Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Like many other people...

I think (probably like many of the rest of us in class) his argument idolatry and hypercanonization stuck with me the most.  While I'm not sure I loved his presentation of his argument (occasional poorly written sentences like the one we discussed in class, lots of name dropping, a bit of overkill on the historical background - in my opinion), I do, however, agree with his argument.  I definitely think we have a tendency to make assumptions based on other, "smarter" people's opinions.

For example, there is a book (I won't name it so as not to offend anybody who actually likes it...) that I have been forced to read twice - once in high school and once in college.  And neither of those times did I find the book any more worth reading.  I attempted to read it in high school and disliked it so much that it became the first book I ever SparkNoted.  It is horribly written, not just in terms of diction but also of basic grammar and sentence structure.  And not only are the potentially important themes overblown and poorly addressed, but the actual plot of the story is ridiculous.  Yet, because this book is just one of those books, I've had to read it twice.

So, I agree with Arac when he argues that we each need to strip books like Huck Finn of all the widespread externally imposed meaning and see it for its own merit - or maybe lack of merit, if that is what we see.

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