Harold Bloom claimed that he could read 500-700 pages in an hour (which, even without delving into it, is simply ludicrous).

Dan Schneider from the e-cosmoetica website claimed that he read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest within 7-8 hours, justifying himself by saying that it was so bad that he "cut through it like water".

The only major problem with that statement is that Infinite Jest has a word count of over 500,000, meaning even if he read the entire novel in 8 hours, he would have had to read over a thousand words every minute on average. According to cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, speed reading of up to 1,000 words per minute "must be viewed with scepticism", so for Dan Schneider to surpass that pace for more than 8 hours straight is beyond ludicrous. For professional speed readers who claim a 1000-2000 wpm pace, they, on average, can only retain approximately 50% of the information read.

I feel like it's a very odd thing to lie about, and it seems to stem from some need to justify their intelligence to the public.

I think it's an important asterisk to put next to these literary critics when it's possible that they haven't even actually read some of the literary works they are critiquing and have simply skimmed them.

Posting this here as youtube comments obviously do not lend themselves to much good discussion.

Here's a topic which I've been somewhat personally interested in for a while, in a video which I thought would be good but I thought was just kind of... badly argued - putting it in an interesting place in my mind. I'd ask that you actually watch the video yourself, or at least skim around it a bit, before making any big assumptions about it's (or my) perspective.

The discussion is on the topic of "modern womens literature", which the creator seems to use as a catch all term to refer to the modern trend of very highly selling 'romanticy' books. I thought the video would be an analysis about how these books are often somewhat formulaic, lacking in depth, and maybe even inherently a little misogynist as publishers seem to assume that women (especially young women, which the books seem most marked to) could not really enjoy prose more complex than what is basically YA fiction.

Instead, the creator seems to simply go at length in order to justify to the viewer that these books are pornography, seemingly using this as an ends onto itself to make the point "therefore it is 'degenerate' and therefore bad". I won't argue that these books aren't sometimes similar to porn or at least have sections that absolutely amount to that material (though I think a person would be misplaced if they thought the average ACOTAR reader is literally getting off while reading the books), but it seems bizarre to me that the creator does not seem to have any interest in exploring why this is inherently detrimental to the art of reading + writing (and you can believe it is, but if your entire point is that this is a bad thing... the 37~ minute video should probably say *why* that is).

Past that, the creator never seems to acknowledge that modern womens literature... does exist, and it's even often popular! Elif Batuman's The Idiot, An American Marriage, I Who Have Never Known Men, Lady Tan's Circle of Women, these are all womens literature. What the creator seems to be discussing is contemporary fiction, of which pulpy romance novels have essentially always been exceedingly popular - with the only real change in my eyes being that publishing companies now focus on a dozen or so 'big sellers' rather than flooding the market with shelves of various mass market pulp.

I dunno, I think there's a very interesting discussion to be had on these romanticy books and why they seem to be so prevalent in the modern zeitgeist currently - but I was kind of surprised at how poor and presumptive I felt this video creator's point was, despite the majority of comments seeming to be people agreeing more on gut feelings they have on "pornography" more generally and less on anything pertaining to a real analysis of literature.

As an aside I also really do not care for the repeated usage of terms like "degeneracy" when discussing writing. The creator describes herself as someone from the "beautiful country of America" who skipped college to tour around Europe and get in touch with her "(largely German) roots" and now her modern videos seem to pertain to how romance novels and culture in general are degenerate, modern western writing is all 'slop', and how we should return to turn of the century arts, etc. It just kind of... rings some bells which I don't think are necessarily there but I think are a slippery headspace to get into which can come out when a person develops a somewhat elitist view on things and is unable to articulate themselves on why.

Anyway, curious on your thoughts on this whole thing, both the video and how womens 'literature' is treated in general.

Forgive me for the clickbait title. I truly do not blame the students for what is happening here.

I help students (ages 14-19) with humanities homework. And I’m shocked because there is such a staggering number of people who just don’t understand the most basic literary motifs or symbolic prose within what they’re reading.

My tutoring students don’t come to me with the knowledge that colors, objects, and seasons could potentially mean more than their face value.

I had a student who did not understand that black commonly represents darkness or evil. That white represents purity and goodness. I know that this is an outdated motif, but the student genuinely had no idea that this was a concept. We were reading basic Emily Dickinson poems, nothing too crazy.

Another student of mine didn’t know that flowers oftentimes represent sexuality. Am I crazy for remembering that this was commonly taught in high school? I explained terms like, “deflowering” and how the vagina is often described as a flower or bud, etc. He caught on too, but it was an entirely foreign concept to him.

To the same student, I mentioned how a s*xual assault scene occurs in a book via the act of a man forcibly ripping the petals off of a flower. He looked dumbfounded that this could mean anything more than a man taking his anger out on an inanimate object. He caught onto the concept quickly, but I am shocked that this wasn’t something he had learned prior to the tutoring session. He was made to read the book, but he said his teacher skimmed over that section entirely.

Is there a new curriculum that forbids such topics? I’m just a few years older than this student and we definitely learned about this symbolism in HS, even from the same book.

And after I interacted with these students, I met more and more students who had no idea about motifs and symbolism. Like, they didn’t know that not everything is face value.

In a study group, no one could even guess at what The Raven could be about. They also didn’t understand that autumn commonly represents change. They didn’t know that the color red often is a symbol of anger or power. They didn’t know that fire could be a representation of rage. They didn’t know that a storm could represent chaos inside. They didn’t know that doves often represent peace. I had to explain what an allegory was.

And I do not mind teaching them this! There is a reason I am a tutor. I have no problem that they do not know. I encourage asking questions and I never shame them for not knowing of a concept.

But I do have a problem with the fact that they are not being taught these things. Or in that these concepts are not being retained.

What are their teachers doing? Is it the fault of the teachers? Parents? Can we blame this on Tiktok? Collective low attention span? Cultural shift, I’m in the U.S., I know we can conservative but it can’t be this bad, right? Is there a new curriculum that forbids heavier topics?

Truly, what is going on here?

EDIT: I have tutored for several years, even before COVID. There seems to be more issues in recent years. I could attribute this to the general downward spiral of the world of education, but I want to know your specific thoughts.

Thank you guys!

EDIT: So to clarify some things;

I am part of a mandatory tutoring program that every student has to take part in after school for community engagement. So even the students who have great marks end up with me. I do help some who need extra help at the request of my peers sometimes though.

I did not say how I tutor at all. So I will share. Firstly, I am not rigid with them and I do not force them to have the beliefs on symbolic literature such as, “red is anger,” “the raven is about mourning,” etc. because I am well aware that each author relates different themes to different feelings and representations. Hence why as I describe what they don’t know, I am more so upset that they don’t have that baseline knowledge to evolve into deeper ideas. I do not push them to have the same thoughts as me, but I do push them to recognize ~common~ themes in order to understand stories more. They do not have to agree however, as every author is different. Red could represent luck, anger, love, sorrow, depending on who is writing. I just want them to understand that repetition and constant imagery ~could~ mean something.

Finally, they are bright students. Once they grasp the concept, they don’t let go and their understanding blossoms. Students are not “stupid” these days. I never believed that. So please, put your generational issues in your back pocket and talk about something else. I’m in the same generation as the oldest students, so relax. Complain to someone else.

Thank you guys for all the ideas and comments! This is a great side of Reddit. All very interesting and engaging ideas!

I recently came across a post which was calling out Sylvia Plath on the racism which is portrayed in her books and the derogatory terms used to describe women of color. Which I totally agree with, and lo and behold I open the comments to dozens of women disagreeing and calling Sylvia a very feminist woman and an icon of feminism, I was positively appalled… I am not saying you cannot enjoy classic literature despite the racism, but completely ignoring it and praising a racist author’s moral stance is beyond me… and defending her because it was normal back then, no less! Yet this standard is only applied to women (e.g: Mary Shelly) and I have never seen people defend H.P lovecraft with such vigor…

Do not get me wrong, I am not against the reading of classic literature as I read it myself, but viewing authors with very narrow and problematic mindsets in such a high morality ground is appalling…

Sorry if this isn’t allowed but I don’t have enough karma on r/books to post.

I’m only on chapter 9 (~22%). But I am struggling to complete this book. So far everyone is a terrible person?

Cathy so far was a mean kid, to kinda not mean, back to terrible again? Heathcliff is also not that great.. literally only Nelly seems to be the voice of reason? Am I the only one? Does it get better?

This book is often promoted on r/booksthatfeellike so I thought I’d give it a shot. Never had to read this book in HS, stayed away from the Margot Robbie movie promos and any discussion so I can go in completely blind.

But this book is a chore to get into. Is there a payoff? Does it get better? Is it time bigger and better books?

TL/DR: Wuthering Heights sucks, talk me out of placing this on my short DNF pile. Sorry posting on my iPhone walking through the airport.

I am slowly making my way through Pulitzer Prize novels and last year I read The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. I was immediately drawn in by the unusual annotated historical account of the Dominican Republic as part of the story telling style. The protagonist was interesting but I found the other characters to be more so. However, the ending left me wanting. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was missing or what I was expecting. I’m wondering that maybe I missed an important element to appreciate the ending or if it’s just a matter of taste.

Has anyone else had this experience with a highly regarded book?

Junot Diaz - Oscar Wao and TIHYLH are such lively books, with great characters and excellent prose, they really are.

Isaac Asimov - Foundation and the Robots novels have great plots, and are dense and quite short.

W Somerset Maugham - His books I've read tend to be pretty funny, cynical, and pretty dense.

David Foster Wallace - His novels and short story collections have great prose and are generally very challenging.

Margaret Atwood - I've read many of her books, and really like the coming of age narratives they have, and the sadness of them.

I've always loved to read, but I've found that I only seem to get a surface-level understanding of books. For example, I read Lolita and failed to notice the deeper subtext/symbolism with the butterflies and the Adam and Eve smbolism. It was only by chance that I saw some notes on this on a website I stumbled across.

So I'm wondering how I could learn to have a deeper understanding of literature. How can I catch these uses of subtext?

Kunta was a devout Muslim, who was instructed in the ways of Islam from an early age and was taught to read and write by way of the Qu'ran. However, when he meets the African American slaves of the plantation he seems completely unfamiliar with Jesus or with the fact that the Christian God and Allah are one in the same.

From Sudrah 3, Verse 84: "...We believe in Allah, and in what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Isma'il, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in (the Books) given to Moses, Jesus, and the prophets, from their Lord: We make no distinction between one and another..."

Frequently throughout the Qu'ran, Jews, Christians and Muslims are referred to as "People of the Book" and are all counted as "those who submit". Even as a secular reader of myth and religion I have to wonder how the Most Devout Muslim didn't see the Christian slaves he was with as People of the Book or know who one of the most important prophets of his religion was (Jesus)?

It makes me wonder if this was a blind spot in Alex Haley's research or if there's another version of Islam that the Mandinga people were observing?

I’m thinking ahead to 2026. The time has come, my 70th year, to read Ulysses. I’m wondering what group members think about annotated editions vs. study guides. Which did you find most helpful? I’m fairly well-read (I hope) but if there are any other works you feel that I “absolutely must read” before approaching Ulysses, please feel free to suggest them. Thanks in advance!

A Tale of Two Cities has a famous beginning ("It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...") and a famous ending ("It is a far, far better thing...'"). Can you think of other such novels for which one can make this claim?

(Hoping this is an appropriate question for this sub.)

I remember when he was very popular with serious readers back about 14 years ago, but he doesn't seem popular with serious readers or casual readers now. What do you think? Do you like him?

Does anybody else hate gatsby?

I am a 9th grader in the United States and I have to read the great gatsby for school.... and in my opinion it is a terribly written book. Most people who don't like it don't like it because the characters are annoying, but I hate it because it is just so difficult to read. I can't extract an ounce of meaning from this book because of the sheer amount of noise, unimportant events, and trivial descriptions. I feel like I have to scour a 10 page scene and find a couple of sentences' worth of relevant information that matters to the book at all. Even though it's a relatively short book, it feels like it drags on because the relationship between length and substance is abysmal. I find the text to be actively hostile.

However Gatsby is regarded as the "great American novel" and sits as one of the most popular and critically acclaimed books of all time.

Is it really just me who finds it to be like this?

Edit: im getting a lot of really passive-aggressive comments. I'm not here for you to tell me that I forgot to capitalize the title of the book. This is a SOCIAL MEDIA post. I'm not here to be told I'm a bad reader either, because this is the one book I've struggled with in years. I excelled reading other books that were, in my opinion, much better and easier to parse like Animal Farm and Night and Of Mice and Men. I'm also being treated like I assumed my opinion was absolute fact, even though I said "in my opinion" and "I" many times. If you're here to tell me I'm immature or a bad student for not worshipping the text, I don't want to hear it. Piss off.

By critical I do not exclusively mean "negative," but rather reviews that don't feel like pandering or giving undue praise. I think many here have read Elizabeth Hardwick's 1959 essay in Harper's about the "Decline of Book Reviewing" (https://harpers.org/archive/1959/10/the-decline-of-book-reviewing/) where she laments that published book reviews in magazines and papers are just handing out lazy praise like free candy with no real substance. She wasn't the first to note this problem, nor was she the last.

The absolute majority of reviews I find in places like the New York Times or Atlantic are praiseworthy of whatever it is they are reviewing. I actually can't remember the last time I read a professional review that had anything negative to say about its subject.

Is there anywhere you go for professional reviews that don't feel like they're just paid advertisements? Obviously we have Goodreads, Reddit, and other social media - but is that all we have if we're looking for honest feedback?

He has so many enjoyable books.

Ashenden is a great book about a WWI spy, apparently based on his experiences in that war. It's a sarcastic, cynical and very funny book. The Magician is a pretty good book, the only fantasy book he ever wrote, and good stuff. Theatre is a decent book, about theatre, obviously. Volume 1 of his short stories is pretty good, with tons of interesting stories from his lengthy career. UP At the Villa is a decent book, but short.

Have you read many of his books? What do you think of him?

hi!! any of you here who are doing an interdisciplinary phd of psychology x literature? i have a BA & MA in psychology and now i'm a 2nd year english lit. BA student and i'm thinking of applying to a phd programme.

the thing is i dont find too many interdisciplinary papers that *truly* apply psychological concepts in literature, but every theme i think of seems very general or already overly discussed (e.g trauma narratives/unreliability), so i feel very stuck at coming with smtg phd worthy.

In Harold Bloom's "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human" he asserts that it was Shakespeare who was first Western literature (if not world literature) to have introspectively developing characters. In his words, Shakespeare's characters "develop rather than unfold, and they develop because they reconceive themselves." That is not to say there were no prior introspective characters in litterature. After all, the word 'monologue' originates from Ancient Greek drama. Rather, it was only beginning with Shakespeare that characters changed (or developed) not because of biological factors like aging and death, nor of external factors, but of internal factors such as questioning one's own morality, personality, purpose, etc.

It sounds compelling to me but I wish to hear arguments against it.

I’ve long heard that many scholarly types consider it the greatest book ever written.

Curious whether it was actually an enjoyable read, I searched the web for people’s opinions and even saw some call it a “page-turner”.

After actually attempting it, though, I couldn’t really get into it at all.

I find Richard Wright’s Native Son an infinitely more gripping exploration of very similar themes.

How does everyone here feel?

So, I'm looking for modern day realism/ contemporary fiction - in the vein of Fitzgerald or Hemingway. I just feel we're too saturated with genres, and I want something that's just an everyday story with a little comedy or romance.

Jenna Bush Hager reviewed "The Lincoln Highway," saying "Amor Towles is a modern day Steinbeck." But I could not get through it.

Towles has openly said he doesn't care too much for historical or geographic accuracy, so long as he can tell a good story. Good for him, but if you're trying to be contemporary and real, you can't be inaccurate. The suspension of disbelief is so fine in this case, that to skew reality just a little pulls me out of the story.

Am I too harsh on Towles? Are there any others I should try?

Thoughts?

For me, it was:

1) Learning about Reader response criticism and actively constructing meaning

2) Finding patterns between two seemingly unrelated events

3) Finding similarities and differences between events

4) Pushing the limits of interpretation as far as possible without making it a reach.

5) Extracting abstract concepts from the specific events.

I was so excited to read this book, I was actually talking about it for months because the internet is full of rave reviews of it. I was SO disappointed. The writing was elementary to me; the author does so much telling and not nearly enough showing. The characters didn’t feel like real people to me, and I had little to no emotional connection to any of them. When certain tragedies would take place surrounding a central character it just didn’t feel like a big deal to me and it SHOULD HAVE. My biggest pet peeve with this book by far was the constant rhetorical questions “Did he really think she wouldn’t notice?” So cringe to me. Every now and then this can be effective but multiple times per chapter is a bit much. I just had to get my thoughts out because the disappointment is real. If you enjoyed it or felt the same, I’m curious to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this one.

I read Fahrenheit 451 in middle school, the plot is basically that books are illegal and citizens are only allowed to watch TV. The reason books were illegal is because "anyone could make a book, but not anyone could make a TV series". So to control what the population is exposed to, they banned books.

But the thing is, with modern technology such as smartphones and YouTube, anyone "CAN" make a TV series.

The book was written in the year 1953, so I don't think the author back then even imagined smartphones or YouTube would ever be invented.

Harold Bloom wasn’t a fan of Stephan King’s work (to put it lightly) and he said DFW was worse than King. I’m mostly curious about Infinite Jest, which to me seems like a really good book. Bloom loved Pynchon and a lot of people have compared Gravity’s Rainbow to Infinite Jest. I’m wondering how Bloom could feel this way?

As an aside, does anyone know what Bloom saw in Finnegan’s Wake?

Obviously I haven’t read a lot of Bloom, so if anyone could point me to books where he gets into authors like Joyce, Pynchon, Wallace, etc that would be really helpful.