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?

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, 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.

Hayden, this is a serious question. And I'm sticking with the white whale, because I started with it. If you come in here and say "I just re-read Moby Dick, and I forgot how much I loved the encyclopedic attention to detail," and then I said "Yuccch! I read M-D, and I didn't like it at all!" -- how is that opting for the easy and familiar over the difficult and challenging? After all, I *read* the book. How is that taking the easy way out?

I don't see where "not liking" = "not willing to be challenged intellectually."

I *do* see where "refusing to read" = "not willing to be challenged."

It would help me a lot if you could explain, because I'm honestly feeling like I'm just plain ignant for having an opinion about a book that's different from yours.

Also, I loathe Jane Austen with a firey passion. I found Emma as dull as Moby Dick. So I'm equal-opportunity trash-talking.

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter said to me "Old poetry is really stuffy."

I murdered her, of course.

No, I called her an anti-intellectual.

Nope, not that either. I got my Victorian poetry anthology out and showed her a couple of the racier bits of Browning. When she'd finished stuffing her eyeballs back into her head, she asked for me to suggest some more stuff she might like.

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.

And THAT is how you teach people to like Melville.

My argument would that IN THE WORLD OF LITCRIT it has been used in just that way. And I guess not only the Canon.

Yeah, definitely. I think you're absolutely right about the academy, but I live in the real world, and I'm just not used to it anymore. I always hated it when people told me that I was stupid for liking the things I like without even bothering to find out why. But (AGAIN) I am not doing that here. I'm not calling anyone stupid for liking what they like, nor am I preventing them from talking about it. I'm bristling at the notion that the baby and the bathwater both have to go. Sure, some jerks made fun of you for liking romance or sci-fi. That doesn't mean that Melville, Faulkner, and Joyce are boring shit only fit for jerks.