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Recent Comments
- In The Mailbox: 02.28.23 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain on Hey, longtime pw readers…
- In The Mailbox: 12.23.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll truly IS a sad, embittered psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- In The Mailbox: 07.18.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
I know I’ve heard of this blogger, but I’m not sure if I’m supposed to care what he thinks or not. I don’t get the talking points memo any more.
People named Jules should be women who cut their own hair.
Jules is a bright guy. I guess I just don’t get it when people write dismissively about books they’ve never read.
I keep telling people this: Catcher in the Rye is not about Teen Angst (which, evidently, is a buzz-phrase that comes attached to the book thanks to years of easy repetition). Instead, it is a profoundly effective (and funny) exploration of disillusionment and the battle we undergo to hold on to certain romantic ideals.
And yes, the question of Holden’s reliability as narrator needs be factored in to any close reading of the novel. Remember, he confuses some lyrics, and the book takes its title from Holden’s misreading.
Lazy and dismissive marginalizing of a book is something you expect from, say, a progressive reacting to Liberal Fascism, not from educated folk given the opportunity to engage with a writer who so deeply felt the world (in his peculiar way) that he eventually tried to hide from it.
Thanks for the link, Jeff! It was more a matter of writing somewhat dismissively about Salinger and the big mystery/idol worship thing than the book itself, whic
Meanwhile: Don’t worry, cranky-d, you aren’t. Sorry, psycho, I’m not.
sorry, to finish the thought … which I didn’t actually write about except to say I haven’t read it and don’t intend to dive into another adolescent angst wankfest at this point. Been there, done that.
“Adolescent angst wankfest” is to Catcher in the Rye as “Godless, nigger-loving raft racing” is to Huckleberry Finn
Sheesh, now with the race-baiting!
Thanks again, Jeff. Gotta to go work. Please be gentle.
Not race-baiting, Jules. Just the opposite, in fact. HF was at one time dismissed in such a way. I suspect most people now agree that the novel is about more than a river trip with chattel.
I’m beginning to think it’s a bad idea ever to reference any post by anyone else ever.
I’d like to think he was just kidding around.
Just came from a site where they were calling Salinger a “one hit wonder”. By that account, so was Jimi Hendrix
Well, it’s an interesting time to discuss the worthiness of a book.
At times, books or author or artists suffer from a reverse snobbery. I’m not going to read that book ’cause everyone says it’s bla bla bla and they don’t want to hop in with the hipster douchebag crowd. I can’t say whether that’s the motivation for folks not reading the book, but one’s motivations are always suspect when you judge w/o reading.
I had that thing going for Radiohead. All the critics loved it, so I was defiant and refused to listen. Who suffered? Me. That’s who.
Anyway, there are many reasons for not preferring to read a certain book. I don’t know if some are more invalid than others- after all, one only has so many book-reading hours in their lifetime.
I read it as a kid – prolly around 13, and loved it. My sons read it, and they liked it.
Also, I think it is an interesting book in that stuff Jeff mentioned earlier. Character, etc. But, AP material? High school reading material?
I dunno.
I shudder at some of the stuff they give kids to read in “literature” classes. It appears they fall, like “Catcher in the Rye” does, in my mind, as more of a reading for enjoyment kind of book. Perhaps book report material. But, does it really need to be studied?
Shouldn’t precious class hours be spent on works that are a tad more … inaccessible to the reader?
Jules is a great blogger who cares about the truth, and who cares about books and writing. He dashed off a quick take on Salinger, who he has not read, and based it on hearsay. Not his best post, but at least he made it clear that he doesn’t have any firsthand knowledge of the man’s work.
I love Jeff’s blogging, too, so I hate to see y’all getting off on the wrong foot!
Personally I think Salinger had a great voice, and I very much enjoyed reading him, but when I read Catcher in the Rye again recently, for me, it didn’t hold up.
Jeff, if you have time, I would be interested in hearing your take on Rye. And I bet Jules would, too.
I think CitR is interesting as a study in what I like to call “Books That Were Assigned To Me In Middle School And High School And Which I Therefore Developed An Undying Hatred For”. (See also: Lord of the Flies, A Separate Peace, Bridge to Terabithia, etc.)
It’s unfortunate, really. Our public education system (or, at least, New Jersey’s) is teaching reading in such a way that it actively encourages students to hate the very literature they’re studying. It’s only through pure luck that I managed to grow up a bit before my senior year of HS such that I could see past this particular stumbling block, else I would have missed out on Catch 22, Last of the Mohicans, numerous plays of Shakespeare and several other great books.
I’m sure that, were I to re-read Catcher and other works thus condemned to my personal ash heap, I would enjoy them in a way that only 20 years of chronological separation from those teen angsty years can provide. Alas, my spare time is at a premium these days. After all, those blog comments don’t write themselves!
See. Doug, all those books – to me – fall under the “free reading” category. That they make up standard fare in classrooms … sigh. Dumbing down. Bridge To Terabithia as a classroom text? Shesh.
This is a tangent, but to be truly educated – all those books should be read for enjoyment. School, as I wrote earlier, is for more inaccessible works. LIke Gravity’s Rainbow.
[runs]
I have never read “Gravity’s Rainbow,” but since gravity cannot have a rainbow, per se, I reject the book outright based on its title. Plus Jeff and everyone else who’s read it said it was hard to read, and I don’t want reading to be hard and stuff.
Speaking of judging a book by it’s cover, Mr. O’Keefe gives a statement.
Oh. See, I was in 11th grade when Bridge to Terabithia was published, and so I missed that whole bandwagon. I’m not feeling the loss.
I wouldn’t mind a class on Ulysses, because that there is some really opaque stuff, and I’m sorely lacking in the attention-span department. That’s a book that I would definitely want for some hand-holding to get through.
I’ve got a third-grader that has read Bridge to Terabithia. Also, Inkheart. She’s reading Inkspell right this second.
Probably not ready for Proust, yet.
In honors english we had to read parts of Beowulf in the original language. Chaucer too. That’s the sort of thing you do then because it isn’t likely to happen later in life.
Slart, she’s reading Bridge ON HER OWN? W/o a middle school teacher to pose theme and setting questions at her?
Let’s add The Scarlet Letter, Great Expectations, and Silas Marner to the list of books I read in high school and would never touch again. The experience also pretty much made me hate Dickens, though A Tale of Two Cities was okay reading (because I chose to read it) though I probably didn’t “get it” and I have read “A Christmas Carol” just to see how different the movie adaptations were from the original.
I’m a, well, pre-Terabithia guy. Way pre. I remember Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, All Quiet on the Western Front, etc. Never read CitR, for some reason. I tried Gravity’s Rainbow once. Will not go there again. Or any of his other books. What crap. Time included it in its’ 100 Greatest Novels. What more do you need to know?
Anyway, I’m just giddy over the hideous Zinn shuffling off this mortal coil. Finally. Hope there’s something to that whole karma theory…
Well, I would say that the goal of high school literature courses is not necessarily to make you LOVE the books you’ve read. It’s to enable you to read and understand more complicated works of fiction.
With today’s student being “challenged” with such difficult works as “A Separate Peace” … it’s no wonder that they are only able to read weighty tomes such as Twilight on their own.
Of course, I suspect that for the last … 25 years or so theme has taken precedent over the actual text. Literature as morality play.
I’m beginning to think it’s a bad idea ever to reference any post by anyone else ever.
Pretty sure Jules isn’t going to drag this out for days, on three or four other blogs, take screen-shots of your every post and comment, accuse you of every social sin under the sun for about a week in the titles of his posts, and make you live to regret the day you ever launched pw.
Here’s a question: how should we be educating young readers, aside from parents encouraging their children to do so? What should be a part of a school curriculum and not, per Carin, voluntary?
Homer? Shakespeare? Chaucer? Hawthorne? Melville? Should we constrain educational imprimatur for the classics? Or do Vonnegut, Bradbury, Heinlein, Salinger, etc. belong there too?
I will say that I have a far higher opinion of all of the “classics” I’ve read outside of a school context (particularly the works of Dostoevsky, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dickens, Twain/Clemens and Tolstoy) than those I was forced to consume for “book reports”.
And cranky: Great Expectations is one of my all-time most-hated works precisely because of the “forced-to” factor. Marner I read extra-curricular and enjoyed it immensely. Hated Scarlet Letter too, for that matter.
greginsewa:
Thanks for the unwitting reminder. I forgot to mention that Hemingway is another author whose collected works are effectively ruined for me by my schooling.
*sigh*
I think books like Catcher or Gatsby — wherein we have a first-person narrator — are often far more interesting to study than books that require you to read through a lot of historical footnoting.
Wanna study how narrative works? How it can be made to work? How voice or tone is created? Study Catcher.
And also, Gravity’s Rainbow is phenomenal. One of the greatest novels ever written or likely to ever be written. Makes me despair that it even was written. Because seriously, what do I have to offer by way of comparison?
Add To Kill a Mockingbird to that list.
Cranky – we had to read Beowulf in its original form as well. The teacher was dummerer than RD, and assigned the words blood and gore to 2 cheerleaders, and every time those words came up, they had to stand up, say their assigned word, and sit back down.
As for Catcher, because I was raised in Utah, the big issue was all the swearing in the book.
We read it anyway. As a teen, I was determined not to be offended by it, and I wasn’t, because it was soon obvious how much of the vulgar language was a shield to protect a tender soul from the vulgarity of the world.
I didn’t know about Salinger’s war experiences. Utah beach. Cripes. My sister and her dh visited there a few years ago. She swears the place is haunted—a terrible sensation of evil that makes your skin crawl in ways that the other beaches don’t.
No wonder he retreated from the world. If I had experienced something that intense and painful, I wouldn’t want to deal with stupid frivolous people trying to ask me the same stupid frivolous questions about stupid frivolous things, either.
We Americans are obsessed with our own entertainment and amusement. Seeing wholescale slaughter makes that obsession look pretty repulsive.
Homer? Shakespeare? Chaucer? Hawthorne? Melville? Should we constrain educational imprimatur for the classics? Or do Vonnegut, Bradbury, Heinlein, Salinger, etc. belong there too?
That’s easy. The classics – Homer, Shakespear, Chaucer … etc should be central texts that are read by an entire class, with themes and settings and all that lit bs discussed. Vonnegut, Bradbury, Heinlein are all works that can be easily read and understood by your average reader. They certainly don’t require precious classroom hour to disseminate.
Book clubs, reports, and pure enjoyment. that’s where those books belong.
My focus isn’t that one type is more important than the other. But, the first group are certainly beyond the independent reading ability of most students in high school.
I think we’ve tried the dumbing-down of reading materials (with the goal to create a love of reading in more folks) and I think it’s been a big old FAIL.
We’ve simply created folks who consider middle-ability texts to be “difficult.” Thus – Twilight.
Of Mice and Men and Flowers for Algernon caused me physical pain.
My 8 year old is reading Twilight.
Another thought:
Orwell’s works were always curiously striped of their context and we were never given to understand the author’s actual intent in writing them, yet we were forced to read them and “analyze” their message as only 10th graders can do. His treatment among authors was rather unique, in my experience.
Almost as if the NJEA had a bunch of ideologues pushing a central message or something… Naaaah. That’s crazy talk!
I read Terabithia on my own and hated it, because I always hated books that were written to “help you deal with a serious issue.”
Which is why I avoided Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret like the plague as well as most of Judy Blume. (The Fudge books were just plain funny.)
I loved the Wizard of Oz series (especially Ozma of Oz), Madeline l’Engle, and Zilpha Keatley Snyder (The Headless Cupid, The Egypt Game, Black and Blue Magic, etc.) even if she was an old hippy. I wanted to read imaginative stories that took place in a magical world, not the stupid real world, which, you have to deal with that anyway, so why read about it some more?
JD:
Those two as well. I’d forgotten them — thanks for reminding me! I still bear the “educational” scars.
Carin:
Twilight, and before it, Harry Potter. I guess it’s nice that folks are still reading stuff, but when Steve Jobs takes to the stage to demo a new product capable of displaying almost the entirety of the collected works available in the English language and chooses to show it off by buying Ted Kennedy’s hagiographic biography, well, I fear we’ve already lost the battle as a society…
Doug, I had a really depressing experience this past summer. I was talking to a soccer mom who was reading a Romance novel. I tried to talk her into reading Emma or Pride and Prejudice, telling her they are two of the most TRULY romantic tales out there.
She said that she’d always heard they were “too hard” to read.
Because seriously, what do I have to offer by way of comparison?
Starting at the age of 8, I decided I was going to grow up and write Harry Potter, but J.K. Rowling beat me to it. Helluva project. She spent 5 years plotting out the series, researching wood lore and plant lore and The Alchemical Wedding and all kinds of history and legends.
The pieces fit together in a satisfying way when you study it closely, as I did for a few years, but the wild popularity turns some people off and also obscures her attention to detail and the carefully crafted symbolism.
I confess to having read, and owning every Harry Potter book. I denounce and condemn myself.
Doug – I do no think those kinds of scars can ever heal.
JD, I thought Steinbeck could tell a good story so I pretty much enjoyed reading his stuff.
One other thing I did enjoy was reading and discussing Shakespeare, partly because of all the “hidden” raunchiness in it. Hey, I was a teenage male. Whattaya expect?
Carin:
You could always suggest Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters. Maybe they’d be gateway drugs…
I have not read the Harry Potter series nor do I intend to. I have seen all the movies, and that’s probably enough.
I would denounce myself for my pseudo-elitism, but it’s who I am, so I won’t.
When I lived in Monterey, I used to enjoy going down to Cannery Row and Fishermans Wharf. Try as I did, I never could picture Steinbeck there.
Jeff, what do you think about Tom Robbins? I read Jitterbug Perfume as a young man, found it moderatly challenging, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
It’s been awhile, but I remember at the time being continually delighted at the way he phrased things.
I’ve never read anything by him since, not sure why.
Part of the problem with high school literature courses is that the really do assign stuff that’s over the heads of the students — not in terms of vocabulary or reading level but in a thematic sense. I’m sorry, but in 10th grade, I couldn’t give a rip about A Tale of Two Cities or Julius Caesar, and the way they have to teach it — teasing every little bit apart so that evabody gets it — makes it unpalatable for the rest of your life.
cranky-d: Sorry you developed a yuk for Dickens: he’s become my favorite. Try Bleak House (or watch the recent BBC miniseries with Gillian Anderson) or Little Dorritt (or the recent BBC miniseries). Pretty good stuff.
Carin: I’ve tried reading Austin but I can’t. Something about her style makes it hard for me to keep track of who’s who when reading it, but I do love the movies based on the books.
dicentra #38:
I will cop to Rowling making for an entertaining read, but I always took the symbolism to be a bit too heavy, she can’t write teen angst worth a bucket of warm spit and I could never escape the sense that she, like Chris Carter, started out with a mere idea for a series and then wrote herself into a few corners. I lost interest in The X-Files when I realized Carter had as little of an idea where the story was headed as I did.
For my money, though, the best way to consume the Harry Potter series is the UK audiobook version, narrated by Stephen Fry. Absolutely wonderful.
Dunno what you’re talking about; never read it. She’s a smart enough cookie to figure things out, though, and what she doesn’t understand, she asks us about.
She doesn’t so much absorb the gist of a story as much as the entire narrative, beginning to end. If we ask her to summarize a book, she’ll give us the exact sequence of events that happens. She’s not remembering the text of the book so much as what happened on a really fine level of detail.
Uncanny, really.
Inkheart she passed her AR test on with about 95% correct. Knowing her, she probably had them all right, but the key was wrong.
Oh, and: she’s also read and completely understood The Phantom Tollbooth, which is a book I still reread from time to time.
Slart:
Phantom Tollbooth stands the test of time, along with Lewis Carroll’s works, as some of the best and funniest tomes of logic, illogic and conceptual mathematics. Not even my 5th grade reading class could ruin Tollbooth for me…
I also admit to really really liking Richard Bach and Paulo Coehlo. And Vince Flynn. And Brad Thor.
And she’s in third grade? Yikes.
JD:
Those authors definitely go on my “Summer beach ‘CIA wetworks’ reading list”, or, in my father’s shorthand, “trashy reads”. Clancy and Ludlum fit that mould too.
Fuck you too jules.
My favoritest author EVAH is this half-white dude named Barack Hussein Obama, who writes uplifting stories if hope in truly elegant prose. He plays a prominent role in his own books. It is really inspiring stuff. You should check it out sometime.
By the by, if anyone is in possession of an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’re doing yourself a great disfavor if you haven’t picked up the free Stanza e-reader app and started filling your library from Project Gutenberg and Feedbooks.
Though I hear the Classics app also went free, since Steve Jobs & co. basically stole the look, feel and functionality of Classics for their upcoming iMaxiPad and iBooks deal…
JD #53:
I hear he had a ghostwriter.
I just got posting privileges. The vicitms of the Nazis, Mao, Stalin, the North Vietnamese and Pol Pot, along with the many who died defending the freedoms of the United States of America over the years, have asked the devil to permanently plant my head in my ass for enternity and he agreed.
It is really a bitch to type this way.
Sometimes it feels like Fariña’s death (sucked) taught me the wrong lesson… haven’t succeeded in unlearning it, though.
Correcting myself: remove “disfavor”, sub “disservice”.
Brain is suffering from P.M. energy crash. Must find coffee.
Yeah, tell me about it. You know how you tell your kids they can be anything they want when they grow up?
With her, it’s more like she can be two or three everythings that she wants. Not genius, just a lot of curiosity and a drive to learn.
Oh, and red belt in tae kwon do in a few months. Black belt in a year or so.
If she doesn’t hit the testing cycle just right and I do, we’ll test at the same time.
Slart, she’s reading Bridge ON HER OWN? W/o a middle school teacher to pose theme and setting questions at her?
Dunno what you’re talking about; never read it. She’s a smart enough cookie to figure things out, though, and what she doesn’t understand, she asks us about.
I was joking.
ANYTHING read by Stephen Fry in an audiobook is worth listening to. That man could read the phonebook and it would be enthraling.
Ah. That’s what I thought.
Like Doug, I need more coffee.
Realizing that the enjoyment of art is indeed a subjective thing, I still ask how can anyone not love Gravity’s Rainbow? Jeff turned me on to it and I cannot thank him enough. Yes, it is a difficult read, but the story is phenomenal. I remember at around page 70 or so, I e-mailed Jeff and basically said I don’t think I can do this, but he encouraged me to carry on and that I would not be disappointed. He was so, so correct in that advice. cranky-d, give it a try, if you’re all interested. Please don’t let the idea (which is true, imo) of it being a hard read keep you from reading it. It’s an amazing story told by an amazing story teller. I also loved Mason & Dixon by Pynchon, too. Some unforgettable characters in that novel.
Part of the problem with high school literature courses is that the really do assign stuff that’s over the heads of the students — not in terms of vocabulary or reading level but in a thematic sense. I’m sorry, but in 10th grade, I couldn’t give a rip about A Tale of Two Cities or Julius Caesar, and the way they have to teach it — teasing every little bit apart so that evabody gets it — makes it unpalatable for the rest of your life.
Well, this really goes to a larger argument I have with education … Personally I don’t think they are over the heads of most kids. I just think kids (many, not all) are under-prepared to read them. Julius Caesar is going to be pretty confusing if you don’t have a good grip on Roman history. I had a really cool Shakespeare teacher in 10th grade.
Carin: I’ve tried reading Austin but I can’t. Something about her style makes it hard for me to keep track of who’s who when reading it, but I do love the movies based on the books.
Loveherloveherloveher. I re-read her works every few years. She makes me chuckle.
Obstreperous – I’ll give it ONE more try.
I have a few ahead of it, so don’t be surprised if no one hears me mentioning it for a while.
I’ll give it 120 pages.
You will not be disappointed, Carin. I’m basically, “everyman” and I could get through it. Well, enjoying the hell out of it certainly helped, too.
Carin:
My wife is an Austenophile and I could never see the attraction prior to knowing my wife. She’s had me read a few and, combined with some judicious use of BBC miniseries, I’ve actually enjoyed the Austen I’ve read.
Dunno, think I had always passed her off as “chicklit” and thus ignored her writings. That doesn’t explain how I let Jane Eyre slip in, though. I enjoyed that, even though I was a 10th grader at the time. Couldn’t ever stand the other Brontë sister, though.
They have a word for it, endternity.
I don’t really care for Wuthering Heights. I’ve read it two or three times … but still I don’t really get it.
Probably my all time favorite author is PJ Wodehouse.
But then I’m shallow like that…
Our Dumb World by The Onion was an excellent read.
Also, if you like Wodehouse, you have to read the Bandy Papers by Donald Jack.
Speaking of Wodehouse and Stephen Fry: You all have seen the Fry & Hugh Laurie rendition of Jeeves & Wooster, right?
The first two seasons are an absolute treat. Not seasons 3 & 4, though — they’re an utter waste.
Carin:
I always cared for Monty Python’s rendition of “The Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights“
I should have guessed that was coming.
You know what classic author really bites it? Hardy. Tess of the D’iealreadys scarred me for life.
Is that the Hardy of The Hardy Brothers fame?
Or is that Hardy from Laurel & Hardy?
I liked Salinger and Twain too. I am a huge fan of Pynchon.
did hardy use squid™ brand pitchforks in his novels?
I still love Jitterbug Perfume, and I used to teach both Another Roadside Attraction and Still Life with Woodpecker. I’ve enjoyed just about every Robbins book I’ve read: anybody who can anthropomorphize a stick and a sock is okay by me.
His politics are annoying — and his dialogue is as thick as Kevin Smith’s — but he can turn a phrase with the best of them, and his unusual metaphorical flourishes are a thing to behold.
Plus, lesbians!
Somehow I missed CinR in high school and my good intentions to read later on (and never getting to it) is akin to my family’s joke that I grew up in Granada Hills, CA, and we never visited the San Fernando Mission (something we passed on a regular basis).
Tale of Two Cities, some of Shakespeare’s plays, Madame Bovary, Catch 22, Scarlet Letter Great Gatsby … a few of what I remember from HS English. I recall my dad picking up my Catch 22 and only getting half way through. He said it was way too real for him to be funny (such bureaucratic SNAFUs and FUBARs he endured when he was in the Army made him decide against a career in it).
Outside of class, Heinlein was quite popular and I read everything of his I could find. Ayn Rand, too (though one English teacher was a bit scandalized that my parents had allowed me to read Fountainhead when I was 11 … I’m not sure whether it was the politics or sex that was most upsetting to her).
Carin
btw, I, too, think “hard” books should be taught in jr/sr high classes. However, I think they need to be mixed with some “recreational” reading. As I recall, my teachers had a double list – one “required reading” and “optional titles” with a quota of what one could pick from each column.
I just passed two boxes full of Goosebumps books that my girls read years ago to #2 daughter – mom of twins. They are in the first grade and will soon enough get to a point of being able to read them. I believe they’ll instill love of reading in the boys as much as they did with my girls.
My son-in-law gave my #1 daughter a Kindle for Christmas. She loves it as now she doesn’t have to lug books around – and a lot of the “classics” are free (or only a buck or two) on the Kindle, so she downloaded her favorite Jane Austin’s already and is happily revisiting them.
Oh… another book I was meaning to read and actually, finally, have is “The Lovely Bones”. I recommend it!
(swims in from storm-tossed sea)
“Its”
(cue Sousa’s “The Liberty Bell” march)
Here you go Mike.
Woot! Time to go to the bookstore!
What?
Never read CitR either, and I was HS in late 80’s for perspective. Did have to read A Separate Peace, Tale of Two Cities, Lord of the Flies, and God Bless the Beasts and the Children. These were all from my Honors English class Sophomore year, and in which every student complained openly to our teacher how depressing the entire reading list was. We ended with a unanimous favorite however, The Scarlett Pimpernel.
As far as what to read today or what to teach, we do have the PW Classic Liberal reading list somewhere… I have misplaced my link, but it is very good. A little help over here folks?
(swims in from storm-tossed sea)
You can’t judge a book by it
’s cover(cue Sousa’s “The Liberty Bell” march)
Oh, hell.
You can’t judge a book by its cover
Strikethrough fails most epically on apostrophes.
You can’t judge a book by it’s cover
I’m sure Jeff meant it ironically. :D
Mr Cox, your link.
I don’t like lesbians, and utterly fail to see the attraction they evince in many men.
Am I a bad person?
You’ld make a bad lesbian greginsewa, clearly.
I don’t like lesbians, and utterly fail to see the attraction they evince in many men.
Am I a bad person?
I don’t think it’s literal. More of a juvenile fantasy most of us have about two hot women getting it on. Now back to my movie as Jenna just broke out the strap on.
Lovely Bones is a great read.
And, to clarify, I’m perfectly content with many of these books occupying the “optional” list of required reading – you know, choose from THIS list and write a paper kinda stuff.
But, books that are given class-time (usually weeks) should be stiffer stuff.
I just think “literate” folks – in college – should be able to reference such books w/o them ever having been “assigned” to read them.
Lesbians are so 90’s.
Seems to me a lesbian with a strap on is like a communist swearing on a Bible.
I find it confusing.
“No wonder he retreated from the world. If I had experienced something that intense and painful, I wouldn’t want to deal with stupid frivolous people trying to ask me the same stupid frivolous questions about stupid frivolous things, either. ”
I didn’t exactly go through a Utah Beach, but I manage to drag myself to work and deal with stupid-frivolity every day, you know, lawyers and insurance claim handlers….
BTW – Jules is good people, and he linked here and suggested people come see him get whacked around a bit. I think he realizes how he has opened himself up for a bit of jabbing, heh heh.
I can barely remember the High School literary works I read, however I do remember reading quite a bit of Shakespeare and Dickens. Oh and we did read Gatsby, never touched Catcher. The side story of this comment is I hated Great Expectations with a passion, but forced myself to read Tale of Two Cities, (for extra credit) and loved every minute of that book. Something about the character of Sydney Porter remains blistered in my memory.
Oh and I don’t even remember anything about A Seperate Peace, other than we read it.
Very busy day so late to this. I am also someone who never read Salinger in high School, nor College or after. Since I was in High School ’64-’66 perhaps they considered it too new. Or the swearing could have ruled it out. We got Melville, London, Irving, Cooper, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner IIRC for American Lit.
I don’t like lesbians, and utterly fail to see the attraction they evince in many men.
Am I a bad person?
Well, that depends, Greg. If you’re talking about the drop dead gorgeous kind that exists primarily in my imagination, then yes, yes you are a bad person. And evil too.
If you’re talking about the Rosie O’Donnell type, then no. Perfectly normal to be repulsed.
Hope that helps. Carry on.
As far as what to read today or what to teach, we do have the PW Classic Liberal reading list somewhere… I have misplaced my link, but it is very good.
Here you go.
While we’re on the subject of dreaded high school activities, You haven’t lived until you’ve translated Caesar’s Commentaries. Sic transit gloria indeed!
Books are stupid. Like school. And Chris Matthews.
BRD! Long time no see!
Excuse me while I try to shoehorn some Steyn in here.
Bear with me; maybe the reason Sarah Rolph (#15) thinks CitR doesn’t hold up is because teenage angst has been extended into the 30’s.
Yeah, I know, pretty much off topic. But it’s an interesting read, and funny…NOW GO READ IT DAMMIT!
Hey – was watching C-SPAN, listening to Obama, felt the need to break out from the lurk and say something pointless and vaguely irritating.
Yeah, I been missing that from you. ;-) Kidding!
Sydney Porter
Carton. As in milk carton. As in little 1/2 pt. milk carton that came with school lunch, which always smelled vaguely of lightly spoiled milk on the exterior. You’d chew the pointed pouring spout while drinking and note the milk that stayed in the far corners through capillary action.
That’s how I remember his name. Always thought of the milk carton.
BRD!!!!!! Wow, this is like Old Home Week.
LBascom
Remember the ’80s? Japan was buying up every American icon from Rockefeller Center to Columbia Pictures and TV viewers were bombarded with commercials warning that they’d soon be speaking Japanese down at the shopping mall. So what happened? Well, the yellow peril got wrinkly—and thus a lot less perilous.
Jaysus effin KEERIST… I almost spewed a mouthful of stirred-not-shaken-bombay sapphire martini across the monitor.
LOVE LOVE LOVE Steyn.
(must write on that topic when I sober up)
“Hey – was watching C-SPAN, listening to Obama,”
i’m watching groundhog day same difference
“Hey – was watching C-SPAN, listening to Obama,”
I would rather remove my own gall bladder with a salad fork than listen to that man.
Completely coincidentally, I am at this moment drinking a Bombay Sapphire martini, shaken, over a carefully removed and twisted (which puts the lemon oils on the surface, yanno) twist of lemon peel.
My secret is to keep the glasses and the gin in the freezer until I’m ready to mix ’em up.
My secret would be better with Tanqueray Ten, but fiscal responsibility (and a convenient sale down at the local beverage mart) has me drinking Sapphire, which is almost as good.
I’m pretty much pining for some High Life right now, if that counts.
In any case, put on C-Span for the missus, who is left of persuasion. She felt that the Obama was being a bit dingenuous from time to time. So, all in all, it worked for me. I didn’t have to listen and the missus kind of agrees with me on the Obama.
(Missus now chimes in: “You can also say that I didn’t think that he read the [Republican] bills – or at best staffed out the reading of the bills, and that he doesn’t understand Medicare.”)
Not only that, but in reading over my shoulder, she’s suggested we might get beer.
So, Duke, the C-Span rebroadcast of Obama’s meeting with GOP Hill leadership is working out pretty well for me, all things considered. I, therefore, highly recommend bipartisanship in at least some circumstances.
Bipartisanship does indeed seem to be working for you, BRD. I will say that booze does make C-Span watchable, same as baseball. No booze? BOOOOOOORING!
Slart
Totally agree on the T-ten … I haven’t tried the lemon peel, I’m partial to Mezzetta garlic-stuff olives.
You mean wrinkly Japanese, or loving Steyn? :-D
two of the most TRULY romantic tales out there
I’m sucker for romance myself.
*sniffle*
Thanks LTC John for the backup. That Bombay Sapphire lemon peel cocktail hour sounds pretty good. I’m knocking back some cheap Argentinian red and watching Househunters Int’l. Malta, St. Paul’s Bay … Sigh. It’s like old home week. Remind me to tell you about the conquistadors crossing the Andes, that and the Knights of St John, and the Maltese in WWII. Both of those places are great. Take me back.
“Crittenden,” said the old guy, my Argentine girlfriend’s father, younger then than I am now, after that mad gallop across the pampas. “You ride very badly, but at least you are not afraid!” I was glad he had not noticed, though I was pretty sure the horse knew. They called him El Chueco, “the Lame One,” because he was pigeon-toed, but that horse didn’t miss a trick and wasn’t taking any crap from no gringo either.
Come on Crittenden, did you shit yourself or not?
It is okay jules. It was stupid of you to criticize a book you didn’t bother to read, but a lot of people criticize you without reading your blog. It’s a push.
No, Bascom, but all the skin got rubbed off my ass hanging onto that saddle. Such great days, on a 400-year-old estancia. Get up predawn to plow the fields all morning, which amazed the eff out of the locals, then ditch that after lunch to drink with the old man all afternoon
“Crittenden, I have to piss. Let us go piss on the land!”
He had bought a lot of cocktail stuff when he heard his lovely daughter was bringing her gringo boyfriend, figured he was going to have to mix the drinks for some kind of turtleneck-wearing sophisticate.
“What do you drink?” he said when I first showed up.
“I dunno. Beer, wine, bourbon, mainly.”
“You are just like us! Are you sure you don’t want a cocktail? I bought all of this for you. Here, let me make you one. It’s called ‘Johhny Rosado.'”
Looking back, I think he was a little disappointed that he didn’t get a chance to put on the dog, being out there in the back of beyond, even if he was glad the daughter’s boyfriend wasn’t a total metrosexual.
Private to Hemmingway: I reserve the right to be stupid. This is still America last time I checked. Anyway, like I said, I didn’t criticize the book … unless you consider “adolescent angst wankfest” to be a “criticism” per se. I criticized Salinger on general spec that he was being a self-important wanker .. and I think his self-indulgent whiny behavior over the past 50 years bears that out. I know everyone thinks he’s a sensitive genius who got PTSD while runnig around Europe with his typewriter, but being acquainted some ordinary geniuses who survived some really bad days when two-thirds or more of their pals got it, I’m not impressed.
As for people who seek fame and universal admiration, and don’t like it when they get it, I haven’t noticed any of them giving the money back yet.
Being from the “back of beyond” myself, I doubt his disappointment came close to his relief that his daughter showed good sense and respect for her fathers influence by not dragging home a feyboy.
The horse was probably relieved too, what with not having to be saddled with crap.
jules, I was stupid all the time. A real man admits it. I would invite you and Jeff for fishing and drinking, but unfortunately I am dead. Have catch one and have one for me.
As for Salinger, he was a hell of a talent. Being a human being can be pretty damn lonely. Espeically at night. Trust me. I know. I would rather have one good book than a bunch of crap.
Jesus, I need to edit.
Ok, that was a little offensive. Typewriter or M-1, it’s pretty bold to judge a WWII vet cavalierly. He probably saw things you couldn’t imagine, no matter how many times you watched Saving Private Ryan. You seem a little bitter about someone that apparently just wanted to be left alone. What gives?
The best martini I ever had was at Pappas Bros steakhouse in Dallas. Regular martini, but it had three olives stuffed with bleu cheese. I’m not much of a martini drinker, but damn, those were good.
Jules, you’re a good sport.
Nothing wrong with being dead, H, we’re all headed that way. Right now I have to bail, decide whether to go watch Nazis getting waxed on the History Channel, or read about how the Indians weren’t a bunch of noble savage simpleton saps who got genocided by the evil white man, but a bunch of highly sophisticated of cultures and civilizations that made some really bad political choices while trying to triangulate against each other. “1491.” It’s turning out to be a great book. In fact, now that I think of it, I think I’m going to go read it. That one and some other good ones at the link:
http://www.julescrittenden.com/2010/01/29/wont-be-down-to-breakfast/
Sorry Lee, I have to call bullshit on that. Plenty of us have gone to war, come back, and lead normal lives. If the guy wanted to be a hermit, so be it. Maybe he just didn’t like people? Who knows?
Private to Bascom: I’m familiar with dead people and narrowly avoided being one on several occasions. However, that remark was about comparing his counter-intelligence duty, close to the lines, but in which he himself said he was carrying around his typewriter, jumping into foxhoes to type, to a couple of infantrymen who saw 2/3s losses, one of whom was literally the last man standing. (That guy is a bit of a recluse, but literally, all of his friends were killed in the space of an hour and half. Every last one.) More discussion of the PTSD issue here: http://www.julescrittenden.com/2010/01/29/wont-be-down-to-breakfast/
Maybe Salinger did have a bad war experience. There is no such thing as safe rear duty in a war zone. However, I’d suggest Salinger’s behavior was pathological and suggests underlying problems exascerbated by whatever his combat experience did to him, unless he happens to have been in the middle of something really extremely bad that no one knows about. Could be.
That’s fine Duke. I don’t know if crittenden landed on Omaha, but how willing are you to be un-sympathetic to someone who was more emotionally affected by the experience than others?
Did Salinger do something offensive enough to warrant a disrespectful dismissal like that?
Personally, I’ve never been to war, so I might be all wet. I just am a little taken aback at someone that easily dismisses someone who has.
Ok Crittenden, not trying to start a fight. I just think you shouldn’t criticize anyone unless you have walked a mile in their shoes.
That way, you are a mile away, and you have their shoes…
;-)
I’m bailing here. Gotta go read “1491.” Glad to get everyone talking about books. Many thanks to all of you who read my blah blah blah and for not being too hurtful about any stupid stuff I said cause I’m sensitive like Salinger and generally prefer to avoid interacting with my fellow humans beings unless I absolutely have to. Ha ha, just kidding! Ok, not really …
Fair enough, Basc. My own experience is limited to a couple of warm to lukewarm war zones as a journo, plus some moderately hot to occasionally intense. Here’s the extended blabfest on that: http://www.julescrittenden.com/2007/03/31/march-31-2003/
Re Salinger, gotta respect a man’s choice in the end. Just a little weird, extreme and inexplicable.
I have been to war, Lee. I saw some things that I don’t care to remember. Most of us did. Most of us came back and got on with things. My uncle Mel went through the worst of WWII in the Pacific and managed to have a good life afterwards. The myth of the disaffected vet is a Hollywood creation. Most of us just did our jobs, came back, and got on with our lives.
I’m not trying to pick a fight with you, you’re a good person, but the whole PTSD thing gets under my skin.
Yeah Duke, I know you aren’t picking a fight, and also I am working from a lot of assumptions.
I don’t know much about Salinger, I’m under the impression that he just made a recluse of himself. It’s not like he became an anti-war advocate, right?
You said most of those in war came back and were fine, and I know that PTSD is largely a Hollywood fiction, but I just don’t see where Salinger merits scorn. I mean, it’s not like he got slapped by Patton. Hell, I am pretty much a recluse, and don’t feel I need an excuse.
I just don’t get the animosity directed at him.
I don’t think Salinger merits scorn either. The man just wanted to be left alone. What’s wrong with that?
?If wanting to be left alone is wrong,? I don’t want to be right?…
Histories are fine. War is hell. Men come back scarred, one way or the other. I admire those who get on with it. I don’t judge too harshly those who do not do as well.
sdferr and SBP… thank you for linky! Bookmarked again.
Thing about scars is, regardless how people get them, most heal up fine and are hardly noticeable to other people. Just not all, or we wouldn’t have things like “PTSD” in the casual vocabulary.
A lot of the difference has to do with how a man goes about his healing, and that will as often depend on what he had in him before the wound, as what the wound put in him.
I had a very light brush with fame, but enough to see some of the downsides. One thing is a lot of your fans think they know you through your work, and think because it affected them so personally you must know them. These are also the ones most likely to approach you, and there familiarity is often quite disturbing.
Another thing is all they want to talk about usually is your work, which unless I am working is the last thing I want to talk about. If you are already a bit misanthropic and paranoid, it would be easy to go to ground.
Oh, I don’t get the gin/olive thing at all. Once you try the lemon peel thing…well, I guess I can’t speak for your tonsils, but for me it was the sudden realization that olives and gin just don’t go together well. Olives and vodka, though, do, because vodka goes with practically everything. Gin has its own flavor, though, which is extremely complex.
Gin/lemon peel is a taste combination that works. Olives kind of overpower the gin, I think; masks some parts of it and clashes with some of the rest.
Not trying to tell you what to do, just offering my observations. If you try lemon peel (I cut a strip just under a quarter inch wide and four inches or so long), I’d be intereted in hearing how you like it.
[…] here’s Jeff G. and others at Protein Wisdom explaining how I don’t know what I’m talking about, plus a couple of good cocktail […]
I hope Jules knows I was just being a smart-ass way up there at comment number 1. I do that often.
Jules writes in his new post linked just above — “Ulysses. I found it impenetrable and bailed quick, but if Fausta’s middle-schooler can do it …”. Slartibartfast mentioned Ulysses as well, at 20, saying “I wouldn’t mind a class on Ulysses, because that there is some really opaque stuff, and I’m sorely lacking in the attention-span department. That’s a book that I would definitely want for some hand-holding to get through.”
I have the urge to comment on this book, not so much because I’m enamored of it (though I may be), but because there’s a pattern in our relation to Ulysses that I believe we ought to confront in many — even possibly all — of the books we read. And the pattern may hold not just for books; we may find that every aspect of our lives lived in a here and now has this pull from the past, this antecedent, this inescapable tie.
So, can we read Joyce’s Ulysses without having first read Homer’s Odyssey? Yes, of course we can.
But had Joyce written Ulysses without having read Homer’s Odyssey? No, of course he didn’t. Joyce loved the Odyssey, otherwise he’d never have written Ulysses. He loved the Odyssey so well he knew it inside and out. Joyce made Ulysses intentionally packed with Odyssean parallels and references, without which the groping mind of a reader will render the work nearly unintelligible. Certainly not what Joyce had in mind.
As it happens with Ulysses, it isn’t only the Odyssey but many another worldly scheme or practice Joyce uses to inform the shape and tale of Bloom’s day in Dublin: Catholic liturgy, for instance, or medical knowledge, or color symbols. It is an intense effort on Joyce’s part, in this sense, to pack as much of life into the thing as he knows how. And this packing makes for a great deal of work on our part to unpack the book. It isn’t easy.
So we reconsider the question. Can we read Ulysses and hope to understand it without reading (and understanding at least in some measure) the Odyssey? No, I think, that is simply not in the cards: it would be silly.
We come from somewhere particular — all of us — somewhere over which we have no control, somewhere over which we have no choice or say in the matter, somewhere that reaches out to control something of us whether we like it or no (and some of us, like Joyce with his copy of the Odyssey, may like it quite a lot). That past is packed in detail many orders of magnitude more fully than Joyce’s book.
And so, back to the pattern I mentioned above. In order to understand how we came to be where we are today, we’ve little choice but to study the intentions of men of our past; their intentions, not our own, lest we render these inherited things — as for instance, our political arrangements — utterly unintelligible and practically useless.
Jules is all right with me, not that he should care.
I’m not one to lay pretense to being able to read the difficult stuff, but I do like the idea of being able to read and enjoy some of the works that others have claimed to read and enjoy.
Bleak House has defeated me, a couple of times. The beginning is so mind- and spirit-deadening that I just can’t do it.
Ulysses I may have to try again, alongside The Odyssey for moral and structural support. I’ve looked at the online version, and it doesn’t seem nearly as opaque as it did for me the last time I looked at it, which was probably a decade ago.
I’ve managed to knock off a few of Sinclair Lewis’ works with not much problem. Not sure if I get any points for that.
Neal Stephenson amuses me no end. I flat-out enjoy his stuff more than that of any other author. That probably speaks to my shallowness; certainly it speaks to my geekiness.
Smartassedness acknowledged and saluted, cranky-d … ditto for psycho. If you see pyscho tell him he gets points for originality and for not trotting out the usual “family jewels” joke. You know:
“Ha ha, the family jewels! Hey, I bet you hear that a lot!”
“Only from morons!”
Typing standing up as my back is spasming out badly, waiting for the wife to bring back a big fat bottle of prescription muscle relaxants, so I’m checking out, headed for la-la land. I hope. Thanks again to all, glad to be part of a yammer about something besides politics for a change, even if it is political anyway.
I read “Catcher in the Rye”. I didn’t get it. A couple of hundred pages of a privileged preppy whining. Not an experience I would voluntarily repeat.
Besides, Bob Uecker’s “Catcher in the Wry” was way better.
And yes, I was also assigned “The Scarlet Letter”, “Great Expectations”, and “Silas Marner”, and found them to be worthless. Good books have been written, but they have never been on a high school reading list.
153
I just remember having “Catch 22” confiscated by my highschool freshman homeroom teaher six times. Eventually they gave up censoring my reading material. I got my reading material out of the dumpster behind the Ballintine Books warehouse.
Well, Duke, I don’t care for the lesbian thing, regardless of the participants looks.
I denounce myself.