them away before I even bring them home, because I just know I'll never read the thing. I am also wholly ignorant of most French writers and poets. I've read about 1/2 of Proust's Rememberance of Things Past and 2 chapters of Zola but no Flaubert, no Verlaine, no Baudlaire, and these are the guys I always mean to get around to reading, I just can't seem to find a way into them. ktel and Phil Sparrow 1 1
JeremiahParadise Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 Not a specific work, but I haven't read much of any Romantic poetry. Missed the survey course in undergrad, then never had the opportunity in my MA program. Seems like a huge problem heading into the Subject test. Blah.
lolopixie Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 I haven't read Paradise Lost. I just downloaded it and ready the first page and put it down. LOL. JeremiahParadise, Two Espressos and Starlajane 3
Starlajane Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 This is so funny: Moby Dick s definitely on my short list; I love Melville but just haven't gotten around to that one. And I was just in B&N last week, and Paradise Lost was one of the two books that I bought; the other was T.S. Eliot's Wasteland. The only book that I am embarrassed about not having read is Ulysses: it has been in my bookshelf for twenty years and I have yet to read it.
Isidore Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 The only book that I am embarrassed about not having read is Ulysses: it has been in my bookshelf for twenty years and I have yet to read it. I've started Ulysses three times... once on a dare/challenge with an English professor/bar regular of mine, and we both gave in to defeat about 80 pages in. And (surprise!) I haven't read Moby Dick either, but it's honestly on my to-read list, now that all my applications are in - that and War and Peace (seriously - assuming the fates are kind and I DO get into a program somewhere, when else am I going to get a chance?) Starlajane 1
marlowe Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 I've started Ulysses three times... once on a dare/challenge with an English professor/bar regular of mine, and we both gave in to defeat about 80 pages in. And (surprise!) I haven't read Moby Dick either, but it's honestly on my to-read list, now that all my applications are in - that and War and Peace (seriously - assuming the fates are kind and I DO get into a program somewhere, when else am I going to get a chance?) Ulysses is incredibly tough. I don't think I would have ever finished it if I did not take a course specifically on Joyce.
wintergirl Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 The only book that I am embarrassed about not having read is Ulysses: it has been in my bookshelf for twenty years and I have yet to read it. This is me exactly. Read the first three chapters for required class as a freshman, skipped the rest, and been lugging it around ever since as my own personal literary albatross. LLajax 1
Two Espressos Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 There are so many books I'm ashamed for not having read! Moby Dick, Ulysses,The Canterbury Tales (I've read sections of it, but not in its entirety, even after having taken a Chaucer seminar...), The Decameron, Gravity's Rainbow, the list goes on forever. . .
perrykm2 Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 I dunno. I'm never embarrassed that I haven't read something. I feel guilty if it's important. I've never read any novel by the Bronte sisters, which is pretty weird/bad, in my opinion.
coffeeplease Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 The Great Gatsby. My high school English courses were very light on American lit, so many of us graduated without reading the canon. Also haven't read The Scarlet Letter or The Old Man and the Sea, now that I think about it.
lolopixie Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 The canon (which one???) is constantly expanding. There is just no way anyone could have read everything that and English major "should have" - pre Ph.D. program. I took a ton of British poetry classes in my undergraduate career. In my master's program, again I took more of a survey of courses. The difference to me between undergrad and master's was that there was a lot more critical reading, research, and exploring of the theories that the world of academia is working with for the development and research of the field. Now once we get into our Ph.D. programs and are given our reading lists, that is when we will read/re-read everything that we should have for our chosen field and subfield. Even still, that doesn't encompass all of it in its entirity. That is what I love about English; the fact that you can always have something new and exciting to work with (even if it was written 100+ years ago). I like to go to the Columbia website and look over their reading lists for the orals and pick books off of there. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/english/grad_orals.htm It is a pretty good resource to get the gist of what will be expected. I figure Columbia is notable enough to be a reliable source lol!
lolopixie Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 Here's a good list for my fellow postcolonialists: http://www.class.uh.edu/english/__docs/postcolonial.pdf
indalomena Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 Oh goodness, there are plenty of "important" books I haven't read! I don't feel guilty/ashamed, I just haven't got round to them, and I specialised early -- in the UK, we don't really go in for big survey courses. I haven't read all of Shakespeare, for instance, and I'm an early modernist; certainly haven't read Joyce beyond Dubliners; haven't read 1984, or Moby Dick; no Hemingway or Henry James. There are many, many more canonical texts I haven't read. But then there are plenty of completely obscure and bizarre books that I have read and obsessed over and read again.
ComeBackZinc Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 I'll go on record as saying I've read and enjoyed Ulysess, just for balance.
bdon19 Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 There are TONS of things I haven't read, but I usually don't feel guilty for not having read them. Like indalomena, I just feel that there are too many and I haven't gotten around to them yet. The more "embarrassing" or "guilty" feelings come from not having read important things in my field...or not recognizing them on the GRE Subject Test. I will forever be pissed at myself for confusing Swift and Pope. So I don't really feel guilty for not having read Ulysses, even though I study the novel, because I start with the 18th-c. and end somewhere around early modernism (with the exception, perhaps, of D.H. Lawrence). I have never read Henry James, though (besides Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw), which seems problematic for a novel scholar. I haven't read Women in Love, or Northanger Abbey, or all of Tristram Shandy. These are the things that bother me more than not having read Proust or (much) Joyce. Though it does bother me that I haven't read Mrs. Dalloway. I adore Woolf, but for some reason I just never got around to that one. I've read almost everything else, so I don't know why I don't just read it!!
marlowe Posted January 16, 2012 Posted January 16, 2012 Though it does bother me that I haven't read Mrs. Dalloway. I adore Woolf, but for some reason I just never got around to that one. I've read almost everything else, so I don't know why I don't just read it!! Strangely, I had Dalloway assigned in both high school and survey courses. I had to do The Waves on my own, and only got around to obscure Woolf (ie. Flush) because my gf is obsessed. I have absolutely no background in American Lit. None. I am catching up as quickly as possible.
truckbasket Posted January 17, 2012 Posted January 17, 2012 I'll go on record as saying I've read and enjoyed Ulysess, just for balance. I'll second that. In fact I'm studying it right now! It is a bitch, though. Studying for the GRE alerted me to just how much I haven't read, and I'm looking forward to playing catch up while reading for quals.
HunkyDory Posted January 17, 2012 Posted January 17, 2012 I've read most of the stuff people are listing. But my big gap is female writers. No Austen, no Brontes, no George Eliot, No Woolf, No Chopin, etc, etc, etc. Started many of them, but they're all just so awful. pinkrobot, greenlee, Jbarks and 12 others 15
Grunty DaGnome Posted January 17, 2012 Posted January 17, 2012 (edited) I've read most of the stuff people are listing. But my big gap is female writers. No Austen, no Brontes, no George Eliot, No Woolf, No Chopin, etc, etc, etc. Started many of them, but they're all just so awful. Despite the fact that this seems to be a very unpopular sentiment, I'm going to stick my two cents in. I felt the same for a long time, especially about Jane Austin [i know, I know! There are rabid Austen fans out there! Just hear me out]. I couldn't get into Austen at all because EVERY book is about getting married and the narrative intrusions interject all sorts of sentimental and Anglo-centric, unwittingly imperialist values. Huge turn-off. Based on this, I could never understand why so many women's studies majors and feminists embrace her. Eventually, I learned to appreciate Austen's poetics. Wayne Booth is a big proponent of her narrative technique. There are also many interesting cognitive theory papers about Austen and "empathy," detailing how her narrative style constructs the interior world of her "off stage" characters through consistent focused implication. For these reasons, I changed my position on Austen, at least regarding her technique. The subject matter is, for me, still not terribly interesting, but that is just a matter of personal taste -- something we have to put aside at times, I suppose, if we want to be scholars and not just avid readers. That, for what its worth, is my best defense of Jane Austen, from the point of view of a reformed Jane Austen anti-fan. Edited January 17, 2012 by Grunty DaGnome
effess Posted January 17, 2012 Posted January 17, 2012 I've read most of the big bad books (Ulysses, Anna Karenina, Moby-Dick, etc. Actually, those are three of my favourites) but there are always going to be so many more out there... A few years ago I had one of those shake-the-world-under-my-feet realizations that I will, eventually, die, and there will still be SO MANY BOOKS I won't have read. Can we do recommendations, too? Anyone who hasn't read Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm should. Immediately.
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