File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1998/phillitcrit.9806, message 28


Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 22:43:38 -0700
From: "T. Q. Alexander" <rattler-AT-thegrid.net>
Subject: PLC: The Cross Roads


I wrote:

> >
> >    Say George, I picked up my AA degree, and I'm now transferring into
> >the University to continue my studies in Literature. I suppose, and you'll
> >have to excuse my naivety, that I am to choose a period or genre of
> >literature to base my studies upon? I suppose I'm wanting to study both
> >British and American lit. The industrial age of Victorianism is rather
> >interesting. Post Modernism? I think I would like to study the Twentieth
> >Century lit, both British and American. I guess I'll find out better once
> >I start my classes. What period do you most enjoy in lit?!?
> >
> >Me
> >--
> >Thad Q. Alexander
> >(rattler-AT-thegrid.net)
> >OCC Undergraduate
> >Long Beach, CA.
>

And then George wrote:

> Nice to hear from you. Gibbon, you must consider, as all historians, finds
> in his history those things about which he wants to comment vis a vis his
> contemporaries, to that you find him, what, prescient is not surprising.
> You will find, as well, when you consult the texts from which he draws,
> that lawyers have _always_ been seen as opportunists (read Plato), that the
> current age is a decline from the previous, and that we are all always
> going to hell in a handbasket.
>
> I happily excuses your naivete (note spelling), and find the way you have
> put your question provocative, and perhaps what the group could happily
> respond to now. So, I will defer replying to your question, and suggest you
> post this and the above to the whole list. The naivete is, of course in the
> "enjoy" part of your question. I have always taken seriously the notion
> that we always specialize in what we hate, or what bothers us, or what we
> need to formulate a response to. I began, for instance to study (and teach)
> Whitman because I hated him, but Lawrence, to whom I was devoted, was very
> taken with his work. I needed to know why.  And, of course, the best way to
> learn something is to teach it.  Another consideration is that what we
> don't enjoy indicates in each of us an areas of deficiency.
>
> But I would like to hear some answers from our compatriots here to your
> provocative question.
>
> Cheers,

 --
Thad Q. Alexander
(rattler-AT-thegrid.net)
OCC Undergraduate
Long Beach, CA.
USA
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Great Books of Western Civilization
---
The good parts of a book may be only something a writer
is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck
of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.
    ----Ernest Hemingway




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