I never meant to say it did. Which is why I asked if identification precluded analysis.

Gotcha. Missed the "precluded" part.

Although now that I see it, I'm confused by the question. Are you asking, "If I identify with a character, can I no longer analyze it?" or "Can I only analyze if I identify with the character?" Or neither?

for those of us who love the books and not only don't care why we love them, but actively don't want the visceral love potentially ruined by the cerebral or intellectual dissection.

FWIW, critical discussion has helped me delve further into and really appreciate many more books than the opposite. That's me. I know there's room for me and Deb here, but maybe we do need to do some tinkering.

The more I think about the book club idea, the more I like it. I spent my bus ride home playing with some ideas on how we might do such a thing. OTOH, I don't want to derail the current conversation. Later on tonight perhaps those of us who want to discuss that issue in more detail can try to throw some ideas around?

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure why you think that my position negates yours

I think because of the presentation that both you and David are giving: I'm finding a sense in there, not that Reader ought to be willing to try and stretch themselves by giving every great book at least one shot (which, whereas I won't do it if the first book I try by an author doesn't talk to me, a la Charles Dickens, whom I detest, I can still think a worthy if somewhat unrealistic ambition), but rather that, if Reader doesn't ignore their gut-take on the book and go with a purely cerebral take on it, he's being anti-intellectual.

That, I completely disagree with. I don't actually like discussing books very much, and generally come in here to see who's reccing what. I don't read books in groups - there's snobbery for you, but really, it comes from the "muHA! I have ALL THE POWER!" gestalt of having lectured classes. I'd rather get the class talking than participate in the discussion. And when it comes to being told why something should work for me, I reach for ordinance. I hate that beyond expression. But that? It's just me, and my take.

And as a writer, with whatever small cred that carries with it, I would just like to say this: anyone who has sat down and written a work of fiction - yes, specifically fiction - has pulled off something mind-boggling. It's incredibly difficult to do, those people, that journey, those roads, that ending, the mechanics, all of it.

So I have to think that damned near any book I pick up has the potential to challenge me. I'm just more likely to allow myself to be challenged if it isn't being force-fed to me, like medicine.

And me out the door - train south in an hour. Interesting discussion, all.

For me, personally, the encyclopedic wandering of the text was a big part of it.

Yeah, I can see how people of this day & age would like their writing more focused. Most writers believe in economy, and I love economy when it's used well.

I loved the meandering, though. You know while reading it that Melville kept thinking, "Why not just talk about maps here? It'll help the reader to understand the implications of the last few ships they meet." The digressions gave it more of a boozy, conversational feel, I thought, and most of them were funny as hell to boot.

That's not much of a reach. We were discussing the canon of Great Books. Not the canon of Great Beach Reads.

All I'm claiming is that "intellectual books" and "canon" are not the same set. They intersect, sure, but they're not the same. Also, for the most part, it looked to me like the discussion of the relevance of canon was more about "who decides what's canon, and how, and what use is a list that no one can agree on and which keeps changing?" than about "what use are the books on that list?"

I know there's room for me and Deb here, but maybe we do need to do some tinkering.

Heh. Nah. I can always duck out when it goes into long litcrit stuff. If it's covering a book I don't care about, I just skip it anyway; and it's it's doing a book I love, I just back out at warp speed.

SHIT, I'm late.

Spikefens (I'm carefully using this word to denote the crazy-ass end of the Spike fan spectrum) didn't identify with Spike so much as projected their wants/needs on the character.

Actually, the more I dig, the more I find that there is a lot of identification going on. There are some well-reasoned, even if they're still wrong as a wrong thing, essays on it out there.

And my motive in that may be selfish, because I'd rather read Ple explicate what she's getting out of her Batfamily reading, then simply know she's cluching Nightwing #93 to her chest and rocking back and forth in a rapture of joy.

Deb got to hear me expound for the better part of two hours off and on about why exactly that dramatic arc worked, and how perfect it was, and the art, and the circular, and the.....

Yeah. So, umm. Yeah.

When I have time again, you'll see some, probably. You saw a little bit when I gushed about BoP 68.

Hmm. If my head is still in one piece when I get home, I have thoughts to add. Someone remind me, eh?

but rather that, if Reader doesn't ignore their gut-take on the book and go with a purely cerebral take on it, he's being anti-intellectual.

Yeah, I don't remember arguing for a purely cerebral take on anything. I haven't mistaken anybody here for a brain in a jar.

You want a discussion about the value of Moby Dick? Start it. And don't get pissed off when people disagree with you about it. Work with what you have.

I'm not pissed about anybody's opinion about Moby Dick. I was annoyed that people dismissed the value of having a critical discussion about it at all. In the middle of an interesting discussion about literary canon. It was (from my perspective) pissing on the fire, extinguishing the discussion. Because if you dismiss out of hand the value of that discussion that's exactly what you're doing.

It was not a matter of people expressing differing opinions about particular books. At all. Frankly, I don't think the people that made the comments that I consider obviously and strongly anti-intellectual would recognize them as such.

But your point about this thread being wide ranging and not focused on the same text is entirely valid, and is also an argument for a reader's club type thread.

Of course, if we all accepted the utility of a canon and agreed on what constituted it (fat chance), we'd all be talking about Ivanhoe already.

Hayden - I think you misunderstood in one thing. I'm not saying the canon is a shibboleth on this thread. (In fact I'm semi-agreeing with you that there has been an over-reaction.) My argument would that IN THE WORLD OF LITCRIT it has been used in just that way. And I guess not only the Canon. I remember being told that my disliking "The English Patient" (the book not the movie) proved my shallowness. Deborah was apparently told the same about Heinlein. And I guarantee you that anyone one who went into litcrit and admitted disliking Shakespeare(sp) would run into this. There definitely is a kind of snobbery out there that breeds a reverse snobbery in reaction. OK, now I know you could argue that the reverse snobbery came first. So I will point out something in U.S. history. As late as the mid 19th century, sailors in a port were observed staging Hamlet for their amusement. Shakespeare only left popular culture for the elite canon in the U.S. from the late 19th century forward. I dimly rember from history something about how it was the Jacksonian era the first greatly widened the gulf in the U.S. between popular and elite culture.

I like meaty discussion as much as anyone does, but I find myself bristling at the concept that we're anti-intellectual because our discussion doesn't fit Hecubus or Hayden's notions of what it should be.

This, really, makes me think that Typo Boy is dead-on. David and I were posting about an attitude hereabouts (one that smacked me in the face during the Joyce discussion of two weeks ago that Brenda mentioned and one that has certainly rared its head here multiple times before) that when someone wants to talk about a Great Book, unless it was written by Jane Austen, it will immediately elicit a chorus of "I hated that book"s and "I prefer to read X genre"s and "What's the point?"s, exacerbated by few arguments about why. It's clearly a preference for the easy and familiar over the difficult and challenging, and it's a negation of the whole point of having Great Books in the first place. I call that anti-intellectualism.

Anyway, by merely pointing that out, I feel like I've called the Furies down on my head. Some people, like Suela here, seem to think that I'm somehow negating the books that they typically like to talk about or calling them anti-intellectual, which isn't the case. For instance, real, published lit crits often betray similar biases, and they're typically no dummies.

So what? Do we split off a Great Books thread or a book club thread? Or should David and I just keep our big, fat mouths shut when someone brings up a Great Book? And is there a gender thing going on here?