Friday, March 30, 2007

Read me, Like me, Read me not

There are three kinds of literature. One is which consists of must-reads for everyone. Which contain wise thought and will lead to a general betterment of all that read it. The poems of Robert Frost, written in a relatively simple language and essays such as Francis Bacon's "Of Studies" are good examples of these.
The second are those which cannot be appreciated by the lay mind and are purely works of art. They might not even be liked by all connoisseurs of literature. They often contain radical ideas and techniques, and are often intriguing to say the least. Examples include Franz Kafka's Surreal stories and Emily Dickinson's Lachrymose Poetry.
The third kind is that of literature purposefully written in a manner that appeals to only a specific section of the masses. These contains lessons and learnings that would do great harm if they were to be taken seriously by the wrong people.
A case in point is Emerson's Essay "Self-Reliance". If fools were to live by the essay, we would be surrounded by idiots who would abide by their own distorted version of the essay, living out their lives refusing to believe anything anyone says and refusing to follow basic social norms and laws.
For this very reason, I believe that the essay has been written in a convoluted style with curious word play, double negatives, heavy use of Old English and Unorthodox use of current English.
A fool would either be unable to understand it, or else would get frustrated by his constant need to refer to a dictionary.


sam said...

wat would become of a person who has not read a single literature mentioned above....

WAT would happened to a person who read em ol!!!??? Don Quixote?
ha ha ha

Johnny Tent said...

Man, I found out yesterday that your attendance in ENG123 is 62%, which is 13% less than what it should be. That is why I deem your comments on literature half baked.

Or is this from a class that you happened to attend.

Or are these entirely your own views, in which case these ought to be bullcrap.

bheekling said...

The attendance statistic is thanks to the fact that I missed half the classes before the first midsem :P
I've been fairly regular since then. I think I'll reach ~70% by the end of this sem...
Also, I'm gonna be submitting an extra assignment to make up for my lost attendance, so everything will be okay I guess :)