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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
i get what you're saying, i'm like that with music. i like bloated, overcomplicated, prog/math rock shit. i'll have 20 time signature changes please, thanks. but if you play that at a party you kill everyone.
one has to be able to move across the range and appreciate different things.
the ramones were great and revolutionary, but at the same time if i listen to them for too long i'm bored to tears cuz everything sounds the saaaaaaaame.
so who's better? the ramones or yes? lololol. ah ha ha ha. hm.... i'm not saying. each has their place.
it's a bit like steppenwolf no? (the novel, not the classic rock stuff). serious intellectual man from the early XX century who listens to classical music wants to off himself but discovers hashish and jazz (not lincoln center jazz, but whorehouse & speakeasy jazz) and learns to be happy.
yes, i know, hesse is also literature for highschoolers, but for my money it's among the best in the genre. was huge for me at the time.
and also-- demonyo is so fucking right about the young hero thing. i hadn' t thought of it (thanks).
anyway i'm off to read a book of hot letters that kathy acker wrote to her summer fling. apparently it's some sort of important something so the MIT nerds had to get them published.
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Bro. Hesse is not "high school." Let's not get bogged down by that designation.
And yes about the age thing. Definitely. But the best novels hit you at different levels and continue to be relevant to the human experience though life.
"Catcher in the Rye" (btw: who's more "high school" than Holden C.? Doesn't mean Salinger wasn't an almost
overactive intellect -- see "Seymour, An Introduction[/i]) still brings tears to my eyes. Still has a deep and almost painful effect on me, perhaps more so than it did when I was 15 and reading it like a 15 year-old would.
It becomes an adult novel as the reader becomes an adult, follows you (or me, at least) through life. Just as "Franny and Zooey," continued to feel relevant after my 20s, in new and unexpected ways.
EDITED TO ADD: Be straight with me, do I sound like a total fucking dullard for bringing up Salinger in a conversation about the 20th century's best literature? I mean... it
is brilliant, isn't it? ... isn't it? Like, universally? Eh?