BookTalk.org

Nostalgia for Bradbury's short stories crept over me the other day. I drove out to a bookstore and found a copy of The October Country and The Illustrated Man, but a funny thing happened to me while I was reading. I began to "judge" the quality of his prose style. After a short while I found that I could not even finish a single page, let alone an entire story. I began randomly flipping through the collection, hoping to find something that might reignite my youthful memory of him. Eventually, I moved on and into a different section of the bookstore.

Has this ever happened to any of you? You reread one of your favorite writers, and you find the experience less than thrilling, almost disappointing?

I guess it's a consequence of middle age?

I see a lot of older people that have read heavily while young seek more feminine literature as they age. They like more flowery stuff such as poetry and the like. I think this has a lot to do with the loss of testosterone men are subject to the older they get. It's nothing to be ashamed of, really.

Please define:

feminine literature
flowery stuff such as poetry

President Camacho wrote:I see a lot of older people that have read heavily while young seek more feminine literature as they age. They like more flowery stuff such as poetry and the like. I think this has a lot to do with the loss of testosterone men are subject to the older they get. It's nothing to be ashamed of, really.

Discovered the Bronte sisters have ya? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Honestly, tastes do change and I think the more a person reads the more they develop a preference in content and writing style but may still be pleasantly surprised every once in a while by something out of the norm.

Although I was being humorous (or attempting to be) in the above post, I find that older men enjoy poetry more so than younger men. Exhibit A is Dwill. Dwill is 100 years old and he loves poetry. You can't even expect him to respond to your posts unless its style is consistent with one form or another of poetry.

It is possible that tastes change as we grow older. However, as reader noted about Bradbury, we definitely become more selective as to style. Most of the science fiction I read as a teenager is just too simple for me now. Heinlein's stories, for example, are still engrossing but his just-tell-it-like-it-will-never-be style becomes boring very quickly.

So is that a question of writing style or subject matter? Is it because they fail to make the unbelievable believable or because their ideas are completely absurd and unfounded in any known science?

President Camacho wrote:So is that a question of writing style or subject matter? Is it because they fail to make the unbelievable believable or because their ideas are completely absurd and unfounded in any known science?

For me it is writing style and depth of ideas. I too, read tons of science fiction when I was younger. Now much of it, but not all of it, seems simplistic and a little shallow. However, great writing can be absurd and in no way needs to exclude science fiction.

Two examples that are in my opinion great science fiction books full of important ideas and meaning that I have read in recent years are Stanisław Lem's "Solaris" and Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness". These are just examples, I can name many more. Come to think of it, works like the "Odyssey" can be considered absurd by modern standards.

By the way, I too have been thinking of revisiting Bradbury. I re-read "Fahrenheit 451" a few years ago, I really liked it, as many of its ideas were intriguing and prophetic. I did find it to be flawed and somewhat too derivative of "Nineteen Eighty - Four".

I might try the "Martian Chronicles" again soon.

President Camacho wrote:So is that a question of writing style or subject matter? Is it because they fail to make the unbelievable believable or because their ideas are completely absurd and unfounded in any known science?

A question of writing style now. It was a question of subject mater in my youth. And therein lies the difference.

I second Emperorbjt's comment that Le Guin has both style and content that even an old man can appreciate.