Darkschunt 
Sunday, May 22, 2005
The other day a friend of mine said something to me and while I'm not mad at her (she's probably going to read this post, and NO, I'm not MAD at YOU), I'm pretty much steaming about what she said and the way she said it.
She had mentioned that she was going to buy a bunch of books from the bookstore and I was like "Cool, can I borrow some of them to read?" and I can't remember what else we said, but then we got turned onto the subject of literature and she was suddenly throwing all these names of authors at me and I would be like "No, never heard of this author." "No, never heard of that author." Now, that wouldn't be so bad itself, but she was just spitting them out machine-gun-fire at me, and it felt really challenging and disconcerting, as if the more I said "No" the more I was making myself out to be some idiot who has never read a book in her life. And then she finishes off with "You don't read much literature, do you?" and in that single line I heard the ringing condescending patronizing tones of every literature snob I have ever come across.
And it just made my blood boil to the max!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In fact, I woke up this morning and the thought suddenly floated into my mind and I just got all steamed over!
You want literature? I'll fucking show you literature! I AM a fucking well-read person, even though I don't bother advertising the fact all that much! I don't mind talking literature sometimes but when you talk about it to some people, they turn it into a complete literary competition, like "oh MY reading achievements are this much heavier than yours" and you find yourself suddenly swept up into this huge competition and I sure don't need to get into that. I am a fucking well-read person who's read a lot of fucking books and even if I haven't read SOME authors that doesn't make me any fucking less a brilliant brain than I fucking KNOW i am. I just don't bother keeping my entire reading list of authors and books ready in my mind to spit out at any just moment in case some literary snob is on hand to question me. I read for the fucking PURE pleasure and not for any fucking literary discussions. Reading to me is a private pleasure, not a bragging pleasure.
So, you fucking WANT literature? HERE, i'll FUCKING give you literature. Below here are just a few of the authors I've read in my lifetime, what names i can dig out of the dusty archives of my library memory:
Defoe, Bronte, Shakespeare, Austen, Mark Twain, Tolstoy, George Eliot, Gaston Leroux, Arthur Conan Doyle, Anthon Chekhov, Joseph Conrad, E. Scott Fitzgerald, Herman Melville, Kipling, Henry James, J.D. Salinger, Thomas Hardy, Dickens, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Louisa May Alcott, Agatha Christie, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Edgar Allan Poe, Yeats, Hans Christian Anderson, Tennyson, Keats, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Joyce, Geoffrey Chaucer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Milton, Emily Dickinson, Byron, Elizabeth and Robert Browning, Anne Bradstreet, Kate Chopin, William Faulkner, Arthur Miller, Walt Whitman, John Steinbeck, Austin Alfred, Dante...
The truly ancient? Well, have you read The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki, which was the first ever novel written by a woman? Or her diary? Or the Pillow Book of Sei Shonangun, one of the most fantastic poets of the Emperor's court in the Heian era in Japan?
And if you want to talk contemporary books, there's Jung Chang, Amy Tan, Michael Crichton, Arundhati Roy, Joanne Harris, Eliot Pattison, Arthur Goldstein, Liza Dalby, Jean Sasson, Isabelle Allende, Mary Higgins Clark, Irvine Welsh, James Patterson, James Clavell, A.E.W. Mason, okay we'll add in Dan Brown too, Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, Robin Cook, Jack Higgins, Ian Fleming, Ken Follett...
And what about science fiction and fantasy? Let's not forget David and Leigh Eddings, Ursula le Guin, J.R. Tolkien, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Brooks, Phillip Pullman, Glenna McReynolds, Anne Rice, L. Frank Baum, E. Nesbit...
And horror and chick lit and graphic novels and more autobiographies other than those already mentioned above, or authors like Focault and other plays and poets and authors whose names I can't recall right now...
I could go on and on but I'm really hungry now, and SweetRhapsody is crying for me like a hungry infant, so bye!!!
She had mentioned that she was going to buy a bunch of books from the bookstore and I was like "Cool, can I borrow some of them to read?" and I can't remember what else we said, but then we got turned onto the subject of literature and she was suddenly throwing all these names of authors at me and I would be like "No, never heard of this author." "No, never heard of that author." Now, that wouldn't be so bad itself, but she was just spitting them out machine-gun-fire at me, and it felt really challenging and disconcerting, as if the more I said "No" the more I was making myself out to be some idiot who has never read a book in her life. And then she finishes off with "You don't read much literature, do you?" and in that single line I heard the ringing condescending patronizing tones of every literature snob I have ever come across.
And it just made my blood boil to the max!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In fact, I woke up this morning and the thought suddenly floated into my mind and I just got all steamed over!
You want literature? I'll fucking show you literature! I AM a fucking well-read person, even though I don't bother advertising the fact all that much! I don't mind talking literature sometimes but when you talk about it to some people, they turn it into a complete literary competition, like "oh MY reading achievements are this much heavier than yours" and you find yourself suddenly swept up into this huge competition and I sure don't need to get into that. I am a fucking well-read person who's read a lot of fucking books and even if I haven't read SOME authors that doesn't make me any fucking less a brilliant brain than I fucking KNOW i am. I just don't bother keeping my entire reading list of authors and books ready in my mind to spit out at any just moment in case some literary snob is on hand to question me. I read for the fucking PURE pleasure and not for any fucking literary discussions. Reading to me is a private pleasure, not a bragging pleasure.
So, you fucking WANT literature? HERE, i'll FUCKING give you literature. Below here are just a few of the authors I've read in my lifetime, what names i can dig out of the dusty archives of my library memory:
Defoe, Bronte, Shakespeare, Austen, Mark Twain, Tolstoy, George Eliot, Gaston Leroux, Arthur Conan Doyle, Anthon Chekhov, Joseph Conrad, E. Scott Fitzgerald, Herman Melville, Kipling, Henry James, J.D. Salinger, Thomas Hardy, Dickens, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Louisa May Alcott, Agatha Christie, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Edgar Allan Poe, Yeats, Hans Christian Anderson, Tennyson, Keats, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Joyce, Geoffrey Chaucer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Milton, Emily Dickinson, Byron, Elizabeth and Robert Browning, Anne Bradstreet, Kate Chopin, William Faulkner, Arthur Miller, Walt Whitman, John Steinbeck, Austin Alfred, Dante...
The truly ancient? Well, have you read The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki, which was the first ever novel written by a woman? Or her diary? Or the Pillow Book of Sei Shonangun, one of the most fantastic poets of the Emperor's court in the Heian era in Japan?
And if you want to talk contemporary books, there's Jung Chang, Amy Tan, Michael Crichton, Arundhati Roy, Joanne Harris, Eliot Pattison, Arthur Goldstein, Liza Dalby, Jean Sasson, Isabelle Allende, Mary Higgins Clark, Irvine Welsh, James Patterson, James Clavell, A.E.W. Mason, okay we'll add in Dan Brown too, Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, Robin Cook, Jack Higgins, Ian Fleming, Ken Follett...
And what about science fiction and fantasy? Let's not forget David and Leigh Eddings, Ursula le Guin, J.R. Tolkien, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Brooks, Phillip Pullman, Glenna McReynolds, Anne Rice, L. Frank Baum, E. Nesbit...
And horror and chick lit and graphic novels and more autobiographies other than those already mentioned above, or authors like Focault and other plays and poets and authors whose names I can't recall right now...
I could go on and on but I'm really hungry now, and SweetRhapsody is crying for me like a hungry infant, so bye!!!
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