Hunter S. Thompson - that well know living, non-white guy, writing in Italian!
I'm really quite baffled how you can dismiss several centuries worth of literature so glibly. Sure, you might not like what you've read, but 'English literature' is hardly some homogeneous block. The three examples you've picked out, you may not have liked, but they were all hugely atypical, and while I have spent many an hour amusing myself by bashing the prominence given to dead white guys and making Chloe and Sophie shriek, I find it quite weird that in order to make your point, you picked three books by women who challenged the culture of their day.
SUre, the canon of English literature doesn't need you to like it. But, seriously, saying you loathe all books about dead white people is cutting out a HELL of a lot of books. It's easy (and fun!) to attack the canon without chucking out the baby with the bathwater. Would you make a comment like that on, say, Russian or French literature?
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2008-12-14 07:34 pm (UTC)I'm really quite baffled how you can dismiss several centuries worth of literature so glibly. Sure, you might not like what you've read, but 'English literature' is hardly some homogeneous block. The three examples you've picked out, you may not have liked, but they were all hugely atypical, and while I have spent many an hour amusing myself by bashing the prominence given to dead white guys and making Chloe and Sophie shriek, I find it quite weird that in order to make your point, you picked three books by women who challenged the culture of their day.
SUre, the canon of English literature doesn't need you to like it. But, seriously, saying you loathe all books about dead white people is cutting out a HELL of a lot of books. It's easy (and fun!) to attack the canon without chucking out the baby with the bathwater. Would you make a comment like that on, say, Russian or French literature?