Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2011-01-26 04:05 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2011-01-26 04:05 pm
[ SECRET POST #1485 ]
⌈ Secret Post #1485 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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[image possibly triggery for self-injury]
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Notes:
Friending meme is still going!
Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 134 secrets from Secret Submission Post #212.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 1 and again 2 - repeat ], [ 1 - what ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
no subject
Troll better next time.
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That is just... a biting commentary on the educational system in this country.
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I did read my fair amount of classics in getting my degree, but I wasn't required to read every single classic out there! That's not a requirement for any kind of English degree, to my knowledge. Some I tried to read on my own, wasn't enjoying them and decided not to bother finishing them.
That's not really a commentary on the educational system. More about my personal taste, which you can judge me for if it makes you feel better.
no subject
Can you explain to me, in precise, careful terms, exactly WHY these books are considered 'classic' and therefore untouchable? Because as far as I'm concerned, forcing oneself to trudge through books you're not enjoying just because they're over 100 years old doesn't mean you're educated, it means you're a masochist.
no subject
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Also, can we stop with condemning the Western World for having a bunch of old, published, books? Most people were fucking iliterate even in their nation's tongue and published books were mainly from Europe/North America/Russia. It's not that the rest of the world was not writing, just a lot of cultures didn't record, preserve, or have access to the technology needed to mass produce their works in novel format.
no subject
And?
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The Point:
I disagree and wish you to elaborate.
Re: The Point:
The Point:
Re: The Point:
Re: The Point:
Re: The Point:
no subject
Oh my goodness. We study Euclid because it's the basis of geometry. We study Locke because his works shape modern political theory. We read Aristotle because it provides the groundwork for psychology. Are they super fun to read? Not for most people. Do we read them anyway? Yes, because you must understand what came before to understand what comes now, and what's coming next. All of those, of course, are among the books you want to ignore because they're old. As are many works of fiction, which are just as important to understanding the history of societies, human nature, the political world, and the way narrative structures and the written word has evolved over centuries. The books you want to toss out as boring and pointless are the FOUNDATION of our culture. Not because they're old - there are plenty of old books that are forgotten - but because they're what everything else has built upon and responded to.
If you refuse to read these works just because they don't tickle your fancy it doesn't make you clever and rebellious, it makes you arrogant and ill-informed.
no subject
Forever.
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Your final line, naturally, is a pretty arrogant and elitist viewpoint, which makes your subsequent accusation of arrogance hilarious. Are these works important? Depending on who and when they are from, that's debatable. My entire point is that reading them on the sole basis of their being 'classics' regardless of whether or not you actually enjoy them doesn't make you smart, and acting like it does makes you an asshole. Unless you have to as part of your career choice, I don't see why anyone should have to read them, particularly when much of it bears little relevance to most peoples' immediate lives.
no subject
Will you please name one of these mysterious shitty books that everyone claims are wonderful but are actually shit? It's really hard to meet your demand of giving clear, precise reasons that a series of hundreds of works is relevant and important, particularly when you keep falling back on the fact that some (one? ten? all?) of the works on that list are "shitty" without providing any reasoning.
no subject
The Sound and the Fury
Hunger
Pride and Prejudice
ANYTHING JAMES JOYCE EVER WROTE
no subject
Luckily, you've actually picked a good selection from my point of view, because I love one, and don't like one, and hated another before I liked it. The fourth I haven't read. Also, they're quite modern... I think the oldest book on your list is P&P, which isn't quite 2 centuries old. So really, you're talking about fairly recent fiction rather than the "western canon", no?
Pride and Prejudice is my favorite novel of all time, and I happen to think Austen is a brilliant writer, but since taste isn't the issue here, I'll explain what I think are its greatest contributions. First, it provides an intimate view of the role of women in Regency England from the point of view of a woman, and an imperfect woman at that. That alone is pretty unique, and certainly a perspective worth knowing. It gives a portrait of genteel country life at the time, celebrating what Austen saw as the pure and good ideals, while pointing out the foibles and contradictions common to the class and to society as a whole. Austen's work is especially interesting because, although she was writing during the height of the Napoleonic Wars, her novels make almost no reference to the wars or their effects on the everyday lives of the English. The books present an idealized view of love and marriage, English manners, and proper living, but at the same time are an excellent example of social satire, betraying some of Austen's true thoughts on the state of the gentility and society in general. Overall quite witty, an excellent example of novels about women, by women, that focus on the everyday experiences of those women (as opposed to the excessive gothic novels that were more common at the time). One of the earliest examples of the modern novel.
I'll pick Ulysses as the Joyce example, since you didn't specify, and it's certainly one of the most difficult modern classics to work through (although quite entertaining on a second or third read, most people find). It's an early example of stream-of-consciousness, which is a literary technique that pervades modern narrative. It is extensively structured and quite complex, which makes it hard to get through the first time without taking notes, but that structure allows Joyce to illustrate an insane number of modern writing techniques and styles, all of which have been influential in later work. It provides insight into human emotions and thought processes (always interesting), and gives a view of life at the time it was written. I hated it the first time I read it, but after I saw part of a 24-hour reading (because a guy at a bar told me about it) I gave it a second try and it was definitely worth the work. The novel takes place over the course of 24 hours, and can be read in 24 hours, which adds a dimension rarely seen in a written work.
As for The Sound and the Fury, that one isn't to my liking at all. What I took from it was an interesting commentary on the failure of antebellum Southern culture to translate into modern times, and the failures of the South as a society in general, and the damage done by pigeonholing women into specific sexual roles which define their places in society (madonna-or-whore type of thing). This is actually a great example of a book that I personally dislike, written in a style that I think is unnecessarily confusing, but which is still valuable as a literary work despite my personal preferences.
I haven't read Hunger, so I really can't comment on that one.
Now you tell me why they don't have any merit.
no subject
The worst part about the book is that it has no point. Oh look at this guy, he's starving and crazy. THAT'S THE ENTIRE BOOK. It's a load of self-indulgent wash with no redeeming value, yet apparently it gets praised as the beginning of modern literature (it was published in 1890) because the author (who I should note, was an advocate for Hitler and the Nazis) picked up a few prose tips from his time in the United States.
(no subject)
THREAD OVER. EVERYONE GO HOME.
Bravo.
no subject
Btw you actually need to read and understand something before you can accurately criticize it.
You ask why the Western Canon is important. It is important because it- not just the works themselves, but the reasons behind their selection- is the history of our Thought.
no subject
no subject
I said that you need to read something in order to accurately criticize it. I said that it's not just the works themselves that are important but the reason behind their longevity that is worth study. Kim might be a bunch of privileged, Imperialist tripe but I sure learnt a lot about Imperialism from reading it. I don't think anyone in the Literary schools of academia pretends that "important" is automatically synonymous with "good". The debate about what should and should not be in there has to start somewhere.
You were defending the idea that someone can take an English degree and then not read any books because "well they're not actually important so why should she". If she is an English major, then they are indeed important (and she clarified in her next post that she did do most of her readings)- even the ones you think are bad. I don't particularly like the Annales school (blasphemy I know) and my skin starts to crawl whenever I'm assigned pre von Ranke history, but I read it anyways because I am a History major and even the stuff I don't like contributes to my understanding of the subject.
Personally I don't care what people read but I'm a little irked by this whole "NO U" push back. Is it wrong for people who enjoy or study the classics to condescend to those who don't? Yup. But in my experience a lot of people who don't care about the classics get equally if not more defensive. The idea that anything written before 1950 is boring and worthless isn't exactly rare or unique.
Also lol. Laughably pretentious? Popular media reflects- broadly- the cultural thought of whatever time period it happened to be popular during. This is why we study Victorian pulp fiction and Shakespeare alongside the German existentialists. I meant it literally, but I'll try to use a less ostentatious terms than "history" or "thought" next time.
no subject
'cept I wasn't