Hardy. Hardy is worse than Dickens.
Fuck Israel
I wouldn't have minded it so much but it was always such an empty assignment. There wouldn't be much book discussion in class, if at all, and there weren't any supplemental materials, topics, or lesson plans to help kids understand wtf was going on in Victorian times.
A few times when there were book discussions, you weren't allowed to have your own thoughts and interpretations. There is always a Correct Answer about what an author was thinking when he wrote whatever (I suspect more than a few authors were wondering where they put their bottle of whiskey), but they wouldn't tell you what your opinion was supposed to be until you "humiliated" yourself by trying to guess details out of some asshole's 100 year old biography that you weren't assigned to read. Like OK, smartass, if your classes are so snazzy, why are we getting refreshed on nouns and verbs in the first few weeks of an "AP" high school class, YAWN.
Let me read something contemporary. I am tired of glass factories from the 1870s.
A few times when there were book discussions, you weren't allowed to have your own thoughts and interpretations. There is always a Correct Answer about what an author was thinking when he wrote whatever (I suspect more than a few authors were wondering where they put their bottle of whiskey), but they wouldn't tell you what your opinion was supposed to be until you "humiliated" yourself by trying to guess details out of some asshole's 100 year old biography that you weren't assigned to read. Like OK, smartass, if your classes are so snazzy, why are we getting refreshed on nouns and verbs in the first few weeks of an "AP" high school class, YAWN.
Let me read something contemporary. I am tired of glass factories from the 1870s.
Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2022-06-17 20:19:01)
I hated every aspect of english literature classes, the shit books, the shitty teachers and teaching, the lack of structure or useful feedback.
There are enough accounts of authors not meaning what critics think they meant that its all irrelevant.
There are enough accounts of authors not meaning what critics think they meant that its all irrelevant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watership_DownWatership Down has been described as an allegory, with the labours of Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and Silver "mirror[ing] the timeless struggles between tyranny and freedom, reason and blind emotion, and the individual and the corporate state."[25] Adams draws on classical heroic and quest themes from Homer and Virgil, creating a story with epic motifs.
The Hero, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid
The book explores the themes of exile, survival, heroism, leadership, political responsibility, and the "making of a hero and a community".[27] Joan Bridgman's analysis of Adams's works in The Contemporary Review identifies the community and hero motifs: "[T]he hero's journey into a realm of terrors to bring back some boon to save himself and his people" is a powerful element in Adams's tale. This theme derives from the author's exposure to the works of mythologist Joseph Campbell, especially his study of comparative mythology, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), and in particular, Campbell's "monomyth" theory, also based on Carl Jung's view of the unconscious mind, that "all the stories in the world are really one story."[26]
The concept of the hero has invited comparisons between Watership Down's characters and those in Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid.[25] Hazel's courage, Bigwig's strength, Blackberry's ingenuity and craftiness, and Dandelion's and Bluebell's poetry and storytelling all have parallels in the epic poem Odyssey.[28] Kenneth Kitchell declared, "Hazel stands in the tradition of Odysseus, Aeneas, and others".[29] Tolkien scholar John Rateliff calls Adams's novel an Aeneid "what-if" book: what if the seer Cassandra (Fiver) had been believed and she and a company had fled Troy (Sandleford Warren) before its destruction? What if Hazel and his companions, like Odysseus, encounter a seductive home at Cowslip's Warren (Land of the Lotus Eaters)? Rateliff goes on to compare the rabbits' battle with Woundwort's Efrafans to Aeneas's fight with Turnus's Latins. "By basing his story on one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Adams taps into a very old myth: the flight from disaster, the heroic refugee in search of a new home, a story that was already over a thousand years old when Virgil told it in 19 BC."[5]
Religious symbolism
It has been suggested that Watership Down contains symbolism of several religions, or that the stories of El-ahrairah were meant to mimic some elements of real-world religion.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/201 … ts-rabbits“It’s just a story about rabbits.”
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yes, well done, surely english lit as it’s taught to 15 year olds in high school is the totality of the subject.
maths? i hated triogonometry!!! useless subject.
there is a huge body of literature and thought on the difference between reader’s response and writer’s intention. there was a whole school based out of yale, the new criticism, based around close reading.
it’s fucking hilarious that you think you’ve somehow checkmated the subject over such a pedestrian thought. ‘sometimes readers take away a different point than the author intended!!!’
have a cookie.
maths? i hated triogonometry!!! useless subject.
it’s called authorial intention, or the intentional fallacy, if you misuse it. imagine: someone has actually thought about this before.There are enough accounts of authors not meaning what critics think they meant that its all irrelevant.
there is a huge body of literature and thought on the difference between reader’s response and writer’s intention. there was a whole school based out of yale, the new criticism, based around close reading.
it’s fucking hilarious that you think you’ve somehow checkmated the subject over such a pedestrian thought. ‘sometimes readers take away a different point than the author intended!!!’
have a cookie.
Last edited by uziq (2022-06-17 21:38:23)
Isn't the whole of academic literature built around deducing what dead authors really meant?
What a waste of life.
What a waste of life.
Fuck Israel
no, it's literally not. you are utterly clueless.
do you really think intelligent people would spend their life trying to find some singular, ultimate, deduced meaning in a work? why would anyone want to do that?
your ignorance of things beyond your ken would be charming in a high-schooler. you're a grown man. do better.
have you ever read a single piece of literary criticism? even an essay by a literary critic? do you think the whole endeavour is about declaring 'wot the author really meant'? i mean, one of the main movements in 20th century literary criticism, deconstruction, was all about reading contrariwise and finding things in the text against what the author might have intended. so, erm ... ???
and there's no requisite that the authors be dead, either (not that that matters; do books 'die' with their authors and become irrelevant?). lots of literature departments focus on, say, latin american literature, or black literature, and have a quite obvious point in modern society. who woulda thunk it: studying these texts can help to elaborate and understand our contemporary situation!?!?
laughing my fucking ass off.
do you really think intelligent people would spend their life trying to find some singular, ultimate, deduced meaning in a work? why would anyone want to do that?
your ignorance of things beyond your ken would be charming in a high-schooler. you're a grown man. do better.
have you ever read a single piece of literary criticism? even an essay by a literary critic? do you think the whole endeavour is about declaring 'wot the author really meant'? i mean, one of the main movements in 20th century literary criticism, deconstruction, was all about reading contrariwise and finding things in the text against what the author might have intended. so, erm ... ???
and there's no requisite that the authors be dead, either (not that that matters; do books 'die' with their authors and become irrelevant?). lots of literature departments focus on, say, latin american literature, or black literature, and have a quite obvious point in modern society. who woulda thunk it: studying these texts can help to elaborate and understand our contemporary situation!?!?
laughing my fucking ass off.
Last edited by uziq (2022-06-17 22:57:42)
At the very least, I can understand that bad experiences and shit teachers/classes during the developmental phase that is school can turn someone off of a subject for a very long time. I've mentioned before that I've worked people with math blocks through areas they had trouble in, some interesting (or horrifying) stories there. Measured against some anecdotes, I didn't have a Bad Time in school. But I certainly didn't develop a love for reading from the same repetitive nonsense over and over again, or really from even the filler courses in college.
english pedagogy in schools has identifiable problems. it's not exactly beyond the realms of understanding to say that dickens or shakespeare are wasted on 14 year olds. blame the ministers or education policy-wonks who foist 'adult' books on children before their time.
but maths pedagogy and science pedagogy are riven with problems, too. for every person who was 'turned off' english by a 'traumatic' experience reading dickens in school (poor little snowflake dilbert, for all the times he has mentioned it on this forum over the years, you'd think he needs therapy) -- for all that, you can hardly say that rote learning or textbook exercises for 2 hours are the optimal way to spark a passion for mathematics.
the way these things are taught in high-school shouldn't preclude one's adult appreciation or interest. this is yet another example of dilbert being the maladapt par excellence. imagine not reading books or literature for your entire life because you had a bad teacher when you were 14. get over it already. it's pathetic.
but maths pedagogy and science pedagogy are riven with problems, too. for every person who was 'turned off' english by a 'traumatic' experience reading dickens in school (poor little snowflake dilbert, for all the times he has mentioned it on this forum over the years, you'd think he needs therapy) -- for all that, you can hardly say that rote learning or textbook exercises for 2 hours are the optimal way to spark a passion for mathematics.
the way these things are taught in high-school shouldn't preclude one's adult appreciation or interest. this is yet another example of dilbert being the maladapt par excellence. imagine not reading books or literature for your entire life because you had a bad teacher when you were 14. get over it already. it's pathetic.
Last edited by uziq (2022-06-17 23:34:39)
I agree on your math/sciences point, a lot of stories there to that effect. Hence, bringing it up.
I also understand your point about getting over it in cases where that is reasonable, but I would rather walk a mile on broken glass than freshen up on what fresh, gothic hell Miss Havisham was cooking up. Give me another 20 years of vacation before asking me to revisit Dickens, I'm exhausted.
I'll watch Scrooged as a compromise.
I also understand your point about getting over it in cases where that is reasonable, but I would rather walk a mile on broken glass than freshen up on what fresh, gothic hell Miss Havisham was cooking up. Give me another 20 years of vacation before asking me to revisit Dickens, I'm exhausted.
I'll watch Scrooged as a compromise.
In school, I really enjoyed aviation and life sciences. Especially with the latter, got to get out on a lot of field trips. Lots of working with hands around lakes and in gross swamps. Geology was a disappointment. Being holed up in an ugly portable with a rattly air conditioner could be called practice for an office, but the class itself was super passive. If we all had smartphones, I think every one of us would have been on them for the entire period.
even the canon/‘classics’ has thousands of books. victorian lit not your thing? it’s not mine either. imagine not reading any novels in your entire life because you had a bad experience with one author. it’s autistic.
Bad experiences in a poorly presented topic can be a turnoff even if it is far richer, and varied than those impressions suggest. People probably just write it off as all boring and never give it a second chance. Not even hard feelings, but just perpetually uninterested. On them, to be sure, but I understand their reasoning sometimes.
Where it gets funny is when somebody who doesn't know books gets into a book argument with someone who does, in matters not strictly based on opinion.
Where it gets funny is when somebody who doesn't know books gets into a book argument with someone who does, in matters not strictly based on opinion.
i did not like the tv show M*A*S*H. therefore i threw out my tv and never bothered watching another tv show.
Literally every book presented to us in English Lit was miserably dull and valueless, all but one of the English teachers was a pretentious and snooty bore who inflicted dismal crap on us when the syllabus was full of interesting alternatives.
It was a bit more than "one book was boring".
Anyhoo, it hasn't stopped me reading completely, back to WW2 - Operation Jubilee.
It was a bit more than "one book was boring".
Anyhoo, it hasn't stopped me reading completely, back to WW2 - Operation Jubilee.
Fuck Israel
I'm not sure if you're trying to say that's an argument I'm making, because to preempt that, it's not? I didn't like plenty of movies that didn't make me stop buying DVDs or streaming new titles. Similarly, I didn't stop reading books because I got, er, tired of some of the typical ones overdone in school. So long as we're perfectly clear.uziq wrote:
i did not like the tv show M*A*S*H. therefore i threw out my tv and never bothered watching another tv show.
That a huge array of classics were out there to be rifled through was one of the things that irritated my high school brain about being assigned the same titles over, and over, and over again. I would have rather done work on material fresh to me. It didn't make me hate or stop reading classics though. Just despise that sort of class. Marks off for white out, when you have a typewriter with sticky keys, frequent jamming, and "use that ribbon until its dry," probably didn't help. Was glad to finally get a computer.
This isn't something I particularly dwell upon after the fact, it just sometimes comes when the topic or one similar is brought up (i.e., dilbert's miserable school books).
yes and my math teacher was one of the sourest, most miserable people i have ever met in my life. i actively dreaded having math classes because of her draconian, miserly attitude.Dilbert_X wrote:
Literally every book presented to us in English Lit was miserably dull and valueless, all but one of the English teachers was a pretentious and snooty bore who inflicted dismal crap on us when the syllabus was full of interesting alternatives.
It was a bit more than "one book was boring".
Anyhoo, it hasn't stopped me reading completely, back to WW2 - Operation Jubilee.
anywho, i was 13. i'm an adult now. how's that going for you?
Last edited by uziq (2022-06-18 01:58:49)
Imagining mac as an 80yo teacher squatting like gollum on a desk in his dark office, purring sweet nothings to his gundam model. What kind of school memories will that give a student who walks in on that?
I'm looking forward furziq deciding there is someone more deserving of his career and stepping aside, like, you know, he tells everyone else to.
Fuck Israel
when have i told someone to step aside?
i’m one of the most valued editors at my company. why do you think they let me move to another country and keep my job?
i’m one of the most valued editors at my company. why do you think they let me move to another country and keep my job?
Last edited by uziq (2022-06-18 02:21:41)
Haven't you been moaning that old people should step aside to make way for the next generation?
Pretty sure you have.
Pretty sure you have.
Fuck Israel
i think you’re confusing me for macbeth.
Uzique will be at a typical retirement age in maybe 30-40 years. At that point, you'll be looking like ascended Dave Bowman.Dilbert_X wrote:
I'm looking forward furziq deciding there is someone more deserving of his career and stepping aside, like, you know, he tells everyone else to.
If you can still remember your bf2s password, that will be accolades enough.
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +640|3937
As soon as I am old enough to take my pension I will take it and retire. I really look forward to doing heroin, crack, meth, and other drugs as a senior citizen.unnamednewbie13 wrote:
Imagining mac as an 80yo teacher squatting like gollum on a desk in his dark office, purring sweet nothings to his gundam model. What kind of school memories will that give a student who walks in on that?
Are you looking at any natural cave systems in particular, or have you not got to that point in your retirement planning yet?
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +640|3937
The dream is to buy a small isolated plot of land somewhere in the interior and organically grow marijuana.