Let's back it out and look at it from another way: what evidence do you have that continuing this discussion will do anything but annoy me and exasperate you? My whole argument has been that forcing literature down someone's throat turns them off from literature. I've gone ten rounds on this. I haven't read something I was forced to read in twenty fuckin' years, yo, and here I am, being lectured by a college professor to leave your fucking books alone ("Would you please stop trying to denigrate and dismiss mine?"). Is this supposed to make me come around to your way of thinking? Am I now supposed to see the error of my ways? Yes - I have an n of 1 but this particular n is the alpha and omega of my own private Idaho so the correlation is strong and relevant to me. Here's where I was: And now I've got two sets. So thanks for that. Here's the dumb thing: I was the one person in this entire thread who left a little room for the idea that slagging on books wasn't the greatest idea. Now? Now I'm radicalized. I feel like starting a fire with a couple copies of Jane Austen just to piss you off. All I did was express an opinion and make the mistake of defending it instead of telling you to STFU. Is this what you wanted to accomplish?And we forget that when we engage in these discussions - your baggage ain't mine, mine ain't yours, and god help you if you try to make me carry yours or put mine down.
No. I'm not hoping that you'll suddenly come to love Austen or come to think that literary educators are great. It's very clear to me (and has been from the very start) that I'm not going to change your opinion on this. As you yourself said, "I haven't taken your courses. I never will". What I've tried to do is demonstrate that your broad-sided, authoritative-sounding attacks on not only a whole bunch of books but also a whole set of professions are based on nothing more than anger and ignorance. You claimed "the pedagogy of "great books" is bullshit" and that "most books are taught not because they are good, but because they simply and clearly illustrate whatever point the instructor is trying to make". I've provided evidence demonstrating that this is not the pedagogy of most literary educators (and hasn't been for the past two decades). You responded by saying that my evidence isn't relevant to your experience. But I never questioned the veracity of your experience. What I questioned is your use of your experience to make broad, authoritative statements about books and teaching. Most people here weren't slagging on books. They were relating their personal experience with particular books. Some people offered reflections on their reading preferences and habits. When I suggested to you that "I've found that I can get a lot more out of books if I give their authors credit for having something interesting to say" your response was to tell me how much harm it's done to you to have to give credit to authors that you disliked. You then went on to state "I am here to denigrate and dismiss books. ". And that's fine. If you want to denigrate and dismiss books, you're welcome to do so. If that's all you had done, I wouldn't have bothered to respond. But you didn't stop there. You went on to make sweeping claims about books and teaching as though they were facts rather than opinions. And that's why I logged in and offered a rebuttal of those claims, with the evidence that you so summarily dismissed. Since this is meant to be the "thoughtful web" I figured that maybe providing evidence and discussing my experience would be met with something other than attacks on me and what I do, but that hasn't proven to be the case. EDIT: Thanks for the block. I guess that's one way of dealing with disagreement over your claims... Is this supposed to make me come around to your way of thinking?
I was the one person in this entire thread who left a little room for the idea that slagging on books wasn't the greatest idea.
What you've done is proven my point. Don't worry, I won't ever make you log in again.On the other hand, books are great, books are good, only bad people ban books, us intellectuals always know how to look down our noses at those horrible people who ban Horton Hears a Who because of its subversive ecological message. Therefore thou shalt not slag on the heroes of others because obviously that makes you a goose-stepping Nazi.
What I've tried to do is demonstrate that your broad-sided, authoritative-sounding attacks on not only a whole bunch of books but also a whole set of professions are based on nothing more than anger and ignorance.