The Classics Suck! (or how I learned to stop worrying about what people read and roll with it)
I hate Jane Austen.
Not personally, but I utterly loathe her writing far more than anyone ever should. I find the characters as dim as a box of rocks, the pacing of the prose drags as if it were hauling a dead donkey on its back and the story duller than C-SPAN discussing economics. This hardly the sort of book I would inflict upon the unprepared and distracted... better known as most high school students. Why would anyone think of reading as a fun activity after having to slog through Pride and Prejudice, knowing that an essay would be their only reward for doing so?
Now, before the fans of Jane Austen start writing angry comments, there are reasons to read her stuff. You want to see how the class system worked in 19th century England. You can look at how courtship rituals were carried out amongst the aristocracy. You want to use it as an example of a popular style of prose for the time period. I'm sure there are other reasons people can come up with, but for a lot of people (including me) we would never get through a Jane Austen style novel without having some predetermined reason to read it. Additionally, most the reasons I just came up with would not be obvious outside a class curriculum. It isn't limited to Jane Austen and her ilk either. There are quite a few books that I read in high school that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole unless it was required reading for some course or other. I'd probably bypass a lot of John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Louisa May Alcott, all the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens (whom I blame for all purple prose everywhere) and even Shakespeare (which I didn't really start to like until college, but then in college the way of teaching fictional works is much different) in favor of something else.
Most of these books are generally categorized as "literature"... In other words they are written as to be inscrutable to the masses and require someone to remind you why you are reading the book in the first place and why this book is "literature" rather than "fiction" (which is generally accessible to the time period it is written in). I can only draw one conclusion from this. High school reading is not supposed to encourage people to read for fun and look critically at one's own reactions to the text. High school reading is chosen on the basis of what books need an interpreter there to tell you why to read it in the first place.
I have some issues with this. First, dense classics do not inspire people to read. The popular fiction novels can and what's more, they inspire people to write, be it fan fiction or blogging or posting on a forum. Let's face it, the average reader does not get inspired by things that are boring or dull or so dense that they can't understand it. Ennui is not helpful for gaining a better understanding about how fictional works function in the world.
Second, being told what a text means (even if the book involved isn't as dry as stale bread) doesn't foster critical thinking, it inspires a belief that there is a right way and wrong way to interpret a text. This is misleading. Most books can, will and frequently do have more than one way to read them. Implying that there's a "right" or a singular meaning to a story is both silly and not helpful to sharing one's interpretation. After all, if there's only one "right" interpretation, why should we want to bother with any others? Or why should we listen to people who read it differently from ourselves? Clearly people with differing opinions on a text are doing it wrong. It couldn't possibly be that learning how to discuss works of fiction might help in dealing with real people. Oh no, learning to look at things from more than one perspective will never help in real life.
Third, the very label of "literature" implies that all other forms of fictional prose are somehow inferior, even though the stuff labeled as literature can have the same problems that more popular fiction has. Lord of the Flies falls apart in the suspension of disbelief department if you apply logic and reality to it. I glaze over for most contemporary fiction because for me a lot of it just drags with the pacing. Give me swords, magic, spaceships and strange happenings! I do not need or want to read about an average person going through their average life and how they want to find love, get a bagel, be something else, etc. I am an average person and I have an average life and I want something extraordinary to dream and strive for.
I want books to adore that are both meaningful and exciting. Sometimes all it takes to get people interested in reading the classics is to add zombies.
(reposted from my livejournal but it seems to fit here too)
Not personally, but I utterly loathe her writing far more than anyone ever should. I find the characters as dim as a box of rocks, the pacing of the prose drags as if it were hauling a dead donkey on its back and the story duller than C-SPAN discussing economics. This hardly the sort of book I would inflict upon the unprepared and distracted... better known as most high school students. Why would anyone think of reading as a fun activity after having to slog through Pride and Prejudice, knowing that an essay would be their only reward for doing so?
Now, before the fans of Jane Austen start writing angry comments, there are reasons to read her stuff. You want to see how the class system worked in 19th century England. You can look at how courtship rituals were carried out amongst the aristocracy. You want to use it as an example of a popular style of prose for the time period. I'm sure there are other reasons people can come up with, but for a lot of people (including me) we would never get through a Jane Austen style novel without having some predetermined reason to read it. Additionally, most the reasons I just came up with would not be obvious outside a class curriculum. It isn't limited to Jane Austen and her ilk either. There are quite a few books that I read in high school that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole unless it was required reading for some course or other. I'd probably bypass a lot of John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Louisa May Alcott, all the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens (whom I blame for all purple prose everywhere) and even Shakespeare (which I didn't really start to like until college, but then in college the way of teaching fictional works is much different) in favor of something else.
Most of these books are generally categorized as "literature"... In other words they are written as to be inscrutable to the masses and require someone to remind you why you are reading the book in the first place and why this book is "literature" rather than "fiction" (which is generally accessible to the time period it is written in). I can only draw one conclusion from this. High school reading is not supposed to encourage people to read for fun and look critically at one's own reactions to the text. High school reading is chosen on the basis of what books need an interpreter there to tell you why to read it in the first place.
I have some issues with this. First, dense classics do not inspire people to read. The popular fiction novels can and what's more, they inspire people to write, be it fan fiction or blogging or posting on a forum. Let's face it, the average reader does not get inspired by things that are boring or dull or so dense that they can't understand it. Ennui is not helpful for gaining a better understanding about how fictional works function in the world.
Second, being told what a text means (even if the book involved isn't as dry as stale bread) doesn't foster critical thinking, it inspires a belief that there is a right way and wrong way to interpret a text. This is misleading. Most books can, will and frequently do have more than one way to read them. Implying that there's a "right" or a singular meaning to a story is both silly and not helpful to sharing one's interpretation. After all, if there's only one "right" interpretation, why should we want to bother with any others? Or why should we listen to people who read it differently from ourselves? Clearly people with differing opinions on a text are doing it wrong. It couldn't possibly be that learning how to discuss works of fiction might help in dealing with real people. Oh no, learning to look at things from more than one perspective will never help in real life.
Third, the very label of "literature" implies that all other forms of fictional prose are somehow inferior, even though the stuff labeled as literature can have the same problems that more popular fiction has. Lord of the Flies falls apart in the suspension of disbelief department if you apply logic and reality to it. I glaze over for most contemporary fiction because for me a lot of it just drags with the pacing. Give me swords, magic, spaceships and strange happenings! I do not need or want to read about an average person going through their average life and how they want to find love, get a bagel, be something else, etc. I am an average person and I have an average life and I want something extraordinary to dream and strive for.
I want books to adore that are both meaningful and exciting. Sometimes all it takes to get people interested in reading the classics is to add zombies.
(reposted from my livejournal but it seems to fit here too)