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3.21 AVERAGE
3.21 AVERAGE
Releyendo las partes más importantes para el examen y estudiando a la vez lo he disfrutado más que la primera. Sigue sin ser mi libro favorito pero ahora siento que podría mantener una conversación interesante sobre él. Hay partes que se me han quedado, cuando la primera vez todo fue un revoltijo de anécdotas muy parecidas que me daban un poco igual.
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Tiene cosas interesantes y entiendo la época en la que está escrito. Pero me ha puesto de los nervios casi en todas las páginas.
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Tiene cosas interesantes y entiendo la época en la que está escrito. Pero me ha puesto de los nervios casi en todas las páginas.
adventurous
funny
slow-paced
Moll Flanders was a very interesting character and at times, I really liked her style and wit. Defoe has no problem writing gray-scale characters that we love and hate at the same time. My only issue with this piece is that it got repetitive after awhile.
This was a good read but I'm not entirely sure I got it. I thought it was supposed to be a book of sin and redemption. I definitely got the sin, but didn't see that much in the way of actual redemption considering the fact that after her supposed redemption, she was still lying to just about everyone she met, she kept all her ill gotten goods. Just not stealing any more is not the same as redemption.
I'm of a strong conviction that of all the writers or periods of the English canon that one would be inclined to call the most forgettable, I feel like I'm in no minority in pointing to Daniel Defoe and the 18th century he belonged to. I would also hazard to say its not entirely his fault; he, and writers like Swift and Fielding, were just stepping their foot into that mystical medium that Cervantes had supposedly 'invented' a century prior called the novel. Such growing pains are things still very evident in the work all these centuries later.
While this is no review of Robinson Crusoe, I'm hardly going back to the sordid thing to spare it any more thought, and it feels reasonable to give some context to my reading Moll Flanders. My writing of the first paragraph is partly in my own defense for not knowing the first thing about Defoe or Crusoe when I saw it on our reading list for my first year of uni. This wouldn't be such an issue in my experience of the book - I was entirely unfamiliar with Claude McKay when doing modernism but came to love his poetry - if it wasn't for his godawful writing. The issue of literary engagement becomes a greater issue when its literally your grade on the line, so when reading a book that is essentially written entirely of undecorative, robotic, gaunt declaratives, one is really given no room to hone in on the writer's poetic license. Frankly, you can hardly tell he's got a provisional.
Perhaps its the fault of the affectation of the time - something about the enlightenment and the pomp of Georgian England and aristocratic Rococo Europe, infected by Dryden's manacles of literary expression - its no surprise half the notable works from the time are works of satire (Gulliver's Travels, Dunciad); they were so overloaded for centuries with the works of true poetic sincerity that they needed a century or so to go back to their Chaucerian roots and take the piss out of it. Well I'm afraid, as the pendulum swings, I'm on the wrong side at this time to be such a good Defoe fan, or a fan of any of his contemporaries. Robinson Crusoe is a dull book, and its even duller to write about if not to hate.
Moll Flanders, perhaps for the different context in which I read it, feels spared from such judgement. The writing is no better, make no mistake, but I feel no extra weight of dread in needing to write about what is so vapid. Those declaratives I was talking about are really something of a staple for Defoe, though again I'm not sure if its just him or the fact that, because he's the first one doing it, no one has told him he's allowed to use description. I was saying to a friend when I was nearly finished that one of the things that is genuinely quite a good talent of Defoe is his ability to come up with a really good idea for a story. If I had just told you the premise of EITHER Robinson Crusoe or Moll Flanders, you would assuredly not just be hooked, but be certain that the writer could do nothing to make it so dull and uninteresting. And yet herein lies Defoe's other great talent - he does it anyway! Straight from the preface of Moll Flanders you are given the declared summary of the tale in its exactitude of everything she does. Such is hardly new - Milton, mi amor, my beloved, used 'arguments' as summaries prefacing each book of Paradise Lost - but its deployment in a novel, where half the enjoyment is to witness the unravelling, feels like a shot in the foot right at the start of the race.
The most damning instance of this for me was where Moll finds out that she has not only married, but had 3 children with whom she ultimately finds out is in fact her own blood brother. In the hands of any novelist born after 1800, such a chapter would surely be at least very interesting and funny, and by any novelist after 1900, an instant classic. In Defoe's hands however, the event is already outlined in the preface, and the reveal is stretched out with such agonising monotony and resolved with such sterile efficiency that it feels hardly worthy of mention. To a similar degree, all of Moll's other descriptions of interest outlined in the preface ("Mistress, whore, thief, prisoner, penitent") are resolved with a similar anticlimax, to the point you're left with this all too personal conclusion: Defoe is like anyone who has just started writing their own works in that he is great at getting cool ideas down, but he can't string them along or make a good story out of them for shit. Defoe really does live up to the word 'novel', but more in that way one refers to a haircut one shouldn't repeat.
Ultimately, you can extend the following statement to Crusoe if you want - again, I'm not going back to amend anything - that Defoe's books are pretty good crack if you want to read some semblance of an interesting story but you don't much care for characterization, description, poetic prose, interesting dialogue, philosophical enquiry, or a nuanced commentary on society.
But hey, in the immortal words of Kanye West, "thats one hell of a life."
While this is no review of Robinson Crusoe, I'm hardly going back to the sordid thing to spare it any more thought, and it feels reasonable to give some context to my reading Moll Flanders. My writing of the first paragraph is partly in my own defense for not knowing the first thing about Defoe or Crusoe when I saw it on our reading list for my first year of uni. This wouldn't be such an issue in my experience of the book - I was entirely unfamiliar with Claude McKay when doing modernism but came to love his poetry - if it wasn't for his godawful writing. The issue of literary engagement becomes a greater issue when its literally your grade on the line, so when reading a book that is essentially written entirely of undecorative, robotic, gaunt declaratives, one is really given no room to hone in on the writer's poetic license. Frankly, you can hardly tell he's got a provisional.
Perhaps its the fault of the affectation of the time - something about the enlightenment and the pomp of Georgian England and aristocratic Rococo Europe, infected by Dryden's manacles of literary expression - its no surprise half the notable works from the time are works of satire (Gulliver's Travels, Dunciad); they were so overloaded for centuries with the works of true poetic sincerity that they needed a century or so to go back to their Chaucerian roots and take the piss out of it. Well I'm afraid, as the pendulum swings, I'm on the wrong side at this time to be such a good Defoe fan, or a fan of any of his contemporaries. Robinson Crusoe is a dull book, and its even duller to write about if not to hate.
Moll Flanders, perhaps for the different context in which I read it, feels spared from such judgement. The writing is no better, make no mistake, but I feel no extra weight of dread in needing to write about what is so vapid. Those declaratives I was talking about are really something of a staple for Defoe, though again I'm not sure if its just him or the fact that, because he's the first one doing it, no one has told him he's allowed to use description. I was saying to a friend when I was nearly finished that one of the things that is genuinely quite a good talent of Defoe is his ability to come up with a really good idea for a story. If I had just told you the premise of EITHER Robinson Crusoe or Moll Flanders, you would assuredly not just be hooked, but be certain that the writer could do nothing to make it so dull and uninteresting. And yet herein lies Defoe's other great talent - he does it anyway! Straight from the preface of Moll Flanders you are given the declared summary of the tale in its exactitude of everything she does. Such is hardly new - Milton, mi amor, my beloved, used 'arguments' as summaries prefacing each book of Paradise Lost - but its deployment in a novel, where half the enjoyment is to witness the unravelling, feels like a shot in the foot right at the start of the race.
The most damning instance of this for me was where Moll finds out that she has not only married, but had 3 children with whom she ultimately finds out is in fact her own blood brother. In the hands of any novelist born after 1800, such a chapter would surely be at least very interesting and funny, and by any novelist after 1900, an instant classic. In Defoe's hands however, the event is already outlined in the preface, and the reveal is stretched out with such agonising monotony and resolved with such sterile efficiency that it feels hardly worthy of mention. To a similar degree, all of Moll's other descriptions of interest outlined in the preface ("Mistress, whore, thief, prisoner, penitent") are resolved with a similar anticlimax, to the point you're left with this all too personal conclusion: Defoe is like anyone who has just started writing their own works in that he is great at getting cool ideas down, but he can't string them along or make a good story out of them for shit. Defoe really does live up to the word 'novel', but more in that way one refers to a haircut one shouldn't repeat.
Ultimately, you can extend the following statement to Crusoe if you want - again, I'm not going back to amend anything - that Defoe's books are pretty good crack if you want to read some semblance of an interesting story but you don't much care for characterization, description, poetic prose, interesting dialogue, philosophical enquiry, or a nuanced commentary on society.
But hey, in the immortal words of Kanye West, "thats one hell of a life."
dark
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
My interest in Moll Flanders was renewed by the January 14 entry in The Bibliophiles Devotional. "Virginia Woolf credited Defoe with 'having shaped the novel and launched it on its way." (15). In the mid-1960's my parents took my brother and I to see the movie based on the book. I only recall the title actress (Kim Novak: I had to look it up; I was thinking Ann-Margaret for some reason...), her red hair and the gowns she wore.
I did enjoy the book and it was a good book to listen to. I think I may have abandoned the book, had I been reading it. The story, of the wild life of Moll, supposedly based on facts, is long and very, very detailed. It is told in first person, which the narrator, Virginia Leishman seemed a perfect Moll. The annoying part, for me, was the lack of names. It was hard to keep all the husbands, gentlemen/women, landlords/ladies, governesses straight. Even Moll is an assumed name and I do not think that Moll's true name is ever revealed.
I did enjoy the book and it was a good book to listen to. I think I may have abandoned the book, had I been reading it. The story, of the wild life of Moll, supposedly based on facts, is long and very, very detailed. It is told in first person, which the narrator, Virginia Leishman seemed a perfect Moll. The annoying part, for me, was the lack of names. It was hard to keep all the husbands, gentlemen/women, landlords/ladies, governesses straight. Even Moll is an assumed name and I do not think that Moll's true name is ever revealed.