This week's question is....Discuss a work of literary merit that you hated when you were made to read it in school or university. Why did you dislike it?
So many of you know by now that I have a master degree in comparative literature and that my feelings toward this piece of paper are mitigated, to say the least. The classes has zero format, but the thinking sure did. It was a celebration of many writers that had nothing to do with literature, regurgitated by teachers who wanted to be philosophers, historians or straight up somebody else. I persevered in this because I didn't know what else to do (the ill of my generation, I know). I'm still not sure, but my future is not in an University, that I can tell.
The pinnacle of this joke what when I was made to read "The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis" by Jose Saramago, for a class named "Literature & Ethnicity". First, I fucking hate Jose Saramago. The man has good ideas (insert "Blindess" here), but the way he writes is so self-sufficient that I have a hard time finishing his books. "...Ricardo Reis" is a 368 atrocity, written is blocks if 40 pages, without any sort of punctuation. No paragraphs, no defined chapters, only block of texts with only periods and comas. It's unbearable.
But Saramago found a way to make it somewhat the least of "The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis"' problems.
What a horrible title.
I'm sure everyone of you is asking themselves "Who the fuck is Ricardo Reis anyway?" That's where it starts to get ugly. Ricardo Reis is the alter ego of a Brazilian poet named Fernando Pessoa. He used more than eighty pseudonym during his lifetime, but Ricardo Reis is one of the most known along with: Alberto Caeiro and Alvaro De Campos. Did you need to know that this morning? Probably not. You need to know it when you read Saramago's book though. So in "...Ricardo Reis" Ricardo Reis comes back to Portugal, because that's where he's from. And that's about it. He roams in the street for almost four hundred pages. APPARENTLY, if you've read Pessoa and you happen to be a Portugese man in exile, this makes a whole lot of sense. The symbolism is supposed to be stunning.
I'm a Canadian male with no intention to go to Portugal anytime soon. So did I understand anything of that novel? No. To me, it was a boring piece of shit, with horrible punctuation and a man wasting his fucking time. I'm just talking about it and I'm getting pissed off out of my mind. Of course, if you happen to be a masochistic book scholar, you can spend years of your life analyzing the symbolism of a man stuck up on his own intellectuality. But I don't. I am confident in saying that "The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis" is useless for humanity.
The pinnacle of this joke what when I was made to read "The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis" by Jose Saramago, for a class named "Literature & Ethnicity". First, I fucking hate Jose Saramago. The man has good ideas (insert "Blindess" here), but the way he writes is so self-sufficient that I have a hard time finishing his books. "...Ricardo Reis" is a 368 atrocity, written is blocks if 40 pages, without any sort of punctuation. No paragraphs, no defined chapters, only block of texts with only periods and comas. It's unbearable.
But Saramago found a way to make it somewhat the least of "The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis"' problems.
What a horrible title.
I'm sure everyone of you is asking themselves "Who the fuck is Ricardo Reis anyway?" That's where it starts to get ugly. Ricardo Reis is the alter ego of a Brazilian poet named Fernando Pessoa. He used more than eighty pseudonym during his lifetime, but Ricardo Reis is one of the most known along with: Alberto Caeiro and Alvaro De Campos. Did you need to know that this morning? Probably not. You need to know it when you read Saramago's book though. So in "...Ricardo Reis" Ricardo Reis comes back to Portugal, because that's where he's from. And that's about it. He roams in the street for almost four hundred pages. APPARENTLY, if you've read Pessoa and you happen to be a Portugese man in exile, this makes a whole lot of sense. The symbolism is supposed to be stunning.
I'm a Canadian male with no intention to go to Portugal anytime soon. So did I understand anything of that novel? No. To me, it was a boring piece of shit, with horrible punctuation and a man wasting his fucking time. I'm just talking about it and I'm getting pissed off out of my mind. Of course, if you happen to be a masochistic book scholar, you can spend years of your life analyzing the symbolism of a man stuck up on his own intellectuality. But I don't. I am confident in saying that "The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis" is useless for humanity.
