Literary folks: can someone please be explaining to me?

Flamencology said:
I'm trying to imagine some of you as high school English teachers.
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My wife was an English teacher before we bought the horse stable. No thank you.

I was in advanced English and Lit courses from 4th grade through high school, but never got any of the critical thinking skills I was supposed to have. I suppose it's there, I just don't actively use it. I enjoy reading by getting immersed in the story, and if it doesn't draw me in I don't give a shit about themes or foreshadowing or whatever other academic things I'm supposed to be thinking about while I'm reading.
 
Punchy said:
My wife was an English teacher before we bought the horse stable. No thank you.

I was in advanced English and Lit courses from 4th grade through high school, but never got any of the critical thinking skills I was supposed to have. I suppose it's there, I just don't actively use it. I enjoy reading by getting immersed in the story, and if it doesn't draw me in I don't give a shit about themes or foreshadowing or whatever other academic things I'm supposed to be thinking about while I'm reading.
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Read better!
 
Hemingway was a master of prose. He suffered, however, from the same malady as the rest of the literary elite during the 20th century in that he ultimately believed in nothing and wasted his life in a futile search for meaning within himself with no absolute truth to base decisions upon.
That thinking gave us everything from Catcher in the Rye to Gatsby, The Razor's Edge, the Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and the rest of that endless list of narcissistic self absorbed authors and their whining style.
Sorry but I'll take Beowulf, Le Morte D'Arthur or The friggin Canterbury Tales over anything produced in the 20th century. It was a literary wasteland as far as I'm concerned.
 
Flamencology said:
Read better!
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I don't have a reason to. I enjoy pulp fiction. It's recreation and down time. If I wanted to think hard or learn something I'd read a textbook or a tech manual.

It'd be different if it was related to my work, but I'm thinkin' that's one of the many reasons I didn't get into the literature game to begin with.
 
Elias Graves said:
Hemingway was a master of prose. He suffered, however, from the same malady as the rest of the literary elite during the 20th century in that he ultimately believed in nothing and wasted his life in a futile search for meaning within himself with no absolute truth to base decisions upon.
That thinking gave us everything from Catcher in the Rye to Gatsby, The Razor's Edge, the Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and the rest of that endless list of narcissistic self absorbed authors and their whining style.
Sorry but I'll take Beowulf, Le Morte D'Arthur or The friggin Canterbury Tales over anything produced in the 20th century. It was a literary wasteland as far as I'm concerned.
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You're funny.
 
The crickets and the rust-beetles scuttled among the nettles of the sage thicket. "Vámonos, amigos," he whispered, and threw the busted leather flintcraw over the loose weave of the saddlecock. And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight.
 
And let's not forget the brilliant Sylvia Plath who gave us gems like...

"The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence."


"Is there no way out of the mind?"


"God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering."

Such inspiration! :facepalm:
 
GomezAddams said:
I find most "American Classics" to be mind-numbing in their boredom. Maybe there there's some sort of wonderful allusion hiding in there, but if you can't stay awake past page 3, what does it matter?

The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby are two more snoozers that come to mind. I can't believe they still make high-schoolers read those!
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I very much liked Red Badge of Courage.

One trouble with some of the Classics is that we are forced to read them in high school. My brother who likes stuff I would ever read, thought that was the problem with why he hated Tale of Two Cities...so he recently tried to read it again...and discovered it was still horrid. There was a lot of stuff from HS that was in the category for me...and there was some really good stuff like All Quiet on the Western Front and The Cruel Sea. But giving those kinds of books to young boys/men is much more likely to be a positive than Room with a View or Sons and Lovers :Wave:
 
The one that bored me to death and I couldn't get through was A Catcher In The Rye. Sorry to those who are offended by that. I just hated that book.
 
I don't think there is anything wrong with not 'connecting' with what experts consider great works. One can respect an artist's (including artists, playwrights, authors, musicians, etc) work but not enjoy it. I didn't care for the book in question, but I'm not going to dismiss the contribution of Hemingway to literature. I feel the same way about a lot of post-modern artists. I don't enjoy a lot of it, but I respect that some do, and recognize that much of that work changed the world of art. The cultural relevance doesn't impact whether I enjoy something.

I'd rather someone read it and not like it than not read it and pretend to love it, or worse yet, have no exposure to it at all. If you read it and love it, all the better.
 
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"I'd rather someone read it and not like it than not read it and pretend to love it, or worse yet, have no exposure to it at all."


Love it.................Exactly........
 
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I enjoyed Catcher in the Rye and Animal Farm, didn't care for Crime and Punishment or Lord of the Flies. That tells you nothing about the books but a lot about me.
 
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