Avoiding the issue

[IntravenousJava]

A friend recently chided me for being unwilling to read anything unless it was written by a "stuffy old dead guy."

I smugly replied that Jane Austen and George Eliot are among my favorite authors.

Obviously I was avoiding the issue, so I'll address it here and invite other perspectives.

In defense of my reading habits, I simply happen to agree with Harold Bloom that the sheer volume of literature which has accumulated through the ages forces a mere mortal like myself to be selective.

[The Comedian]

My reading habits are similar to yours. Although, I do try to throw in a contemporary writer from time to time. I think C.S. Lewis once said something about trying to alternate between old and new in his reading habits. . . .

Anyway, my contemporary reading is mostly comics and graphic novels, which are not only a pleasurable change-of-pace, but, being image-driven, they are a different sort of reading experience all together.

But to your point: There is nothing wrong at all with reading stuff by "old dead guys", even if some of those old dead guys are old dead chicks. ;) Hell, my last two reads were Seneca and Aristophanes. I'm currently reading a short novel by Tennessee Williams and my "bathroom read" is The Divine Comedy. All written beautifully by old dead guys.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

If you enjoy reading the stuffy old dead guys, then read them. I think it's as simple as that.

[IntravenousJava]

my last two reads were Seneca and Aristophanes.

Isn't it uncanny how relevant some of the stuffy old dead guys and gals are with respect to the present day state of things?

[Pierre Menard]

If you enjoy reading the stuffy old dead guys, then read them. I think it's as simple as that.


This.


Isn't it uncanny how relevant some of the stuffy old dead guys and gals are with respect to the present day state of things?

I feel the same way currently reading Montaigne. Some aspects of humanity just do not change, no matter what era.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

My reading habits are similar to yours. Although, I do try to throw in a contemporary writer from time to time. I think C.S. Lewis once said something about trying to alternate between old and new in his reading habits. . . .

I actually do just that. I used to alternate every other book--a contemporary book (usually something like sci-fi or fantasy) with a "classic," though I use the term loosely (I'm counting Roth, Delilo, and Franzen--whom I've yet to read--in that category). Still, I find myself reading classics more than non-classics, now.

[kelby_lake]

I mainly gravitate towards the classics. If I'm not reading something "classic", I'm reading pulpy literature for teens.

[Der Wegwerfer]

I'm currently reading a short novel by Tennessee Williams and my "bathroom read" is The Divine Comedy. All written beautifully by old dead guys.


my "bathroom read" is great short stories of 2010, maybe you should add more fiber to your diet? :lol:


seriously, there's a reason the classics are the classics. Even many passages from Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden are amazingly applicable to todays standards.

read what you want, life is too short to read something because others think it should be read.

[The Comedian]

my "bathroom read" is great short stories of 2010, maybe you should add more fiber to your diet? :lol:

I get plenty o' fiber. :lol: I have a wife and two daughters -- the bathroom is one of the few places I can go to escape all the insanity and have a relaxing, yet literary, read! ;)

[kiki1982]

:lol:
hmmm, bathroom read, maybe I'll give that one a go...

I always get scolded by my hubby that I read to impress. Well, if he's impressed, that's great, but I always tell him that I just like it. Most of the old stuffy guy's writings are indeed still applicable. You see through people in one second.

For once, Bloom and I seem to agree (wow!) that there is not enough time in life to spend on possible crap, so you might as well stick to the good stuff.

[Charles Darnay]

Like you, I stuck exclusively to the classics. My bookshelf for awhile was entirely Barnes and Noble Classics (strange considering I'm Canadian but oh well....)

It was not until m senior year of high school that I made it to the early 20th century American lit.....Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway &c.

For the past few years I have been all over the place. I still love and absorb the classics, but have made a more conscious effort to discover the new stuff. I get involved with the hype of book award seasons and have discovered some great authors this way.

The stuff old dead guys are great, and there is a wealth there that can keep you busy for a lifetime - but not everything published after 1964 (random year) is terrible.

[cafolini]

I think that how old it is what you are reading is not a problem. The problem might occur in thinking you are getting what you are not out of it. You might be dumb enough to read a 2000-year-old piece and think it applies to today instead of being a strictly historical piece.
Some people would argue against what I'm saying in circles of futility. But the fame of an old writer can hardly compensate to make his points of view apply to this day.

[dark desire]

Let me deconstruct this post of yours.


A friend recently chided me for being unwilling to read anything unless it was written by a "stuffy old dead guy."

I smugly replied that Jane Austen and George Eliot are among my favorite authors.

Obviously I was avoiding the issue, so I'll address it here and invite other perspectives.

In defense of my reading habits, I simply happen to agree with Harold Bloom that the sheer volume of literature which has accumulated through the ages forces a mere mortal like myself to be selective.

"I'll address it here and invite other perspectives". This means you are looking for other perspectives. What can be other perspectives? And why are you looking for new perspectives? One other perspective is that there is something in contemporary literature that you are missing out on. You are looking for another perspective so that it can arouse your interest in contemporary literature.

"I smugly replied that Jane ..." This shows you are not open to exploring the other perspectives even as you want them. You could have asked your friend to elaborate what he/she meant. But you did not. Admitting that your response "Jane Austen and George Eliot are among my favorite authors" was smug you express dissatisfaction with your current reading habits.

You do not need to be defensive here but you say "In defense of my reading habits..." In the next sentence you use the word 'simply' to emphasize your reading habits and the reason you provide. You are creating defenses around your reading habits. This shows anxiety about your current reading practices that you are not totally confident about them.

In his comment Harold Bloom sets human mortality against the volume of literature accumulated through ages as if he is compelled to read the entirety of literature that has ever been written. Using the opposites of human mortality and infinitude of literatures written he constructs the argument that he will be selective in his reading. Why does he exaggerate? He hides his lack of confidence in approaching literature other than his usual practices under the guise of humility. There is anxiety hidden even in this. Instead of using the word "mortal", he uses the phrase "mere mortal" which tells that he is overdoing humility here.

Nobody can force you to read anything more than what you already do; nobody, nothing except your own heart. Answer this yourself - Do you want to explore new literatures?

What I can do here is tell you what is available out there. There are thrillers and adventures that are lower grade imitations of Hemingway's tight prose. There are cheesy romantic novels whose mothers were the works of Jane Austen, Bronte sisters and George Elliot. Then there are postmodern authors who bring attention to various cultural phenomena that take place around us all the time in their books. These books mix elements of reality with elements of fantasy. One cannot tell one from the other. In doing so they bring attention to things in this world that did not exist 100 or more years back. While you see traits of human behaviour from old literatures, new literatures are something different. Old literature cannot tell you the effect of internet or advertising, rampant consumerism etc that are phenomena of last few decades.

There is no rule to be selective about reading practices and there is no rule to be expansive about them. It all depends upon what you want. Reading something new takes efforts. Sometimes it is rewarding more than expectations and sometimes it becomes disappointing. I'd feel better if you try something new. Otherwise I'll feel like a stupid fellow writing so long a post for nothing.

:-)

[JBI]

Going on the Dead White Man hunt in Academia right now is a form of suicide in many places. We have moved onto that, besides which, comprehensive exams in all major institutions for those who study literature necessarily include the whole slew of dead white men, so there is nothing to complain about.

What people should really be yelling about is the simple fact that the canon that is marketed is prose-fiction dominated, and all in English. The real sufferer from the English academic reform of the 60s onwards were not the dead white guys, but rather the dead ancient guys.

The generation who came to prominence in the first half of the 20th century was in all ways better educated than their predecessors. Call it elitist, but some monolingual ranters who know nothing about tradition, let alone the greater world outside of their American or British novelists have contributed very little to the study of anything.

With Latin education lost, the Latin tradition of reading was lost - the tradition that formed the foundation for the study of English letters in the first place. Slowly French, Italian, and in general, all other forms of literature were culled from the obligatory background of students.

What can anybody say about English literature up until 1900 without at least engaging with another tradition? Likewise, it is fine to rant against American expansionism and jingoism in Walt Whitman, but how many doing so speak Spanish, or know anything outside of the American jingoism of Walt Whitman. The joke is on them, in that they preach for difference, yet know far less about the world than the predecessors who they so loathe.

Dead White Men should be replaced with Dead White Englishmen to be more accurate. All the real research that gets anywhere is done by people disengaged completely from the debate - those who work with more "area" groups of literature, who get none of the exposure. Michel Foucault only read French authors, keep in mind, and his English followers only read English authors.

That's probably why so many of the great texts on world literature end up coming from a German tradition, rather than an Ango-American one. The emphasis on history and internationalism is so foreign to the French inflected English academe that it offers no guidance or frame for any real inquiry into anything useful outside of itself.

So, in contrast, I would berate all of you who have never read a single poem, never picked up a French title, let alone an Italian one, or a German one, and yet post on threads like these exclaiming your superior tastes, when, quite frankly, George Elliot, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, etc. are so quintessentially English and cliche that they are far more limited than all that dead white mumbo jumbo.

Quite simply, how many literate non-white people were there in England during the period of 1000 to 1900? how many of them were female? So few, that it is ridiculous to suggest a tradition of English should be otherwise. The real ones the "Female Finding" gynocriticism targeted were French and continental authors, European presences, and basically the longer traditions of literature, who have been ignored and neglected and denied in the English academy forever, despite being the bedrock of both medieval and neo-classical periods of English literature.

So please, if someone is going to make a thread complaining about this issue, at least realize that from an international perspective, you have no right to really defend yourself as "literate" only knowing English authors in an international world. Quite simply, literature is far from restricted to the Island. I do not care if one only does read English letters, but they should at least be honest that they are not well read if they only stick to Victorian high brow snobbery.

[JBI]

I think that how old it is what you are reading is not a problem. The problem might occur in thinking you are getting what you are not out of it. You might be dumb enough to read a 2000-year-old piece and think it applies to today instead of being a strictly historical piece.
Some people would argue against what I'm saying in circles of futility. But the fame of an old writer can hardly compensate to make his points of view apply to this day.

Oh please, it is the hubris of any society that thinks itself somewhat different from societies that came before it. The same tropes are present in anything from Ancient India to contemporary Afghanistan.

[IntravenousJava]

Being new to this forum, I am reluctant to make inordinate demands in the way of lengthy posts. Unfortunately, anyone who knows me can testify that brevity is not among my finer qualities. Still, I shall try to restrain myself...

My friend's criticism regarding my narrow literary horizons, although apt, is not entirely accurate. After all, contemporary selections figured prominently in college, though I suppose the issue I've raised is less about what I have read and more about what I choose to read when it's entirely up to me.

My reasons for clinging so tenaciously to canonical literature are threefold:

1. Posterity has endowed canonical works with testimonials far more powerful and compelling than any reviews commending contemporary works.

2. I seem to suffer from a form of OCD which is somehow specific to literature. I have an irrational fear of having missed something in the canon, which prohibits me from expanding my horizon until said fear is dispelled (an unlikely event with me).

3. I am 42 yrs. old and none of the burning questions regarding purpose, identity, God, etc., are even close to being settled in my mind. In all honesty, most of the contemporary works I have tried (with an open mind I might add) have made little or no pretense at even addressing these questions.

Now I am almost certain that many of you stand ready to refute and enlighten me with an arsenal of profound contemporary "masters," but are any of them going to satisfy my peculiar needs better than Shakespeare or Mann or Proust (my three personal favorites)?

[Venerable Bede]

Like many others here, I tend to read mostly from the classics, but I strive to include several modern titles as well. The main problem is that with the classics you have a good chance of reading a truly great work whereas with current literature there is such a vast quantity of writing in circulation that it can be difficult to pick out the masterpieces amongst all of the trash.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Going on the Dead White Man hunt in Academia right now is a form of suicide in many places. We have moved onto that, besides which, comprehensive exams in all major institutions for those who study literature necessarily include the whole slew of dead white men, so there is nothing to complain about.

What people should really be yelling about is the simple fact that the canon that is marketed is prose-fiction dominated, and all in English. The real sufferer from the English academic reform of the 60s onwards were not the dead white guys, but rather the dead ancient guys.

The generation who came to prominence in the first half of the 20th century was in all ways better educated than their predecessors. Call it elitist, but some monolingual ranters who know nothing about tradition, let alone the greater world outside of their American or British novelists have contributed very little to the study of anything.

With Latin education lost, the Latin tradition of reading was lost - the tradition that formed the foundation for the study of English letters in the first place. Slowly French, Italian, and in general, all other forms of literature were culled from the obligatory background of students.

What can anybody say about English literature up until 1900 without at least engaging with another tradition? Likewise, it is fine to rant against American expansionism and jingoism in Walt Whitman, but how many doing so speak Spanish, or know anything outside of the American jingoism of Walt Whitman. The joke is on them, in that they preach for difference, yet know far less about the world than the predecessors who they so loathe.

Dead White Men should be replaced with Dead White Englishmen to be more accurate. All the real research that gets anywhere is done by people disengaged completely from the debate - those who work with more "area" groups of literature, who get none of the exposure. Michel Foucault only read French authors, keep in mind, and his English followers only read English authors.

That's probably why so many of the great texts on world literature end up coming from a German tradition, rather than an Ango-American one. The emphasis on history and internationalism is so foreign to the French inflected English academe that it offers no guidance or frame for any real inquiry into anything useful outside of itself.

So, in contrast, I would berate all of you who have never read a single poem, never picked up a French title, let alone an Italian one, or a German one, and yet post on threads like these exclaiming your superior tastes, when, quite frankly, George Elliot, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, etc. are so quintessentially English and cliche that they are far more limited than all that dead white mumbo jumbo.

Quite simply, how many literate non-white people were there in England during the period of 1000 to 1900? how many of them were female? So few, that it is ridiculous to suggest a tradition of English should be otherwise. The real ones the "Female Finding" gynocriticism targeted were French and continental authors, European presences, and basically the longer traditions of literature, who have been ignored and neglected and denied in the English academy forever, despite being the bedrock of both medieval and neo-classical periods of English literature.

So please, if someone is going to make a thread complaining about this issue, at least realize that from an international perspective, you have no right to really defend yourself as "literate" only knowing English authors in an international world. Quite simply, literature is far from restricted to the Island. I do not care if one only does read English letters, but they should at least be honest that they are not well read if they only stick to Victorian high brow snobbery.

i.e., JBI's superior taste is better than your superior taste.

[IntravenousJava]

I'd feel better if you try something new. Otherwise I'll feel like a stupid fellow writing so long a post for nothing.

:-)

I absolutely loved your deconstructionist approach to my post. I had not dared to hope for a more inspired response. You even hit close to the mark in several respects, though I suspect your task would have been easier if I were a better writer. Sadly, most of the decisions I make with respect to syntax and diction are more arbitrary than meaningful. I aspire to a command of language whereby my words correspond directly to my thoughts, but I have not yet achieved such.

I know this is a bit off the original point, but your analysis of my possible motives for posting gave rise to something which concerns me deeply. However much I may struggle to know anything definite about the world outside my conscious self, I struggle infinitely more to know the world within.
I make a concerted effort to "overhear" myself thinking, as I feel this is arguably the most useful tool at my disposal if I ever wish to adequately know myself, but sometimes reflected or refracted thoughts provide as much insight as the most rigorous introspection.

Getting back to the issue at hand, I do and will continue to read an occasional contemporary selection. After all, I am alive today and, in my capacity as a husband and father, the problems of the modern world are far more immediate to me than the ponderous concerns of my interior odyssey.
Ultimately, though, for as long as those timeless and universal questions persist, the Canon will remain the staple of my literary diet.

[irinmisfit92]

I feel that some contemporary writers are amazing; however I agree most aren't as great. I don't only read classics, as I also love people such as Philip K. Dick and John Ajvide Lindqvist.

[JBI]

i.e., JBI's superior taste is better than your superior taste.

Not really, I do not read English novels anymore. In terms of Western literature, other posters here are years ahead of me. It's one of my great faults that I stopped reading Italian verse and abandoned my study of French.

As for white, well, that is problematic since white is the colour of Europeans for the most part - no dodging that.

Male - well, true and not true. There were female authors of all time. The most significant literary figure in Henry II's court was Marie de France. Queen Elizabeth was a mini goddess in her time. There is nothing to suggest there wasn't some sort of female presence in terms of literacy. The major problem was that English,when it kicked off, was not a professional enterprise.

You take something like Henry 8ths court. Religious polemics, and courtier poetry, much of which was political, are the dominant writings of the first significant period of growth in English literature since Chaucer. You are looking at a time where women were dying from childbirth at a staggering rate, most people were illiterate, and still, most people were not in the precarious position of writing (Wyatt nearly ends up executed, for instance, after watching Surrey get the axe).

In the Elizabethan time it is different. But still, where is the room for any author? The idea of women being excluded from the theatre as somehow sexist is a rather obscured view of history. Rather, being in the theatre was like being in prostitution (which, to an extent, existed in the industry in the form of homosexual interactions amongst players). Rather than see it as women being excluded based on being reduced to lower spheres, one should think of it as a view of women as "too good" to be mixed with that lowly riffraff.

The history of gender misses the single most important fact about the ancient world up until the 1920s which dominated female life - childbirth, and, more importantly, death from it. With low life expectancies, complicated and difficult pregnancies, and the high possibility of death afterward, of both child and mother, one can see a great irony, that is, that it wasn't feminism that was the liberator of women that allowed them to pursue careers, but rather, the ease of reproduction in the modern era, brought on by, ironically, for the most part, white male scientists.

As we enter the Romantic era, however, we notice that there are tons of successful and influential women of letters. The major gothic romances, for instance, or the Victorian press were loaded with such work - female readers, female writers. Even male authors were writing with a female sympathy. When we see "sexism" in Victorian writing, we cannot interpret it as a "patriarchal" imposition so easily, in that the commercial public was decidedly female. Anybody who understands commercial literature knows that it is the reader who determines the text and the appropriateness based on their aesthetic desires to keep reading, rather than some almighty power.

If we look down the list then, it seems, ironically, that it is the United States that has the patriarchal tradition of literature up until this day. Not that women are not writing, but, ironically, the female dominated academies of the country have designated the vast majority of major authors in the last 3 generations as primarily male. That perhaps is just the luck of the draw, but try coming up with a top 100 list of books in the US in the last 50 years, and you will see what I mean.

So, ironically what does Dead Old White Man mean? Historically relevant? Not too bad. Male? Not too bad actually, considering the bulk of historically educated people were men, and authors tended to be male, it makes sense a canon would be male. Then there is the idea of white - well, lets see someone advocating Asian literature, or Arabic literature, or Persian literature, or Hebrew Literature, or anything else but English literature. That would imply giving up the dream of tenured positions in the monolingual world - fat chance someone who has just written their thesis on Cynthia Ozick or Sylvia Plath will do that.

Oh the irony.

Taste has very little to do with it. I don't do research on contemporary, or even modernist works - I am more or less what one would call a classicist if the term were stretched to include world classics. As such, the "canon" as it will has already been assembled by more intelligent people than me over the ages for my benefit, for better or for worse, and I do not need to ***** about it, the same way a Chaucer expert (they come in both genders) does not need to sit there and justify Chaucer - everyone knows Chaucer is not going anywhere, despite his being dead, and white, and male.

If one wanted to get beyond dead old white manism, they need to get beyond trying to solve the problem in a British-American traditional focus. Bring in someone not American, and the problem is solved. Cannot have your lunch and eat it too. The British public has already gone international, as they did years ago. The Canadian public is almost entirely an International readership (Canadian works don't get read), we seem to have done it. The US is so big though, that it can get away with only reading itself. As a result, its readers need to decide what it is they exactly want. Dead White Men, or internationalism.

[IntravenousJava]

As a contemplative soul and avid reader, I find circumstantial concerns such as gender or culture to be of little or no import, since literary themes tend to transcend all barriers.

[JBI]

As a contemplative soul and avid reader, I find circumstantial concerns such as gender or culture to be of little or no import, since literary themes tend to transcend all barriers.

Culture is kind of the point? Seriously, gender is relevant and culture is relevant. Experiences of women are important as are experiences of men. Cultures determine a sort of sphere. You cannot read the best literature without examining them from a cultural perspective. It is not possible. This idea of transcending culture is nonsense. Language is culture.

I am not suggesting I am the best reader, but seriously, most people make grand statements and read nothing, especially nothing that "transcends cultural boundaries".

[IntravenousJava]

Culture is kind of the point? Seriously, gender is relevant and culture is relevant. Experiences of women are important as are experiences of men. Cultures determine a sort of sphere. You cannot read the best literature without examining them from a cultural perspective. It is not possible. This idea of transcending culture is nonsense. Language is culture.

I am not suggesting I am the best reader, but seriously, most people make grand statements and read nothing, especially nothing that "transcends cultural boundaries".


I essentially agree with your premises; gender and culture are indeed important, as are ethnicity and religion. But your conclusions... well... not so much.

Having reduced their written works to the simplest terms, I find that Sappho, Stendhal, Gogol, Neruda, Dickens and Dickinson have all reflected the same fundamental concern, namely, the human condition.

[Alexander III]

Going on the Dead White Man hunt in Academia right now is a form of suicide in many places. We have moved onto that, besides which, comprehensive exams in all major institutions for those who study literature necessarily include the whole slew of dead white men, so there is nothing to complain about.

What people should really be yelling about is the simple fact that the canon that is marketed is prose-fiction dominated, and all in English. The real sufferer from the English academic reform of the 60s onwards were not the dead white guys, but rather the dead ancient guys.

The generation who came to prominence in the first half of the 20th century was in all ways better educated than their predecessors. Call it elitist, but some monolingual ranters who know nothing about tradition, let alone the greater world outside of their American or British novelists have contributed very little to the study of anything.

With Latin education lost, the Latin tradition of reading was lost - the tradition that formed the foundation for the study of English letters in the first place. Slowly French, Italian, and in general, all other forms of literature were culled from the obligatory background of students.

What can anybody say about English literature up until 1900 without at least engaging with another tradition? Likewise, it is fine to rant against American expansionism and jingoism in Walt Whitman, but how many doing so speak Spanish, or know anything outside of the American jingoism of Walt Whitman. The joke is on them, in that they preach for difference, yet know far less about the world than the predecessors who they so loathe.

Dead White Men should be replaced with Dead White Englishmen to be more accurate. All the real research that gets anywhere is done by people disengaged completely from the debate - those who work with more "area" groups of literature, who get none of the exposure. Michel Foucault only read French authors, keep in mind, and his English followers only read English authors.

That's probably why so many of the great texts on world literature end up coming from a German tradition, rather than an Ango-American one. The emphasis on history and internationalism is so foreign to the French inflected English academe that it offers no guidance or frame for any real inquiry into anything useful outside of itself.

So, in contrast, I would berate all of you who have never read a single poem, never picked up a French title, let alone an Italian one, or a German one, and yet post on threads like these exclaiming your superior tastes, when, quite frankly, George Elliot, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, etc. are so quintessentially English and cliche that they are far more limited than all that dead white mumbo jumbo.

Quite simply, how many literate non-white people were there in England during the period of 1000 to 1900? how many of them were female? So few, that it is ridiculous to suggest a tradition of English should be otherwise. The real ones the "Female Finding" gynocriticism targeted were French and continental authors, European presences, and basically the longer traditions of literature, who have been ignored and neglected and denied in the English academy forever, despite being the bedrock of both medieval and neo-classical periods of English literature.

So please, if someone is going to make a thread complaining about this issue, at least realize that from an international perspective, you have no right to really defend yourself as "literate" only knowing English authors in an international world. Quite simply, literature is far from restricted to the Island. I do not care if one only does read English letters, but they should at least be honest that they are not well read if they only stick to Victorian high brow snobbery.

Dam fine post and I agree with near all of what you have said. That is why I still admire the Italian educational system. Whether one does the liceo Classico or Scientifico ancient greek and Latin are still primary subjects. Every Italian schoolboy is exposed to the greeks and the Romans just as much as he is exposed to the Italians. Overall the people on average are more cultured. See in England you read some poetry from the 1800's and the masses think that is old and irrelevant. But In Italy everyone is so used to having been thought many works of ancient greece and Rome, that if I were to say I am reading poetry from the 1800's the words "that is old" would appear simple minded and ridiculous. because they in fact are.


Oh please, it is the hubris of any society that thinks itself somewhat different from societies that came before it. The same tropes are present in anything from Ancient India to contemporary Afghanistan.

Yes.Yes.Yes. Men are men and have always been Men.

[stlukesguild]

i.e., JBI's superior taste is better than your superior taste.

:rofl::hand::smilielol5:

[stlukesguild]

Yes.Yes.Yes. Men are men and have always been Men.

Except when they're women.;)

[miyako73]

Culture is kind of the point? Seriously, gender is relevant and culture is relevant. Experiences of women are important as are experiences of men. Cultures determine a sort of sphere. You cannot read the best literature without examining them from a cultural perspective. It is not possible. This idea of transcending culture is nonsense. Language is culture.

I am not suggesting I am the best reader, but seriously, most people make grand statements and read nothing, especially nothing that "transcends cultural boundaries".

Language is culture. Correct.

[IntravenousJava]

I would never deny the utility of various critical approaches and supplemental studies in broadening our understanding of literature. Multiculturalism, deconstructionism, gender criticism, biographical studies, etc., all add layers and perspectives to our analysis of a writer and his/her work, especially if we wish to study authorial intent, motivations, influences, or even the nature of literature itself.

Nevertheless, I stoutly maintain that the perceptive reader can derive considerable benefit from the study of literature in the absence of the aforementioned tools.

Language, if it is indeed synonymous with culture (I could argue this, but won't at present), is a contrivance, a necessary innovation to answer the practical needs of growing and diversifying populations.

[RetsixArp]

...For once, Bloom and I seem to agree (wow!) that there is not enough time in life to spend on possible crap, so you might as well stick to the good stuff.I agree, but I've been unable to get thru many books in Bloom's Canon (& he says it took him 3 tries to get thru one of his favorites, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian), which I started looking at about 10 yr ago. I don't read Spanish, but I've got several volumes of Borges, including my favorite title, A Universal History of Infamy. I do read Gerrman: I've read Der Zauberberg & Tod in Venedig but only ever got half way thru Doktor Faustus.

I happen to like dead white guys & decline to apologize for that, but I read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man in h.s. Ditto The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I like Delillo & am determined to get thru a couple novels by Robbe-Grillet (also dead).

I took me months to chug thru Moby Dick & more than a decade & dozens of false starts to finish Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason (both volumes; Sartre also dead). My view of Arabic countries I got from Paul Bowles (white; dead): I found The Sheltering Sky turgid, but there's little more chilling than his short story, Allal. Nor do I apologize for straying from the Canon: I read William Harrison's (white; still alive) Savannah Blue (1981) once a year.

[JuniperWoolf]

The majority of my friends have no idea what I read, nor do they care.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

The majority of my friends have no idea what I read, nor do they care.

Ditto.

[stlukesguild]

The majority of my friends don't know what I read... but they do tend to have a inkling that I read a lot when they catch a glimpse of my library. :eek:

[IntravenousJava]

Fewer and fewer of my friends attach much value to reading, which is distressing, and those few who do read popular fiction or nothing at all. Oh well, at least they're reading...