*twitch*twitch*want*

[neadods]

I'm ears-deep in Bouchercon books, the TBRs have overflowed their bookshelves (I wonder if I'm going to have to go back to counting 'em every month), and what do I do? Walk through Borders yesterday on the way to lunch.

No, I didn't buy any books. But that didn't stop me from checking out Great Gatsby (which I've never read and was heavily referenced in the book I just reviewed, of all things.) And what's right next to it? The Beautiful and Damned. Ooooo, shiney. And Rita Mae Brown has a new book out that I could pick up for reviewing purposes...

In the meantime, the Teaching Company, well aware that they've got a live one on the line, keep sending me flyers. Lookie - Classics of American Literature! On sale! That would make a nice bookend with Understanding Literature and Life, not that that alone won't take me a year to do.

The saner part of my mind keeps asking "Honey, you have GOT to decide if you actually want to read/reread some of this stuff." Because I can just go out and buy Gatsby if I keep obsessing on it... but I have *never* wanted to read Moby Dick or The Small House of Uncle Thomas. As far as I'm concerned, that knockoff of the Essex story cut out all the really interesting bits.

There's also the truth that I've already read a few of the required readings already: Complete Poe (8th grade); The Scarlet Letter (9th grade); Tom Sawyer (summer reading program); Invisible Man (11th grade); and that lit prof favorite, Huck Finn (5th grade, 8th grade, *and* college - a pattern matched only by Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which was also required for 3 classes.)

Comments

[tchwrtr.livejournal.com]

Careful...

I grew up with the "Dead White Guys" collection, in leather. Didn't read most of it, but while in middle school I broke the spine on the Poe book. That says a lot, since I was already taking care of my books.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

If I'm buying books for "class," I'm heading straight to Dover Publications. Cheap, and you can write on 'em.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I managed to read a fair amount of Dead White Men's Canon while I was growing up. With very few exceptions, the only thing any of those stories ever did for me was allow me to "get" a reference in another story somewhere else... and the first teacher who ever told me anything about creative writing said that it was always a mistake to assume that your reader has seen/read all the same things you have.

On the other hand, I can see the value in having a reasonably-universal set of cultural references from which one can draw with some certainty of being understood by most readers. But why do these have to be from modern fiction, when most of the points they make are also widely available in ancient myth & fable?

In any event, I have concluded that the only reason I'll ever read a Dead White Men's Canon book again is if someone I know tells me that there's some reason to read it besides its being canon. Too many of the books on that list would never make it out of the slush pile if I were an editor.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

While I'd seriously love to red pen some Shakespeare, I'm up for this for several reasons. One is that the canon's not entirely dead white men; there is a dead white woman & a dead black man, not to mention a living black woman, listed in the course readings.

Second, there's a reason why some books last for decades, if not centuries, and it's not simply because live white professors like to teach them. They still have something to say after all this time, even if it's sometimes dated. Sometimes it will never entirely date. The why of that fascinates me. For instance:

But why do these have to be from modern fiction, when most of the points they make are also widely available in ancient myth & fable?

Because Uncle Tom's Cabin, Huck Finn, and The Invisible Man (to pick three) all address not just archetypes, but specific historical and social points in the specific culture of my country. There's nothing in ancient myth and fable that talks about the specific abuses of one race upon another, how the priveleged race also began to question and rebell, and how the specific insults and injustices were continued underground all within the framework of my own country.

Are Whitman and Dickenson somehow lesser than Homer because they are historically younger?

(and in a side note, if they ever do a class on Austen I'm doomed. I won't even wait for it to go on sale.)

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I wrote a short-essay reply to this, and LJ ate it. Grrr.

If I can reproduce it, I'll e-mail it to you.

[shawan-7.livejournal.com]

I can lend you Gatsby if you want. You can probably plunder your friends shelves and save some bucks.

Great Gatsby etc

[fandance.livejournal.com]

I bought a new copy of GATSBY a couple of years ago and reread it. What an extremely different reading experience from when I read it in high school (and didn't care for it much then. Who cared about the vapid Daisy?). The language is gorgeous and Fitzgerald did such a great job of capturing a mood and a time and a life style. He also does a great job observing the different temperments. I love how he describes Tom and Daisy being careless with people. He also captures Jay Gatsby's longing to belong to a world he can never be part of and his twin longing for a woman who can never be his (the green light at the end of Daisy's dock). In the end, Gatsby's obsession combined with Tom's hideous creulty doom Gatsby, and he never even knows why. It's left to Nick to make sense of it, and Nick's sense is to get as far away from these people as possible (smart man).

I also read TENDER IS THE NIGHT in high school and found it very moving/compelling. Thanks to reading NIGHT, I read every Fitzgerald story I could get my hands on, including his short stories which are fabulous gems. I couldn't stand THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, and BEAUTIFUL and DAMNED was a little dull.

As for MOBY DICK (another book I had to read in high school), the twenty plus pages about the whaling industry was a tough slog but the first 50 pages are priceless. Who can match Ismael's opening address where he expresses the idea that he must go down to the sea again whenever he finds himself inclined to knock the hats off strangers. What a wonderful way to say "when I feel alienated, I flee to the sailing ships where I can be isolated with other isolated haunted men?"

Never read UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.

Theatre Flashback ...

[fiona64.livejournal.com]

The Small House of Uncle Thomas

"House, house, house. Always is about house."

(I couldn't help it ...)