the 'Send a Writer to Devil's Island' thread

[dellzeqq]

the thread on Twitter exposed a rich vein of misery. You shudder when you recall your English A-level, GCSE and (in my case) 'O' level set books.

Well, CCpeeps, it's revenge time. You get to send your least fave author to Devils Island for ten years. It doesn't matter if they're already dead - this is a literary thread, and Shaun's budget can stretch to the occasional conceit.

I'll start the ball rolling with the man I suspect may well win our all-expenses and lashings of lashings first prize. Thomas 'miserable woman-hating-git' Hardy.

Take it away.

 

[MossCommuter]

Thomas Hardy for Far From The Madding Crowd (O-level set text)

What a pile of tripe

 

[betty swollocks]

Had you originated this thread in 1974, when I was revising for my Eng Lit A level and having to suffer 'Mansfield Park', unreservedly I'd nominate Jane Austen. However, now I'm not so spotty and feckless (at least I don't think so)...and I think she's rather great, I'll go with the mind-boggling tedium of Hardy too. I avoid Dorset because of him.
George Eliot runs him a close second though. 'Daniel Deronda' - what was she thinking!!

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Dickens, I like your stuff but you're getting 10 years for the vomit-inducing ending of Oliver Twist, I got my O-Levels in English but no thanks to you pal.

Take him down.

 

[accountantpete]

It has to be Geoffrey Chaucer.

To mis-quote Homer Simpson - "I've seen Plays that were more interesting,Plays!"

 

[ceepeebee]

A slightly controversial one maybe but can we send Haruki Murakami? Thing is, I love his writing, his stories are excellent until.... he can't finish a story to save his life. I think I must have tried 6 or 7 times with him now and every time I've loved it until the last 30 pages or so and everything just crumbles - so frustrating.

 

[MacB]

Thomas Hardy pained me at 'O' Level but I didn't think it was possible for an author to generate feelings of visceral hatred in me...until I read Tony Parsons first effort Man and Boy. It made me want to add death by a thousand paper cuts to the penal code.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Just to broaden things out a bit, I nominate Thomas Mann for Auschwitz and Gustave Flaubert for exile on Elba.

 

[User169]

Flora Thompson. Can't imagine why it was considered a good idea to make children read this.

(I'll stick up for Hardy on the basis of his poetry)

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

I'd like to nominate Robert C. O'Brien (AKA Robert Leslie Conly), author of "Z for Zacharia" and Robert E. Swindells, author of "Brother in the Land".

10 years on Devils Island isn't enough for these guys.

 

[User169]

Just to broaden things out a bit, I nominate Thomas Mann for Auschwitz and Gustave Flaubert for exile on Elba.

Both great authors, but not heard of either of those!

 

[mangaman]

Both great authors, but not heard of either of those!

Agreed - I'd have to rescue Flaubert for Madame Bovary and Mann for The Magic Mountain.

I find Dickens overrated but not detestable, although he nearly goes.

I'd send Dostoyevsky, for being rubbish but appealing to gloomy teenagers and students - The Brothers Karamazov was a crime against the reading public

 

[RaRa]

Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy. So very very depressing.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - I can't remember who wrote it but it made my eyes bleed,

 

[dellzeqq]

Just to broaden things out a bit, I nominate Thomas Mann for Auschwitz and Gustave Flaubert for exile on Elba.

gasp! Thomas Mann. Well, I grant you that he can only occupy two pages with table manners, when, as Proust has conclusively demonstrated, twenty pages would be scarcely sufficient, but when it comes to keeping a metaphor going for five hundred closely packed leaves - he's the daddy!

 

[dellzeqq]

A slightly controversial one maybe but can we send Haruki Murakami? Thing is, I love his writing, his stories are excellent until.... he can't finish a story to save his life. I think I must have tried 6 or 7 times with him now and every time I've loved it until the last 30 pages or so and everything just crumbles - so frustrating.

yes. But bear in mind that being seen reading this sap's work is babe-magnetic. It's better than getting gooey over Gainsboroughs.

Oh.... you knew that!