(no subject)
just as there is no one thing we need, there is no one thing we are. except, perhaps, for that emptiest and (hence) weightiest of terms: human.
it amazes me how easily people still throw around assertions like "women [this]" and "men [that]." you'd think by now you'd have to be at least a bit subtler, to be included in polite conversation. at least add a few self-deprecating caveats.
but it seems some have found a different strategy: make too many offensive sweeping generalizations in a single communication to allow anyone to focus on just one of them.
As a teacher of literature, I am forced to teach contemporary novels, and go home to read Dickens, Trollope, Burroughs or anyone who keeps clear of empathy with another mind. Lot of this stuff, like Regency Novels at the beginning of the form, is just plain crap to feed emotional vampirism. A single sentence from a novel recommended on Oprah makes me choke. There is a real world out there, and the sooner writers return to it, the better.
Here is my belief. It’s not that women read more novels; it is that a certain type of woman established its favourite genre, the Harlequin Romance, as our dominant mode. And for the record, Kerouac never ruled the literary world, and died making $10,000 dollars a year. How quickly good male writers are forgotten for the trash ramed down students’ throats.
--comment from "gooddoctor" on this article about fiction readership
riiiight.
it amazes me how easily people still throw around assertions like "women [this]" and "men [that]." you'd think by now you'd have to be at least a bit subtler, to be included in polite conversation. at least add a few self-deprecating caveats.
but it seems some have found a different strategy: make too many offensive sweeping generalizations in a single communication to allow anyone to focus on just one of them.
As a teacher of literature, I am forced to teach contemporary novels, and go home to read Dickens, Trollope, Burroughs or anyone who keeps clear of empathy with another mind. Lot of this stuff, like Regency Novels at the beginning of the form, is just plain crap to feed emotional vampirism. A single sentence from a novel recommended on Oprah makes me choke. There is a real world out there, and the sooner writers return to it, the better.
Here is my belief. It’s not that women read more novels; it is that a certain type of woman established its favourite genre, the Harlequin Romance, as our dominant mode. And for the record, Kerouac never ruled the literary world, and died making $10,000 dollars a year. How quickly good male writers are forgotten for the trash ramed down students’ throats.
--comment from "gooddoctor" on this article about fiction readership
riiiight.