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English blogging assignment #1
Posted elsewhere. Bleargh.
The question, "What does Literature mean to me?" isn't normally the most pressing question I deal with from day to day. Predictably, I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and ripping it to pieces in what passes for my brain these days. Also predictably, I haven't come up with an answer. I know what Literature is- Literature has a capital L, lots of run on sentences, a story line that may or may not be worth grasping, and expensive leather covers with little ribbons in the spine to mark your place. Literature is something you take your time thinking about, which gets increasingly difficult in today's world, where "OMFG, u leik so n33d 2 git leid" passes for everyday communication. When the general population replaces letters with numbers, whether out of laziness or asthetic principle (see "2" and "n33d") the passage "Honest James, forgetting the injury he had so lately received from him, flew to his assistance, and, with great difficulty, hauled him in again, but, not withstanding, in the attempt, was, by a sudden jerk of the ship, thrown overboard himself, in sight of the very fellow whom he had risked his life to save and who took not the least notice of him in this distress," becomes hard to fathom. You need about half a bottle of Ritalin just to sit through it.
Literature is all of my mother's books. Understand, The Books are a topic of conversation in my family quite often. To this day, my dad rants about how he moved all six billion of them from New York City to San Francisco to Syracuse. Until recently, they languished in boxes in the garage. (Providing the second half of my dad's rant. "I moved the damn things across the country- TWICE- and you don't even take them out of the boxes!") A few months ago, my dad went out and built bookshelves to hold them in what has become our upstairs library. The room is smaller than our library in New York; and since he's only put shelves on one wall, only a fourth of the books my mother owns are actually out of their boxes. There are all kinds of books- at least a hundred Literature books (read: nice leather covers, ribbons, gold embossed lettering, more run on sentences than you can shake a stick at), everything Issac Asimov's ever written, mysteries, technical manuals, books on science and history.
Have I ever actually read any of it? Not really.
To me, personally, I think Literature is something on a to-do list. It's something I need to do to better myself in the eyes of other academic people. It's something I need to do so I can analyze just where the movie producers and scriptwriters went wrong when they were making Troy. It's something I need to do to keep up with my cousin James, who has read more of the classics than I have, and subsequently makes me feel stupid.
Literature is something I keep putting off because a) SCREW the damn run-on sentences and b) Wintertime just uploaded the lastest chapter of her fanfic, and that is a hell of a lot more interesting. Or b) Mercedes Lackey finally released the new book in her Masters of Magic series, which I've been waiting for for three years. Literature is something I keep meaning to do, but never get around to actually doing.
Wow. So now I've firmly established that I'm a shallow, un-academic freakazoid who would toss the noble words of her forefathers (blah, blah, blah) out the window for a cheap thrill. I can only hope I get gold stars for honesty and actually having a bunch of classics on my to-read list ;) I guess I'd better go home and crack open Candide or something. Especially now that those books are out of the garage, and I can't even use "Oops- the library is closed" as an excuse.
The question, "What does Literature mean to me?" isn't normally the most pressing question I deal with from day to day. Predictably, I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and ripping it to pieces in what passes for my brain these days. Also predictably, I haven't come up with an answer. I know what Literature is- Literature has a capital L, lots of run on sentences, a story line that may or may not be worth grasping, and expensive leather covers with little ribbons in the spine to mark your place. Literature is something you take your time thinking about, which gets increasingly difficult in today's world, where "OMFG, u leik so n33d 2 git leid" passes for everyday communication. When the general population replaces letters with numbers, whether out of laziness or asthetic principle (see "2" and "n33d") the passage "Honest James, forgetting the injury he had so lately received from him, flew to his assistance, and, with great difficulty, hauled him in again, but, not withstanding, in the attempt, was, by a sudden jerk of the ship, thrown overboard himself, in sight of the very fellow whom he had risked his life to save and who took not the least notice of him in this distress," becomes hard to fathom. You need about half a bottle of Ritalin just to sit through it.
Literature is all of my mother's books. Understand, The Books are a topic of conversation in my family quite often. To this day, my dad rants about how he moved all six billion of them from New York City to San Francisco to Syracuse. Until recently, they languished in boxes in the garage. (Providing the second half of my dad's rant. "I moved the damn things across the country- TWICE- and you don't even take them out of the boxes!") A few months ago, my dad went out and built bookshelves to hold them in what has become our upstairs library. The room is smaller than our library in New York; and since he's only put shelves on one wall, only a fourth of the books my mother owns are actually out of their boxes. There are all kinds of books- at least a hundred Literature books (read: nice leather covers, ribbons, gold embossed lettering, more run on sentences than you can shake a stick at), everything Issac Asimov's ever written, mysteries, technical manuals, books on science and history.
Have I ever actually read any of it? Not really.
To me, personally, I think Literature is something on a to-do list. It's something I need to do to better myself in the eyes of other academic people. It's something I need to do so I can analyze just where the movie producers and scriptwriters went wrong when they were making Troy. It's something I need to do to keep up with my cousin James, who has read more of the classics than I have, and subsequently makes me feel stupid.
Literature is something I keep putting off because a) SCREW the damn run-on sentences and b) Wintertime just uploaded the lastest chapter of her fanfic, and that is a hell of a lot more interesting. Or b) Mercedes Lackey finally released the new book in her Masters of Magic series, which I've been waiting for for three years. Literature is something I keep meaning to do, but never get around to actually doing.
Wow. So now I've firmly established that I'm a shallow, un-academic freakazoid who would toss the noble words of her forefathers (blah, blah, blah) out the window for a cheap thrill. I can only hope I get gold stars for honesty and actually having a bunch of classics on my to-read list ;) I guess I'd better go home and crack open Candide or something. Especially now that those books are out of the garage, and I can't even use "Oops- the library is closed" as an excuse.