Sorry, But They Really Are Boring...

The New York Times Book Review (7/31/11) had a brief paragraph (p. 22) about a 1950 Columbia University Press survey that asked about the most boring classics of all time. Topping the list were "Pilgrim's Progress," "Moby-Dick," "Paradise Lost," "The Faerie Queene," and Boswell's "Life of Johnson." So far, so good...I can't disagree on any of these, even if it makes me feel like a bit of a traitor to my English major identity to admit it! But continuing on, I read that "George Eliot placed four books in the top 30," and I was incensed....no, no, no, no! My beloved Eliot's books boring? Serious, sure. Mature, yes. Sometimes slow-moving, true. Let's call them stately. But so wonderful, and so NOT boring! Ask me which other classics are boring, and despite my fear of being labeled a Philistine, I will admit that although I greatly admire Joyce's work (while greatly preferring Woolf's), I struggled through both "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake," and yes, they were definitely boring through most of their many pages. Creative, yes. Breakthrough, yes. But still boring. A couple of other classics that bored me were "Don Quixote" and "The Old Man and the Sea." Again, I admire them both, I see their virtues, but I can't lie: I had to drag myself through each of them. I hope I haven't forfeited my book blogger credentials with these true confessions!