100 Bits of Happiness 34/100

[mabith]

Best author-on-author insults!

Virginia Woolf on James Joyce: [Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.

Harold Bloom on J.K. Rowling: How to read ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’? Why, very quickly, to begin with, and perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read

Comments

[lusimeles]

VIRGINIA WOOLF DOES NOT HAVE ROOM TO TALK ABOUT QUEASY ANYBODY

also I knew I liked Mark Twain.

(ROFL AT AUDEN SHADING BROWNING, THOUGH. He would. Have you ever read "The Platonic Blow?" Best HOW-IS-THIS-EVEN-REAL poem EVER.)

Faulker, you say that like it's a bad thing.

I wish I could LIKE this post FB style. I rarely think that.

[ladymercury_10]

Hahaha I had the same reaction the Browning thing. Has Auden never met Elizabeth Barrett Browning? :P

[mabith]

Yes on Mark Twain. I always feel like I'm letting my dad down for not loving Jane Austen, but I just can't manage it.

Ha, it's been a while since I've read it, though the line "the circumcised head was a work of mastercraft" stuck with us in high school in a sort EWW way.

[lusimeles]

I remember you saying that before, yes. But yeah, Jane Austen, ugh she is just the MOST overrated.

LOL, I can't believe you guys read that for class - I went to a pretty liberal school and I can't imagine having that assigned for homework.

[ladymercury_10]

LOL why would anyone think Robert Browning's wife didn't like him? Robert Browning's wife liked him so much that she wrote quite a lot of really lovely and deeply personal sonnets, that she published as "Sonnets from the Portuguese" because she preferred to pretend she was the translator rather than expose the two of them so publicly.

[mabith]

Well, the Auden thing might have been a sort of in-joke statement of some sort or might be taken out of context as a "Browning as he comes off in his writing" vs "Browning in real life" kind of thing. No idea!

Though I think the list was mostly chosen for how much at least half of the bookish people would disagree with each line.

[ladymercury_10]

Well, it was funny in any case. :)

[libco]

Why the Austen hate though. *seethes at old timey authors*

[mabith]

Well, lots of people don't like Austen, just like lots of people dislike pretty much every author ever.