The Pilgrim's Progress in The Roundtable

Nov 15, 2014 Lise Petrauskas rated it liked it

Shelves: the-novel-a-biography, bloom-western-canon, philosophy-religion-psychology

Oh, Pilgrim's Progress, how glad I am that I have finally read you and that I'll never have to read you again. Thank you for being shorter and easier to read than I was expecting. Little Women (obvious references) and The Lord of the Rings (not so obvious), both books I've loved since childhood, came to mind as having been heavily influenced by you in different ways.

The value in this book lies, for me, in the fact that it gives me some insight into the culture and history of the literature that ...more

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Aug 06, 2015 El rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: the-novel-project, 1001-books-list, 17th-centurylit

(I read this book as part of a reading project I have undertaken with some other nerdy friends in which we read The Novel: A Biography and some of the other texts referenced by Schmidt.)

It took me from Aug 6 to today to read the first half of the book. And then I read the second half of the book in one sitting.

Here's the thing - this is not a good bedside table book. Aside from its soporific quality (because it's boring), it really needs to be read in big gulps at a time instead of small sips ov (I read this book as part of a reading project I have undertaken with some other nerdy friends in which we read The Novel: A Biography and some of the other texts referenced by Schmidt.)

It took me from Aug 6 to today to read the first half of the book. And then I read the second half of the book in one sitting.

Here's the thing - this is not a good bedside table book. Aside from its soporific quality (because it's boring), it really needs to be read in big gulps at a time instead of small sips over long periods of time. There are no breaks really along the way, so you put it down for a while and pick it up and you're on a page that starts with Talkative saying... something... and there's a period of disorientation. What's happening? Where are we? Are they dead yet?

It's a slog.

This book is referenced so often in the world that I figured I should read it eventually; most popularly it comes up quite frequently in Little Women, a book I read when I was like 12 or 13 years old. It made an impression on me at the time as far as I can remember it now this many years later. It meant a lot to those March girls, didn't it, and it sort of opened up a whole new world for me - a world where people have a lot of faith and interest in spiritual/religious readings. That was not a world I grew up in. But then I also didn't grow up in a world wherein I was easily at risk for contracting scarlet fever.

The first book was printed in 1678, exactly 300 years before I was born. That's pretty trippy when you think about it. The story involves Christian (hello, hit me over the head one more time with your crazy allegory, Bunyan) and his pilgrimage. Yes. It's pretty straight forward. As an allegory goes it seriously couldn't be less subtle. He encounters a lot of folk along the way and they have irritatingly allegoric names like Talkative, Good Will (not Hunting), Interpreter, Faithful, Hopeful, and a slew of others. They all have long, drawn-out conversations about this and that other thing, and holy shit, it is boring.

The second book was printed in 1684 and this story involves Christian's wife (whom he left behind when he was all "Pilgrimage!" before) and their four sons. I just want to point out first of all that Christian's wife's name is unimaginatively Christiana. I mean, really. Bunyan. Buddy. WTF.

Christiana is basically like "Hmm, pilgrimage? Okay, let's do it" because it really worked out well for her husband. She goes off on a similar adventure, and she and the boys meet a bunch of other people along their way like Great-Heart, Honest, Feeble-mind, Bat-Eyes, and Ready-to-Halt. They also have some conversations about some things, the boys all marry a variety of ladies will equally ridiculous allegorical names, and then the story is over.

I suppose I could say I'm happy to have read this because of all of the references in other literature I will now totally understand (...no, I won't... unless I happen to run into someone named Mnason in the real world), but I didn't enjoy one moment of reading this. There are some okay pieces of the story, and these were the parts where I would pretend I was reading Lord of the Rings and not some insanely stupid allegory.

Honestly, I thought more about LOST throughout reading this, because Jack's dad was named Christian. And LOST was a lot more fun to experience than this book.
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Apr 18, 2015 Lark Benobi rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: uk, male-identified-authors

For entertainment give me Dante's journey through Hell any day--I love the way Dante filled his Hell with actual people rather than allegorical beings, for example, and his imagination was far more creative when it came to just punishments.

I didn't love the experience of reading The Pilgrim's Progress at all. What I did love, though, was to imagine the faith that drove this story. It's very difficult to imagine, from my 21st century perspective, the centrality of religious feeling in 17th centu ...more

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Mar 25, 2015 Petra rated it liked it

Shelves: theological-musings

I'm glad I read this and I'm glad I'm finished.
At times humorous and entertaining, this book is also at times preachy and boring. The storyline holds together well (beginning, middle, end) and Bunyan had intense knowledge of the Bible pulling together references and quotes to show the continuity of his story.
This book reads like a chaste Don Quixote, with travels, meeting strangers, fights, good times and then parting and moving on with one's journey.
Although an interesting read, I found the h ...more

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