Cough, cough... I think that is the only book by Hardy I ever read. I read it as a teen in translation, and although I probably missed the many (all?) social dimensions of it, I loved it.
I am fairly sure now that adolescents and teens make excellent readers of modernist stuff, but anything that has any amount of Lukacs-ian sociological density will be lost on them.
Not sure how much they can hear about modernism and the avant garde in school in North American public school system these days, and they should, much more than about 'realist' novels. Realist novels was all I ever heard about in my locale and time when I was a teen. Yet Cousin Bette was wasted on me.
I read them all so long ago that my memory of them is a bit thin. Overdue for a revisit, but what is it Alan Bennett says about needing a lengthy prison term?
I'm not sure what they read in Americanistanian public school systems these days. (Do they even do that anymore, or is it all about filling in bubble sheets?) Mostly what we read was Hemingway, Arthur Miller, and Orwell. Without discussing the interesting ways those fit together vis a vis politics, of course. They never mentioned Orwell's socialism either, details details. Thus was anti-Soviet propaganda made without their having to work very hard.
Balzac, I believe, would have been frowned upon by the school board -- if you wanted to corrupt your young impressionable mind with that kind of filth, you had to go to BBC reruns on public television. (Margaret Tyzack, woohoo!)
Cough, cough... I think that is the only book by Hardy I ever read. I read it as a teen in translation, and although I probably missed the many (all?) social dimensions of it, I loved it.
ReplyDeleteI am fairly sure now that adolescents and teens make excellent readers of modernist stuff, but anything that has any amount of Lukacs-ian sociological density will be lost on them.
Not sure how much they can hear about modernism and the avant garde in school in North American public school system these days, and they should, much more than about 'realist' novels. Realist novels was all I ever heard about in my locale and time when I was a teen. Yet Cousin Bette was wasted on me.
I read them all so long ago that my memory of them is a bit thin. Overdue for a revisit, but what is it Alan Bennett says about needing a lengthy prison term?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what they read in Americanistanian public school systems these days. (Do they even do that anymore, or is it all about filling in bubble sheets?) Mostly what we read was Hemingway, Arthur Miller, and Orwell. Without discussing the interesting ways those fit together vis a vis politics, of course. They never mentioned Orwell's socialism either, details details. Thus was anti-Soviet propaganda made without their having to work very hard.
Balzac, I believe, would have been frowned upon by the school board -- if you wanted to corrupt your young impressionable mind with that kind of filth, you had to go to BBC reruns on public television. (Margaret Tyzack, woohoo!)
In Lettice and Lovage, most of all!
ReplyDeleteFor a moment there, I read "Henry Miller" so I screamed WHAT.
ReplyDeleteHa! "It's about geography, honest!"
ReplyDelete