I was recently wondering why great works of literature aren't read anymore. For example, I recently read Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan, a sort of proto-Jason Bourne. (There's a great audiobook of it I got free from BJ Harrison's wonderful podcast on iTunes.) But it implicitly lauds (pipe) smoking. No female characters knocking off men's blocks. No strong females at all. No females.
Can't have that.
I'm in the midst of reading Captains Courageous by the woefully neglected Rudyard Kipling. But the rich, spoiled boy gets punched in the nose by the adult male. And while drinking is condemned, smoking and taking a biblically sanctioned day off for rest isn't.
Can't have that.
Can other, more important, works be far behind? Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Homer's Illiad, or Dante's Divine Comedy? Oh, the last is already on the chopping block.
It's distressing to me as a lover of old books that publik ederkayshun is insistent on presenting the up-to-date new. Problem is, Judy Blume is no Rudyard Kipling.
For instance, a great teacher for my son's fourth-grade class had boys and girls both read a book designed for girls, Otherwise Known As Sheila the Great. My son hated it. He says it is too girlie, and the protagonist is unlikeable and lazy. Besides, Sheila doesn't like dogs, until the end she may when she gets one. But one never knows how it turns out. (This is Charles's line of reasoning, as I've never read Blume.)
And since boys generally lag way behind girls in reading during the primary grades, I have to wonder: Why the disservice to the young lads? And sending unfavorable reading to disadvantaged boys at a strategically important time--the fourth grade--is a recipe to instruct them that learning and reading is not for them.
They like action, adventure, even violence. but ederkayshun, dominated by socially SENsitive females, dismisses such work.
Is it any wonder undergraduates are disproportionately female?
Can't have that.
I'm in the midst of reading Captains Courageous by the woefully neglected Rudyard Kipling. But the rich, spoiled boy gets punched in the nose by the adult male. And while drinking is condemned, smoking and taking a biblically sanctioned day off for rest isn't.
Can't have that.
Can other, more important, works be far behind? Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Homer's Illiad, or Dante's Divine Comedy? Oh, the last is already on the chopping block.
It's distressing to me as a lover of old books that publik ederkayshun is insistent on presenting the up-to-date new. Problem is, Judy Blume is no Rudyard Kipling.
For instance, a great teacher for my son's fourth-grade class had boys and girls both read a book designed for girls, Otherwise Known As Sheila the Great. My son hated it. He says it is too girlie, and the protagonist is unlikeable and lazy. Besides, Sheila doesn't like dogs, until the end she may when she gets one. But one never knows how it turns out. (This is Charles's line of reasoning, as I've never read Blume.)
And since boys generally lag way behind girls in reading during the primary grades, I have to wonder: Why the disservice to the young lads? And sending unfavorable reading to disadvantaged boys at a strategically important time--the fourth grade--is a recipe to instruct them that learning and reading is not for them.
They like action, adventure, even violence. but ederkayshun, dominated by socially SENsitive females, dismisses such work.
Is it any wonder undergraduates are disproportionately female?
Continue reading Cleaning Out Literature That Doesn't Meet Neo-Marxist Standards .
About Comments