I rarely identify with specifically with a character. I'll admit I'm not rational about Little Women or the Lord Peter Wimsey books, because I am Jo and I am Harriet Vane and none of you people can have them. I have had the occasional crush on a character. I have one friend whom I suspect of remaining single because no man has ever measured up to Francis Crawford of Lymond and another who's still looking for Travis McGee. Hell, I may still be looking for Travis McGee. Generally speaking, though, I love books for the language, or believable characters, or for speaking what seems to be some essential truth, although sometimes I just love them for the whiz-bang action.

How can JZ be so awesome? I do not understand it.

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

A whale is a mammal, dear.

runs to dinner

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?"

Honestly, hayden, I went back and looked at the start of the M-D discussion, and it pretty much DID go down like up above. Only I mentioned that I don't like M-D before you mentioned that you liked it. That's it. I didn't say that I disliked M-D and therefore anyone who likes it is a fool and it should never be in the canon and young minds are being ruined by it.

All I said was that I don't like it. Where you derive anti-intellectual from that -- and it was in the same post that you pointed out what you love about M-D that you also said this thread tends toward anti-intellectua -- is beyond me.

I thought the discussion was good, and interesting, and lively.

Sometimes I didn't even know what the fuck I thought about a book at all until I'd sat locked in the library tower with fourteen other people hashing it out over three exhausting hours. And that utterly rocked.

How interesting. I seem to be JZ.

Dear P-C's Mom,

P-C married a white Buddhist chick who makes hamburgers three times a day. He was afeared to tell you that she is having a baby and he's flunked out of school.

Merry Christmas!

Aimee

I wonder if part of the reason I get so emotional whenever this discussion comes up is I somehow managed to make it well into my late 20's before I ever realized there were people out there who dismissed whole genres and the people who read them. Since I'm only in my early 30's, I haven't quite gotten past my, "What? How can you say such a thing? And don't you dare doubt the spiciness of my brains!" reaction.

(Susan, I'm sorry I don't like Jane Austen. I tried, I really tried. Ironically, what I don't like about Jane Austen is what I don't like about Moby Dick -- the level of detail about things that weren't relevant -- in my eyes -- to moving the plot forward.)

(Don't apologize, Steph. I'm always surprised when people don't like her, but not insulted. Anyway, one of the things I've decided based on today's discussion is that one of these days I'll have to try Moby Dick, just to see which side of the loves-it hates-it fence I'll fall on.)

There is no one canon, and whatever books are considered important today should be reconsidered tomorrow.

Definitely, while at the same time considering tomorrow why they were considered important today.

I've just threadsucked and reread the discussion and - I don't know, I don't see the attitude that got under Hayden's skin.

First off, I think maybe it's important to remember that this conversation got started with an article that made a nasty gratuitous smack against the romance novel. So if there's ever going to be a little sensitivity on the issue, maybe it's now.

So really, where we started today wasn't dissing "Great Books" but venting a bit about books or genres that don't tend to get the respect.

Shakespeare came up when Aimee mentioned that she didn't like it - but mentioned it in the context of what an oddity it was. And the response was generally surprise mixed with suggestions for elements of his work she might not have encountered or different ways of looking at it.

Madame Bovary was brought up in derogatory terms. But while that one didn't really find any defenders, pretty much every book or author that came up thereafter had both detractors and defenders. Interspersed with that was some discussion of the value of capital-c Canon - and I'll note that the first (only?) mention of Austen was as an example of how understanding of broader Canon could give you a better understanding of her work. Ditto Milton and a few others. Not everything that came up was in that vein - I misremember now who was snarked at for excessively long sentences. But it wasn't the general vein of the discussion, as far as I can tell.

Deb G obviously has a distinctive take on canon and crit, etc. But it seemed to me like her comments too drew more discussion than " rah rah analysis sucks" or the like.

Moby Dick maybe wasn't getting showered with the love. But Steph's first comment (after she mentioned other Melville that she did like was: "Moby. Dick. I understand intellectually what he was doing with it, style-wise and theme-wise, but DAMN."

I won't dispute that Hayden might still be stinging from earlier conversations - like I said, I haven't been in this thread for very long having been on a self-imposed restricted thread diet for a while. But I honestly don't see it here.

If I'm misinterpreting things here, or if anyone has issue to take with any of this, please, please do, because I really want to understand where I'm missing things or why our perspectives might be so different.

Final comment: JZ is me in missing and wanting more focused discussion and analysis and whathaveyou. But for the most part, this seemed like a pretty rational discussion to me.