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興趣頗廣,心得全無;文理不通,感情用事;what's next?

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

What to read next?

I'm getting excited over the novels I've accumulated.
Many of them are classics that are always mentioned within the context of Eng. lit.:
1. Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe
2. Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift
3. The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
4. Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville
5. Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) by Thomas Hardy
 (This is generally not considered his masterpiece though)
6. Heart of Darkness (1902) by Joseph Conrad

But sometimes, it's more satisfying to discover newer writers.
Like, just now, I tried reading a novel set in a mental hospital.
It is always said that the School is a miniature of the Society.
The novel suggests otherwise, that the Society is just one big lunatic asylum.
The idea is of course valid without any proof, only that it takes arts to reveal such simple facts.
I think I may be able to discover something in this satire (or comedy??).
I read the first 26 pages, jumped to p. 145 and found that indeed I could continue!
and I continued for 18 more pages~~

The novel is hard to understand, for the narrator is a patient himself.
It's like reading a poor man's "The Sound and the Fury" (which won a Nobel),
so poor that even though it is deemed a 20th century classics,
yet no Chinese translation exists to date.
There's a film though, and it had sold well, so maybe I can watch it too~~
It would certainly help my understanding, although compared with Faulkner's Nobel-winning piece,
it has to be considered an easy-read~~ Easy enough to leave me possible excitement!!
In Faulkner's case, it is just all too hard, man..

Oh, did I not mention the name of the novel??
It is again, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey.. (飛越瘋人院)

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