that because I pretty much listen to mainstream rock music, readily available on the radio, that my opinion is flat out ignored by most people in there?

I heart the Minister. It was a long time before I could say 'I adore Billy Idol with a deep, inordinate passion' without feeling I was getting "musical cripple" or "you just think he's cute" (though he is) or "please, that's just so '80s" in response.

Anyway. Last night I was flipping through one of my college lit books, and I found a short story by James Joyce. Forgive me for utterly blanking on the title, but it's one from "Dubliners". A Catholic woman working in a laundry, some sort of holiday involving cake with a ring baked in it, she attends a party with some Protestants she's living with, something happens during the blindfolded part of the party. But I don't know what happens. She puts her hand is something oddly mushy while blindfolded and choosing an item off a table, everyone around her goes quiet, then there's a great deal of the sort of commotion that happens when something uncomfortable is being covered up. "So what happened?" I'm thinking. The character has no idea and she's completely baffled by the fuss, and she's been established as an uncomplicated soul who believes the best in people she knows and doesn't expect cruel things to happen to her. She apparently shrugs and moves on with her life.

In that the story provoked thought on my part on all the things that could have happened--and if that was the part--then the story succeeded. Was the character supposed to have learned something or been changed by the events? The main theme I got from the story was "Nice, simple folk who don't mean any harm in the world are perfect victims for small-minded abuse."

Re: Joyce's language. The woman's chin and nose are described as especially pointed, and Joyce refers multiple times to how her chin and nose almost touch as she talks or laughs or what have you. In a short story I expect every image to have a dual purpose, but I couldn't think of what the purpose of this image was, other than to establish that she's a bit odd looking

What did I miss?

See, this is literary criticism. ... What literary criticism is, at its heart, is a way to find more meaning in a text and, for me, frequently a way for me to enjoy it more. It shouldn't be a way to chew up a piece of literature until it is tasteless. I love the "aha" moment when someone else says something that illuminates a book or a Buffy episode for me.

Well, that's good! I guess I was thinking about some of the other forms of criticism, which I *am* fairly ignorant about. Aren't there schools of thought that *do* want to psychoanalyze the authors to discover meaning, etc.? Kind of like confessional poetry, but after the fact, by outside readers? (If that makes any sense.)

Maybe it is just easier for all of us to discuss Buffy or Angel because we've all watched the same episode at roughly the same time, and maybe because there's nothing hanging over our heads when we discuss it--we're not being graded, others' perception of our intelligence doesn't rest on whether or not we see the symbolism in Becoming or Innocence or what have you.

And yes, the joy of it is, for me, revealing each delicious morsel of a book or an episode or a movie, not coming to some conclusion about why it's "worthy."

If people are going to talk about a sort of reverse-snobbery they feel in this thread, can we also maybe talk about the snobbery *I* feel in the music thread? Namely, that because I pretty much listen to mainstream rock music, readily available on the radio, that my opinion is flat out ignored by most people in there?

Sean, I hardly ever venture into the music thread because I can't keep up in here, Great Write, or Bitches, for the most part, but I have encountered what you're feeling in real life, to be sure. Strangely, it's never bothered me, though. I've got Madonna shelved next to Mozart, and Wilco shelved next to Michele Branch. For me, if music moves me, or makes me want to move, it's good. End of sentence. Pop and mainstream rock are a huge part of my listening experience, but I can often be melody's whore. I've been told I *should* like older Liz Phair, for example, but I never enjoy listening to it. I get why her lyrics on Exile in Guyville and Whipsmart are clever and scalding and innovative, but I'd rather read them than listen to the CDs.

Back to packing.

I do not, as my homies say, see myself represented within the discursive community formed here, and both the self-congratulation and the reverse snobbery tend to actively repel me.

Wow, that's rude.

We were offended - personally, emotionally - by the disparagement of literature that is dear to us. And the casual dismissal that it's even valuable to discuss things thoughtfully and in depth.

Okay, I see two separate points in this comment: (1) the disparagement of literature that is dear to you; and (2) casual dismissal of the value of discussing things in depth.

(1) Where does "disparagement" diverge from "saying you personally didn't enjoy" a specific book? I said I dislike Moby-Dick. Hayden loves it passionately. Was I disparaging? And if so, does that mean no one should express negative opinions about any book, because that will disparage someone's beloved book?

I'm sure you don't mean this, Hec, but I honestly don't know *what* you mean.

(2) I didn't see any casual dismissal of the value of discussing things in depth, and it would really help me if you could point to where that happened.

Geez, I love discussing things to death, climbing down between the lines of text and looking at what resides there. I have no problem discussing things in depth, which is one of the few things that I miss about college.

I was trying to draw attention to a response I perceived whenever truly culturally significant books come up in discussion. Lord knows that I've tried to engage people here about those books many times over the last few years, mostly to stony silence or the aforementioned verbal shrugs coupled with the "what's the point?" attitude.

Hayden, I can't speak for anyone but me, but if someone brings up a Great Book that I, in fact, read all the way through, but which I didn't enjoy, I don't have much to contribute to the discussion, as we have seen vis-a-vis Moby Dick.

I'm sorry that bothers you, but calling that "reverse snobbery" or anti-intellectualism is a radical interpretation of the text, no pun intended.

Maybe we're all talking at cross-purposes. I don't know.

Good morning.

I do think that there's a culture war of sorts going on where the Good Books (n.b. this is not a definitive list, but a qualitative one) are being taught so incompetently and discussed so flippantly that smart people (and I mean you, the Buffistae, among many others) see them as stuffy, boring, and out of reach.

Hayden, I will agree with you up until the last three words (as long as we're talking about wider U.S. culture), but I could be projecting onto those. A *lot* of the literature that was taught was presented as "you must read this, and you must dissect it, and the criticism is objective". Present something this way to your average teenager, and you're likely to sour them, no?

But somehow other people were insisting that we were the oppressors rather than the oppressed. Who knows? That's when I started wondering if there was an underlying gender issue.

Again, I was upset by the tone, not by the sentiment. It did feel like a lecture instead of a nudge (to me). And your gender issue question is an interesting one. I think the only possible gender issue is *how* the sentiments were expressed, maybe? (NOTE: I am vastly generalizing here.) I remember an essay in Anything That Moves by a man who had been participating in message boards and suchlike for ages, and who realized that the men had a tendency to "approve" other people's behavior, i.e., "You did X and that's okay," even when people were just sharing their experiences and not asking for validation or support. That is sort of how the posts discussed read.

Basically, I think that if there is a gender issue, it's the issue of how the different genders are taught how to communicate. Not in the interpretation or criticism of text.

Of course, on rereading, it was a question of the reaction to canon, and not of the discussion. My bad. Yes, I did get tired of not having any women or non-white folk assigned in classes. The vast majority of what has been published is by dead white men, 'tis true. But that doesn't mean that, for instance, writers like Zora Neale Hurston should be cast aside. I pick ZNH because she is one the most well-known black women writers, and yet I had to wait until college to even hear of her.

(And this post has been over an hour in the making, because work keeps pulling me away. This is also why I think we don't have deep critical discussions of books here - that type of conversation, for me, requires more attention than I can give it over the course of a normal day. It's easy enough to sit around with wine or tea and expound on Moby Dick or Their Eyes Were Watching God for an uninterrupted hour or so in person, it's much harder to do it in this format.)

Wow. There's been a whole lot of discussion here since I wandered off with that nifty new insight on Beauty and the Beast. (Which my book-buddy coworker loved, by the way.)

For whatever it's worth, I was one of the folks who, albeit weakly, praised Madame Bovary upthread. I also disparaged Moby Dick and Faulker's work in general while suggesting that canon's still kinda useful. Going further upthread you'd find me going "Yay, rah!" to Joyce and James.

So, Great Works of literature. How's about 'em?

Here's what puts a work on my personal Great Works shelf.

1) It has to pull me in. It can take two or three readings. I may have to get past blocks in my own life that keep me from immersing myself in it, but this has to happen at some point in the reading. Works for which this has happened include: Pope's "Eloise and Abelard," Austen's Pride and Prejudice, The Great Gatsby, most of Yeat's poetry, Brust's The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, James' The Ambassadors, The Tempest, Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Stoppard's Travisties, and John Donne's poetry.

2) It has to engender thought after the reading. There are books that pull me in, immerse me in another world, and leave me panting with joy at the other side. If I don't give them another thought afterward, they don't go on my personal Great Books shelf. Yeats makes me think. (Sometimes I think, "What was he smoking and how can I get some?" But not always or even usually.) Donne made me go back with an, "Oh, wait! I just noticed . . . " for days after reading his stuff, so much so that I overdosed and couldn't read him again for a year. Much of Pope's work had a similar effect. In short, I need to find something for my critical faculties to chew over. Not everything mentioned in part 1 meets this for me.

3) I have to be able to go back to a work after significant time has passed -- at the moment I'm working in five year intervals, but I imagine that will change as I age -- and still find meaning in it (above and beyond, "Huh. I used to like this."). The meaning might be a new appreciation for how much of a jerk a character I used to like really was. (Wuthering Heights comes to mind.) The meaning might be seeing how themes or subplots I hadn't cared much about the first time around resonate more.

So really, the viceral hit? For me, a book/poem/play has to have it. The ability to engender and survive a mental dissection? Yep. I need to see this in a work. And for me to consider a work Great, it has to have legs. So my Great Works shelf sees a fair bit of change. It gets more added to it than removed, but some things don't have lasting value to me.

All of which is highly personal and subjective. And really, I'd rather that other people's Great Works shelf is different from mine. That's how my shelf grows. I have a list of 18 books on my computer right now, almost all of which were recommended on this thread. I expect that I'll read amost all of them (if I can find them) and enjoy roughly half. Which makes for nine enjoyable books that I might never have read, otherwise. Will all of them go on my Great Works shelf? Hell if I know. For that matter, I won't know for another five years or so. But again, that's nine books that I would never have had the chance to even consider, so I figure I'm ahead of the game. Whatever the game might be.

The woman's chin and nose are described as especially pointed, and Joyce refers multiple times to how her chin and nose almost touch as she talks or laughs or what have you. In a short story I expect every image to have a dual purpose, but I couldn't think of what the purpose of this image was, other than to establish that she's a bit odd looking

connie, that's odd. The most I can pull up is that one of the results of the massive inbreeding of French and English royalty that their chins and noses got so pointy that they almost touched. Not having read the story in question, I'm not sure if that's even relevant.

I'd guess it's sort of how Jessica watches a movie, both simply viewing it and simultaneously being conscious of the editing choices. I've been trained to read like that.

But Hec, when someone else says "Oh, I just don't watch movies like that -- I absolutely loved it!" I don't then start hurling around nasty accusations of anti-film-theory-reverse-snobbery. Nobody is saying that critical thinking about art is intrinsically bad. What people (and by people I mean me) are objecting to is your apparent opinion that people not interested in deep litcrit discussions of Moby Dick aren't smart enough for this thread. And no doubt you're going to deny that that's what you meant, but from where I'm sitting, that is what your argument seems to boil down to.

I do think that there's a culture war of sorts going on where the Good Books (n.b. this is not a definitive list, but a qualitative one) are being taught so incompetently and discussed so flippantly that smart people (and I mean you, the Buffistae, among many others) see them as stuffy, boring, and out of reach. Why bother reading them (or so I guess the argument goes) when you have to be a professor to understand them?

I think the point that you're missing is that most people who are accusing said Great Works of not being particularly good books have, in fact, read them. So I don't see a lot of "Why bother? It's too hard!" (or even a lot of "I tried it, but it was over my head"*) going on so much as a lot of "Yeah, I read that. WAY overrated." And I also see an intrinsic assumption that most of us have read a decent amount of Western canon, and have formed opinions on the value (or not) of individual works prior to coming to this thread. So what you're seeing as out-of-hand dissing, I'm seeing as shorthand. And we may both be wrong, but that's where the disconnect comes from, I think.

[*The one notable exception from my own life being Finnegan's Wake, which I have started three times and gotten about ten pages in (which is also about where my father's notes in the margin start to thin out) before my eyes crossed and I had to put it down. I love Joyce enough to keep trying, but it may very well be a lost cause.]

I read books with the analysis part of my brain on standby -- it's there if something leaps out at me demanding to be thought about, but in general, I read for pleasure. Afterwards, though, I'm more than happy to cut it up into tiny pieces and look at it under a microscope. I think it's fun, and it doesn't, generally speaking, make me love the book any less. (Analysing Heinlein makes me sad, but that says more about me as a teenager than him as a writer.) I'm left-brained enough to love analysis of pretty much anything, in any form, though I'll admit, like others, to not really having the vocabulary for it.

Anyway, at this point I'm just rambling.

I just want to point out that in between all the lit-crit talk I've seen a heck of a lot of support for some kind of book club thread. Any reason why we don't pop this proposal into the B'crazy thread and get this party started right?

I liked Madam Bovary because I sympathized with Emma's situation, with her terrible sense of disconnect, with her being utterly trapped in a life she was unsuited for, and I simultaneously wanted to bop her on the head for being such a child.

300 messages later, and I'm still slightly taken aback. What I personally disliked about the tone of hayden, Hec, and Michele's posts was the air of "you people are doing it wrong, sit down and listen while I explain it to you."

Am I capable of participating in literary criticism? I sure hope so, or this whole grad school education is a waste. Do I want to do it all the time? Not really. Do I feel any shame in saying things like "Life is too short for me to read any more Thomas Hardy?" Nope.

I also think that attacking people because you're distressed that they dislike something you like is a little crazy. How did we ever manage to get through 5 seasons of Angel?

Wolfram, I was hoping we could discuss it a bit here before going the proposal route, but I've been unwilling to interrupt the discussion that's been going on to do so. I'm short on time right now, but I'll be back later this morning to throw some of my thoughts out there.

Eh, never mind. Here's the short version.

The first problem, as I see it, is choosing books. The second, related issue is that any book choice is going to leave some people uninterested, and hence uninvolved, for a fairly long period.

So here's my thought - We gather a host of book recommendations of all types - Canon, Ought-to-be-Canon, JustAFunRead, TranscendsGenre, etc.

Then I'd like to see these organized into a sort of revolving, overlapping schedule. So maybe each month, there could be three books on the table. Or maybe a different book each week, with some care taken so that one week is distinctly different from the next. Or some other arrangement that hasn't occurred to me yet. In any case, the idea would be that not everybody is going to try to read each and every book - but there'll be something in the offing for people of different tastes and interests, and you'll know what's coming up over the next few months so as to give time for reading or rereading.

So then each book or set of books would have discussion kick-off times, Monday mornings say, and perhaps a volunteer to get things started with a treatise, a quiz, or whatever the hell they choose.

Something like that, anyway.

Thoughts?