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.

Hayden, speaking for me, I don't think that anyone should necessarily keep their mouths shut, unless they are being just plain mean and pokey (not that you were - I didn't feel like you were). I think that, like anything else that has divisive sides, it depends on the mood of the people that happen to be in a thread. Today, not a good day to discuss litcrit or canon or "controversial" books. And by "controversial" I mean the ones that are black and white in terms of liking it.

I have not read Moby Dick, I have no opinion on it except. "Oooh! Big fish!"

I just want to point out that I find it more than a little ironic that a collective made up of people who transcended conventional wisdom on what is considered intellectual television by embracing a show that is, on first glance, an apparently campy and absolutely genre show until given a chance to delight in its depths and charms which was also, for a number of years, virtually invisible to and now a celebrated part of the intellectual/academic community, would debate over the unassailablity of literary canon. Clearly you can't judge any book by its cover.

For the record, I agree with many of the points expressed on all side. It was just a weird thought I had which I wanted to share. (Which rather aptly describes most of my posts.)

But nobody can read everything...we can do our damnedest though.

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.

I didn't get that attitude from this discussion at all. Just because I don't like M-D doesn't mean I don't think other people shouldn't read it, or that it shouldn't be taught.

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.

Where did anyone say that? "It's boring" is a statement of one reader's reaction to a book, not anything about anyone else who didn't find it boring.

There you go. It says something about you. For good or ill, in any number of ways. But that identification is not so much about the work.

See, I'm not sure I agree with this. I've read books that say to me, "Come in, immerse yourself, be this character and experience what happens to him/her." And I've read books that say instead, "Here, stand at a little distance and observe these characters." The former lend themselves to identification, the latter, NSM. Problem is, I can't dissect what makes one book an immersion read and another an observation one--it's like the cliche about porn. I know it when I see it. And since I prefer immersion books, I'd be all kinds of flattered if, when I'm published, a reader tells me they identified with one of my characters, because I'd know I'd succeeded in creating the immersion experience.

Of course, identification is a broad term. Sometimes all I mean by it is "I found the POV character an agreeable, engaging, and plausible set of eyes to see this particular fictional world through." Other times I mean, "Wow, this character is ME!" Which, though it may surprise some, often leads to self-examination, lessons learned, etc., because I always ask myself WHY I feel such a common bond with the character. Every once in awhile my answers surprise me.

(Fascination discussion, BTW. And I apologize again for overheating earlier. Stupid temper.)

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?

It's not, Steph. You didn't like it, fine. You said why. In fact, if things had gone down like up above, I'd have followed up with the same question I started with, which is "What's not to love?"

Betsy, I'd presume that your daughter doesn't say "old poetry is really stuffy" every freakin' time the subject comes up, does she? Cause that would make me as weary as I feel right now.

So what? Do we split off a Great Books thread or a book club thread?

I think the book club suggestion was born of but not a solution to today's discussion.