Harry Potter and the Cheated Readers

[Pook]

With newspapers and traditional TV news outlet plunging in viewership, (just look at the advertisements to see the audience, 6 o clock news is full of stories about 'health medicine' or about 'old people' and the ads are about Lavitra and medicine pills) the old monopoly is breaking up. As those in Western Cultures know, the "news stories" are products like any other product. It is produced and put out to be consumed, like a hamburger or shirt. But what is relevant about the news is that there is the idea of 'free speech' which means its the only industry with the guarentee of zero regulation. We have no way to know if the news story is true or not. And the news industry is the only industry where if the consumer is unhappy with the product (the news), the news industry will tell the customer that he is wrong and stupid with the most arrogant condescension.

So it is no surprise that 'traditional news' is falling in viewership due to competition from the Internet and alternate sources. In effect, there is no longer a monopoly.

This begs the question, if news media can have agendas mixed in the news, can other print industries have the same? What about the publishing industry?

Eventually, the same forces that smashed the monopoly of the news media will do the same to the publishing media. However, that will take time and has not occurred yet.

Some people have wondered how Feminism, Lesibianism, Gay Culture, and all got into Law. If you look at the Academy, the hole to Law it wormed through was the Humanities, through Literature. The Humanities offering classes such as 'Feminism Writers', 'African Writers', 'Puerto Rican Writers', 'Short people with blue eyes literature', is like Mathamatics offering classes such as 'Feminist Math', 'African Math', 'Puerto Rican Math', 'Short people with blue eyes Math'. Math is universal as is the classic literature. Classics survive not because stuffy old professors deem them so, but because the works touch on universal themes of Humanity which make them immortal for they are speak to every generation. What is interesting to note is the classic works have been around centuries if not more, and the 'feminist literature', etc. are still stuck in the current generation. A good way to tell if something is art is if it survives the test of time. 'Feminist literature' and all could be read, but not at the expense of the true classics. (Why are these true classics dispensed with? Because they are now deemed politically incorrect.)

Only a few centuries ago, to be deemed an 'educated man', one had to have the very basics of literature. What was considered 'easy literature' back then? Speeches of Cicero were taught to twelve year olds. Illiad and Odessey (the original works, not summaries) taught to thirteen year olds. Shakespeare and poetry taught to fifteen year olds. At the time of the American Revolution, most households contained at least two books: the Bible (which is a pillar of literature itself regardless of the religious content) and the works of Shakespeare. Legal works like the Constitution, Paine's essays, and the Federalist Papers could be easily read and understood by most of the voting public back then. The point is that what is considered 'deep works' today like Shakespeare, Locke, Bible, Roman speeches, were actually very common back then. This is how the poetic rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence or other works of that time got written.

But back to the present, it is true that agendas control advertising and publishing. The awful shows that come on TV featuring gay and 'strong woman'/ stupid dad themes are not chance. They were deliberatively put in, just as many villians are 'evil business men' in cartoons for kids (and all these 'evil business men' want to destroy the environment.) For a time, these shows and cartoons sold big. But then they plunged. Today television is declining and advertising money is slowly moving from the TV to the Internet. Why? Because that is where the main advertising demigraphic, young men of 13-28 are. YOU are not watching TV like they wanted you to and they are angry at you. I have not watched television for years and thankful for it too (it is called 'programming' for a reason. You are to be 'programmed' to be a consumer).

Take the movies. Does agendas affect the production of movies? If you said no, then I am Santa Clause. It has dawned on many people that movies are very formulaic (why? Because investors don't want to risk so they recycle the same movies again and again). It can be argued that 'they put out only what will sell'. But point to the Passion of the Christ, a movie that was privately invested, directed, and distributed, sold extremely well. A normal industry does not squeal at a competitor, but the squealing over the Passion just drove more people to see it. Movies like the Matrix (at least the original) contained good writing and imaginative myth included. Movies like Lord of the Rings was done completely outside of Hollywood. Movie attendance will fall because we all know the formula and are tired of having pre-packaged views disguised as movies put before us.

As can be seen that the movie/TV/News Media industries were controlled by agendas, so too is the publishing industry. Publishing houses are dominated by women, especially the editors.

Most of what passes for fiction is, of course, poor quality. But the function is to be easy reading to tell an entertaining story. Works that are transcendent in that they majorly affect how you live are, of course, rare, which is why those rare works become elevated to literature. The function of most books is to entertain, and this is fine.

Chriton and Grisham along with other authors can put out fun yarns on decent premise. But as time passes, what has become the mainstream is what are called 'thrillers', books described as 'I couldn't put it down!' and 'read it in one night!'. Thriller books are like cotten handy, sweet but lack anything to reflect over. But a new fad has started to combine the thriller with the occult and various mythology. A prime example of this is the Da Vinci Code, much of the material presented incorrect but nevertheless opened people's ideas to other possibilities. Most female fantasy writers are full of such material, all wrapped in a soft porn plot.

Did you know that female fantasy writers are the eighth wonder of the world? Yes, so much they deserve a special women webpage apart from the 'male' authors at the publishing house (http://www.tor.com/womeninfantasy/). And yes, Virginia, there is even another seperate page for PARANORMAL ROMANCES (http://www.tor.com/paranormalromance/). Just read the descriptions on PARANORMAL ROMANCES and you can easily smell an agenda. If you have the unfortunate pleasure of reading these books, you will notice something very similar in all of them. In Carey's 'Kushiel' series, it is a book of a perfect woman who, at any touch or pain, goes into orgiastic revelry. Everyone wants to bed her, including her villians. If the villian knows she is setting a trap, he doesn't care because she is so beautiful. It is fantasy but not of a mythology type (despite the myth setting). It is fantasy of a silly female kind. It should be listed under 'Romance' books, not 'Sci Fi and Fantasy'. No one takes Romance books seriously so that is why the female romance authors are invading other realms. The Grigori series is full of homosexual and S&M sex. Pointless is it that the book includes angels and dragons, it is just another bad female porn book. Most female authored books revolve around the soft porn. Who is their audience? Women. Still, the books won't ever get the respect of a traditional novels for the same reason the Romance genre doesn't (or why male's porn movies aren't seen as 'cultured film'). Males know how to seperate porn and film with movies. Women can not with their books.

 

[Pook]

Orson Scott Card

As I've gotten older, I've realized most sci-fi is incredibly bad. The genre began in the pulp thirties where people would buy anything that had a rocketship on the cover.

The audience for Sci-Fi have always complained that they are not taken seriously in literature (which isn't true, there is Farehiet 451, 1984, Brave New World). But most works don't. This isn't because of some grand conspiracy but because of the possibility the audience does not allow itself to explore: that the works can not meet such quality. As time passes, the flaws of these older works grow. Asimov is incredibly dated today, and his works like the Foundation series are full of cliches and lack the human element. Heinlen, too, suffers this problem of overatedness. Heinlen is primarily a children's author, and wrote books like 'Stranger in a Strange Land' to escape from that mold, filling it with rants about religion and sex. The point is that these 'golden works' are not passing the test of time and are becoming more ridiculous.

But the one author I want to focus on that reflects many of the issues of the publishing industry is Orson Scott Card.

Orson Scott Card wrote only one good story and that was when he was a young adult. The story is of course Ender's Game. When Card wrote Ender's Game, he simply did it as prologue to get it out of the way to write the stories he REALLY wanted to, which were the sequels of 'Speaker of the Dead' and 'Xenocide' (Children of the Mind came when he and the publisher could milk the Ender's Game fans for another book by spreading out Xenocide. Card admits this).

Ender's Game is very much a young adult novel. After all, Card thought it all up as a young adult. Most of its fans are young adults (and adult women, which would fit their mental comprehension). It is a good young adult book.

But as Card also admits, his science fiction writing (Ender Game series) is what sells. Ender's Game made Card a name and allows him to publish almost anything he wants. Card wants to write fantasy novels but none of them sell well enough (and they never will). Card has sold the Book of Mormon to Tor to make books off of that. Still, nothing catches like Ender's Game.

And while Card was 'hot' in the industry, intense criticism came especially from the female readers. "His women are so submissive," they sniffed. "Strong women aren't there in Card's novels." My response to that would be, "B*tch, write your own novel," but Card, a typical wimpified American male, responded by writing strong woman books (I kid you not). The 'strong women of the bible' series was Card going on about how 'strong' the wife of Abraham was, writing a book about her, or about Rachael, along others. It just goes to show that you must obey the Feminist 'strong woman' agenda.

Card then made the 'Shadow' series to Ender's Game which brought him good deal of money, even though fans would admit the series ruined the original Ender's Game. Oh yeah, he remembered to include 'strong women' throughout it, else he anger the agenda drivers.

But what happens if you don't obey the female agenda? One of the best sci-fi writers, or writer of any genre, is A.A. Attanasio. A good example of his work would be Last Legends of Earth (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cu...te&n=507846&s=books&customer-reviews.start=11) and the reviews for that book are all true. It is that good. Aside from telling a very imaginative story that is connected to myth and Nature, the writing is elevated to lyrical standards. Easy to read but packs the poetic punch, very tough to do.

A.A. Attanasio was nominated for the Nebula Award, has a cult of fans, yet all his books are out of print. Why? He wrote a book called The Moon's Wife. As a female reviewer, a fan of Attanasio, wrote in disbelief:

But there was something naggingly odd about the book, so I reread it, and reread it again, and although I couldn't quite believe it, I found that I was reading it as an allegory about feminism and the position of woman in a technologically advanced society. Put very baldly, the crisis of the book concerns a choice which the protaganist must make between a group of characters who can be read to represent irrationality, religion, belief in instinct, and another group representing science and reason. The disasterous choice which she makes is the same choice that popular feminism has made - not the feminism of the academy, but the woman-centered life of regular ladies who get up and go to work everyday.

Now I tend to overanalyze, but what makes me think that Attanasio is indeed playing this kind of game is that the novel makes very explicit the economic subtext of the Harlequin. That is, the entrance of the man into a Harlequin protaganist's life means that she can stop working. The dreary life from which she is liberated is the world in which she is subordinated to an office routine. The grayness and dreariness of office work - work in general - is here treated as no other genre author except Tanith Lee does. The entrance of mystery and magic is directly linked to the release from the protaganist's job. Tanith Lee is, of course, also playing with the conventions of the Harlequin.

Even if Attanasio didn't mean all this, by trusting the tale I found myself a work by a man that says something profoundly novel about how ordinary women encounter feminism.

Attanasio wrote on his website:

My attempt to portray the disease of archetypal misogyny in The Moon's Wife: A Hystery offended the so-called feminist publisher at HarperCollins so profoundly that she made certain my novel never appeared in mass market in the United States. Silenced, the holy legend of the Goddess lies dormant, poisoned by a witch and the very archetypal misogyny I presented!

Now can you accept the possibility of a feminist dominated publishing industry?

Harry Potter

So now we finally come to Harry Potter. The tale of the author and the criticism is noteworthy. This is how it goes:

-Someone says something critical of Harry Potter.

-Person is argued. "Have you even read it?"

-"Yes," the critic says. "The book stinks."

-IF the critic is an author, then it is replied, "You are just jealous that Harry Potter oursells your book."

-IF the critic teaches literature, then it is replied, "You are a crusty Ivory League elitist!"

-IF none of the above: "It is just a children's book! Don't take it so seriously, p00p head, tee hee hee."

I have never seen a book so insulated from criticism. I sympathize with the idea of 'elitists' who look down on books that outsell theirs (the 'children's best selling list' was invented just to keep Harry Potter off the main list, so they say). But if the book is so great, so fine, so imaginative, so pure, then why all the hype? Even the news media and movie industry are involved (which ought to tell you something).

I've read the first book, found it excruciatingly painful to read, the imagination simple to plain, but the prose awful. Rowling certainly just dabbles in the occult works, as is evident. What is annoying is all the cliches.

If I was a 12 year old Pook, would I like it? Probably not, since I was reading the myths some form back then. The modern writer's favorite trick is to dig up old myths and legends and use that to build a 'fantasy world'. If readers knew the old myths and legends themselves, they would not bother with these hacks. For example, imagine if people didn't know the story of Christ. Then a writer would create new similar characters and have the same setting/plot. But we ALL know the story so it doesn't work. But most people are unaware of the Celtic/Gnosticism/Norse/Egyptian myths so every fantasy novel is placed in the traditional Celtic Wonderland.

As I thumbed through the other Harry Potter books in the store, I could see the prose improve to a simple clarity from the beginning.

But let us remember something. Do you know how much money J.K.Rowling is making off this poor fiction? She is wealthier than the Queen of England. I believe she is over 500 million now, and is going for a billion.

 

[Pook]

I can understand why other children book writers feel cheated. They don't have the benifet of a publicity machine in their favor. But if they say anything, they are just reduced to 'jealousy' of Potter's success.

Does JK Rowling being a single mom have anything to do with the publicity machine? Think about it. And most popular works rarely go into the author. But this one makes her cinderella life as much of a 'story' than the story she is supposed to write!

So who is buying all these Harry Potter books? Children? Very popular with the female children. But notice that female adults are the ones who very much love the book (and why shouldn't they? As most females have child-like minds in the first place). The males who like the book are the interesting ones. Those who like it are almost always married (hence already feminized) and the single ones might as well be.

Harry Potter is not an unusual phemonon. There is always times when a children's series of books 'sweeps' everything. You do not know of these books because time has passed them by, just as time will pass by the Harry Potter books. (A good review of the Potter books, which came to a similar conclusion, is Bloom's review in the Wall Street Journal. I consider it a fair review where he could have been much harsher (http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/courses/205.03/bloom.html)

I will make a few predictions. Jk Rowling will believe that she is a 'Great Author of Literature' due to the hype bubble that surrounds her. She may try to write 'adult fiction', annoyed of being put in the 'children's fiction' box. If she does that, she will go from the shallow end of the pool and drown in deeper waters. (Women make excellent children authors due to their child like minds. To a female, 'adult fiction' is soft porn novels). But the longer this circus goes on, the more apparent her formulas (and the hype media) become.

Since any author who criticizes her is condemned as acting from 'self interest', could we not apply the same with the authors who PRAISE the work?

Stephen King practically says, "If kids are reading Harry Potter, then they will grow up reading Stephen King." Hence, the money angle. Stephen King already uses the horror/myth combo with modern world as Rowling does, so he sees a clear transition and hopes his works will sell more thanks to a Potter childhood (when you don't think its about the money, it usually is. Follow the money.) If readers were more sophisticated, say they were reading better stuff, they might find Stephen King to be average pulp, which would not be beneficial to King's pocketbooks.

Orson Scott Card is another one who praises Potter to no end. In fact, he even goes as far to say that if someone DOESN'T praise Potter, they either haven't read the book or is an elitist snob. Apparently, no other reason is possible.

A good metaphor to put this in context would be this: imagine most people eating healthy but books take a good time to get into. So Stephen King and others create 'fast food' books which people drive through and pick up. Orson Scott Card has his own 'fast food book' stand and sells his own share. Fast food, as we know, is very popular. But it lacks nutrition and is harmful if that is all you eat (though, as you've noticed, fast food eaters and such book readers will never admit it). Along comes Potter Fantasy Happy Meal, easily streamlining future kids into the fast food book chains. No wonder the 'publishing industry favorite' authors love Harry Potter.

Just as the layman does not define what the canon of mathmatics is, or science, the same rule applies for the humanities. By reducing the Humanities to obey political themes rather than natural ones, much of the craft of writing has been lost (in the same way the craft of painting, passed generation to generation, has been steamrolled into almost non-existence by 'modern art').

To give you an impression of how much things have been dumbed down, consider the Lord of the Rings. Today, people treat it as an epic adult story that is a bit 'too long'. When it was published, it was a simple children's story. A simple children's story is now adult epic! And is Alice in Wonderland now considered 'literature'? Perish the thought.

This may seem like elitist talk. But consider that if the Humanities are not repaired, all the cultural chaos of feminism/ gay praise/ lesbianism, etc. will continue to run amok because the literature standards have been removed. Just as if the standards of math were removed, trains would plow into each other, planes would crash, and buildings fall to pieces, wouldn't the standards of Humanity for all time, including sexuality, youth, old age, and society, bring culture to fall to pieces in the same way?

Literature and poetry, unfortunately, have been deemed 'unworthy to defend' by males since it seems so effeminiate. But Alexander the Great conquered the known world because he worshipped the Illiad. America's founding fathers, when debating the issue of Independence, debated Locke, Shakespeare, and Roman oratories. At the cold winter camp of Valley Forge, George Washington inspired himself and the troops by putting on the play "Cato". Lincoln wrote his Gettysburg Address surrounded by his favorite books and consulted them. Truman, when the heavy decision to nuke Japan came, locked himself away with his literature. Churchill, as we know, lived and breathed his books.

Has any politician said anything remotely memorable in the past fifty years? The early movies were made from people who read literature, so it is no surprise that today's movies, which are made by those who grew up watching movies, are in decline. The early video games that were made were also from people who read literature, but the video games coming out now are often made by those who grew up *just* playing video games. You can only copy a copy so long.

The teachers of the old, who tell me their only good students are the asian ones, speak to me with sad eyes and believe with all their heart that something great has forever passed the world.

 

[Coolage]

how about catcher in the rye? There are so many classics that would be better to read.

I am not too impressed with today's fiction

 

[Pook]

Originally posted by mizter6
i started reading it in 6th grade and the story grows with my age. when i look back at it i see the 1st book as an innocent book. and the others just get darker and darker. u can call it a childs book for the first 3 but 4 5 and 6 have come to be a more darker era in the series.

I'm not referring to people like you, who are young and reading it. I am talking about thirty-fifty year olds who are reading it, and when the criticism comes (because anything so hyped and publicised invites it), they won't allow any criticism.

The Chronicles of Narnia were children's books but adults also enjoyed them. But news media, movie industry, and all didn't wrap around them. A big critic of the Narnia tales was one J. R. Tolkien who thought the tales should be more detailed. So he wrote Lord of the Rings, a tale intended for the young.

The standard response I have recieved from many teachers is, "Look at this literature! They hate it because it is too hard to read."

That makes as much sense as saying we should stop teaching calcalus because it is 'too hard'. The failure is not in the literature but in the teachers. Even in university, the english teachers often did a piss poor job at presenting these works. You're not assigned to read them, you're assigned to find 'symbols' or other such gobbeley gook in them. The teachers are providing no context. Like with Moby ****, they would probably emphasize finding symbolism and all that crud. But context is so limited because of lack of reading on the other building blocks, such as other myths. Like how can you understand Moby **** without understanding Leviticus or the powers of Posideon?

It is like high school trying to teach shakespeare but do not teach poetry. "So the reader goes, 'Shakespeare sounds so 'ancient'!" whereas shakespeare is actually using modern english but it is in poetic form. Since all of shakespeare is in poetry, unless you get the poetry, you'll never get shakespeare.

Has anyone had a shakespeare class where they taught iambic pentameter or the BEATS and rhythm of poetry? It is like trying to analyze music without knowing what a note is!

 

[Pook]

Originally posted by Coolage
how about catcher in the rye? There are so many classics that would be better to read.

I am not too impressed with today's fiction

Catcher in the rye is good.

The only problem with this 'new literature' the feminists, gay advocates, etc. try to toss onto the studies is that they replace more important and far superior works.

I generally think that enthusiasm is the best teacher. Most people won't even get into the old books until they have been out of the university for a while. Then, simple curiosity, leads them back and they read the old books in their own way on their own time. And they end up coming to their own conclusions.

I hope I am not coming off as some literature loving elitist as I always hate those. But I am suspecting that if things like Feminism were so adament at 'altering' the canon of literature, it means that what was originally there bothered them. Against the political hydras that invade our culture, literature might be one of the secret weapons we need to slay them, a never ending cache of silver arrows.

 

[LowPlainsDrifter]

Pook,

Try Stanislaw Lem's books - especially the Pirx the Pilot Series, Invincible, and of course, Solaris. Amazing Sci-Fi

The guy is absolutely birlliant.

 

[Giovanni Casanova]

There is nothing wrong with Harry Potter books, and there is nothing wrong with reading books as a source of entertainment, even mindless entertainment. Not every book that is ever written or read has to be some timeless literary classic.

All that being said, it must have take an awful long time to type all of that with only one hand.

 

[The Antichrist_Star]

I can really agree with what is being said here.

Honestly... besides a few books strictly intended for reading pleasure and nothing else ('fast' reads like HP... I have all of the books), I mostly stick to all of the classics (which is a bit strange for a twenty year old).

I love these books though... and I love these authors and find it depressing that people consider the popcorn (like HP) 'literature' and goodness like 'Iliad' too convoluted worth reading.

AS

 

[DJDamage]

Originally posted by Giovanni Casanova
All that being said, it must have take an awful long time to type all of that with only one hand.

All that being said, you could have come up with something more cleaver to discredit someone else's work, in order to defend your beloved penkitten.

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by Pook
It is like high school trying to teach shakespeare but do not teach poetry. "So the reader goes, 'Shakespeare sounds so 'ancient'!" whereas shakespeare is actually using modern english but it is in poetic form. Since all of shakespeare is in poetry, unless you get the poetry, you'll never get shakespeare.

This makes a lot of sense. In the same way, but on a lesser scale, I've found that if you don't understand the context of certain literature, it is nearly impossible to decipher the ideas and messages that the author is trying to get across, especially when the ideas are radically different from what you are used to seeing. I think this is what I hated about Shakespeare when I was forced to read it in high school. Did I understand what he was saying about humanity? No. What do I remember picking up from the Odyssey, the story of Odysseus, in middle school? I remember how he wandered around on a ship for a while, and after he got home he was mad and killed everyone. The teacher had to lay out the major themes for us, how were we supposed to understand the significance of all of the sub-plots and minor events throughout the story? Know what it did? It made me hate classic literature, because it bored me to death since I didn't understand it, plus it was hard.

PS. On a side note, Pook, you've mentioned Ayn Rand and her novels a few times. Do you consider yourself an Objectivist?

 

[OzyBoy]

Whats the big deal with harry potter anyway, i haven't read a book, seen a movie or anything and i don't intend on either. It's just hype.

 

[drixsa]

P-

In an ideal world we all would read the great myths and be at the college level at age 15 but this is not the case.

The positive side of the harry potter books which you failed to address is that it gets kids to develop an apreciation of reading.

Most of the people that criticize the books have not read them and if they read them they have not finished them. Now thats not to say that they are incapable of hating the books but if they had read the whole series i do belive that their would be less advocates against the book.

Though you claim that people were more educated in the past, the majority of people have had no education (i assume you are talking about western civilization because i don't think they translated the constitution that long ago.) while the very rich who were in the small minority got a good education.

Most of the harry potter critics that i know are the ones that do not want to be assoicated with liking it because women and children like it, which i think is as pathetic as it gets.

Personally, i thought that the Da Vinci code was complete garbage. Brown's skills as a writer are few and far between. To mention one major thing he has no clue how to write charecters. Robert Langdon and the bond/semi intelligent females that follow in his books are as intereting of charecters as the water in my cup. I have the right to make these arguments because i have read the da vinci code plus other works by him.

 

[Giovanni Casanova]

Originally posted by DJDamage
All that being said, you could have come up with something more cleaver to discredit someone else's work, in order to defend your beloved penkitten.

I fail to see what penkitten has to do with any of this.

I personally have seen the Harry Potter movies and have read at least one of the books. I own three of the H.P. books. Even that has nothing to do with any of this. I took the advanced literature courses in college, and I've read some of them on my own. They're fine. I also enjoy some of the "pop" fiction books like Stephen King and John Grisham. Not every book has to be an Odyssey or Gatsby, just like not every movie has to be a Citizen Kane or Casablanca. People are allowed to read for purely entertainment purposes.

Furthermore, in my years as a mentor/tutor for elementary and junior high school kids, I can tell you that if books like Harry Potter are enticing kids to read (and they are), then it's worthwhile. Period. So what if the books are enjoyed by a forty-year-old mom just as much as her 8-year-old son?

 

[whistler]

Pook,

Jesus man. Take a breather. Get some ass. That was a diatribe if I've ever read one.

Fvck dude, times change--but they don't necessarily get worse. I think your impression of the past is a bit skewed. Pulp trash was huge in the 1800's just as it is today. There's also an enormous amount of very scholarly and insightful work being published today. But because of the volume of crap and the fact that most people just read to sate their appetite for distraction, there's no need for the good, deep stuff to flow out to joe schmoe.

Also, feminist courses in college were mainly topical. They're not huge any more. Today we have topical courses on terrorism, global trade, and electronic communities, etc.

I will agree that marketing is penetrating every form of media to an uncomfortable level. But, again, can you think of a medium from the past where that hasn't happened? It's a natural occurence in a capitalist economy.

I'd love to nail down an area where society is seriously and irreparably deteriorating. But I'm not convinced you've hit it yet. (not that you need to convince me)

 

[ozymandias]

Take it easy Whistler

I always stand up and defend people like pook because his thought expands horizons and uncover new perspectives. At the very least he opens discussion on meaningful topics.

But people like Whistler need to stay off posts like these and takes his belligerent attiude to the high school posts. Whistler makes some good observations in his reply, but the opening line is way off base. I am sure Pook knows how to kick it back and show the ladies some "Miller Time" (how's that for commercialism), so writing thought provoking posts might be his hobbie. And a damn good hobbie it is I might add.

So a little encouragement for his efforts and refinement of his ideas is much better than mis-directed criticism.

ozymandias.

 

[whistler]

Re: Take it easy Whistler

Originally posted by ozymandias
I always stand up and defend people like pook because his thought expands horizons and uncover new perspectives. At the very least he opens discussion on meaningful topics.

But people like Whistler need to stay off posts like these and takes his belligerent attiude to the high school posts. Whistler makes some good observations in his reply, but the opening line is way off base. I am sure Pook knows how to kick it back and show the ladies some "Miller Time" (how's that for commercialism), so writing thought provoking posts might be his hobbie. And a damn good hobbie it is I might add.

So a little encouragement for his efforts and refinement of his ideas is much better than mis-directed criticism.

ozymandias.

I think I may have been harsh. Pook does write the best posts on the forum.

But the one above is filled with countless assertions that are half-baked and sketchy. Read it. I don't know where he's going with this one.

Rudeness isn't good. I apolgize if I was rude. But defending the guy merely because we hold his writing in high-esteem doesn't mean he shoud escape criticism -- especially when he's trying to lay out some observational "wisdom" or provoke a serious discussion. Strike my first two sentences, if you will; the rest stands. Heck, we berate everyone all of the time here. It goes with the territory when you make broad claims about society.

 

[naoi deag se deag]

Doesn't every generation think their writing is commercial garbage? For instance, Charles ****ens wrote Hard Times primarily to sell more copies of his periodical. History is full of this type of thing. So give it awhile. I think one day we'll see the mores and sentiments of our culture reflected in our writing, and if nothing else it'll be valuable to all the 10th graders who have to analyze this to death.

As a side note, I think Hard Times IS garbage.

 

[belividere]

I am far from an expert in the areas of classical literature or humanities so take this with a grain of salt.

I grew up with a very well read mother who would turn off the tv for me and my siblings to spend that time reading. I actually stumbled on this site by googling the term "Don Juan" as a starting point for finding quotes from Carlos Castaneda's works. I have read quite a bit, Independently, since I was young.

When I was a little kid my school tried to provide the motivation to read by bribing us with pizza. So I would read a bad Clifford the Big Red Dog book or the Bearenstein Bears and write a report for a star. In the end regardless of what I was reading, I still walked away knowing how to read. At the time I wasn't sure who actually knew what but four years later I graduated high school and found out that quite a few people in my class still couldnt even read at all. In my opionion, regardless of how "unworthy" the Harry Potter books are in comparision to the "classics" anything that provokes children to read is positive regardless of the incentive.

I'll try to keep this at a minimum since I don't know if it is the proper place for an off thread topic. I grew up in the inner city with both parents. I was a rarity among my friends. Most of the kids I grew up with came up in a single parent family with a mother trying to raise the kids. I think this is due to both a terrible divorce court establishment which pushes fathers rights aside (google fathers rights on this) as well as children whose fathers didn't care anyways. As much as I agree that men are de-valued in modern american society I cannot help but look back on the "men" who never manned up and took on parental responablities.

 

[diplomatic_lies]

You know Beethoven was considered commercial radical garbage during his times.