/lit/ - Literature

D&E, you would get along with my friend Trevor and i.

we would all have some interesting conversations.

the idea behind having a critical community is, at least to some extent, to identify the features of literature as a toolset for living or interpreting, and to teach those tools or discuss their value (they may only be tools for enhancing aesthetic experience, if you don't buy postcolonialism or anything, but that still counts). this must necessarily involve the privileging of some texts over others, and THAT must necessarily involve attempted development of some kind of agreed-upon rubric of quality.

i think the source of some disagreement might be pedagogy. the academic environment basically prepare you to teach, and one tries to teach things that are useful in this way. this may not be a rubric of literary evaluation that the layperson is interested in at all, but they run the risk then of disagreeing with a whole field of people that are attempting to find and identify life- and perspective-enhancing literature.

in other words i am at least speculatively entertaining the idea of agreeing with you.

Trevor published a paper called "A Newton for Leaves of Grass", which sort of attacks the fallacious but unquestioned assumption (in his opinion) that science can never approach an objective understanding of art.

good times.

>>1769164

the problem with this is that what i do for a living directly relates to the conversation. i'm sick and tired of being accused of dropping impressive facts about myself every time i talk about what i do for a living. it's not my fault or my responsibility if people are impressed, or irritated, or whatever.

i was simply making the point that my thinking is probably distorted, but not for the reasons this person said.

and i don't want to derail this thread, so we should probably stop talking about this.