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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (37007)	5/7/1999 8:12:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 108807

Ever pop a bubble on bubble packing? You realize there are sanctions for those who start -- pop one bubble -- and don't finish every one! The same sanctions apply to corner turners. You did good! I have been very distressed by this conversation. <<I would say that expecting another person to have read Jane Austen, Homer, Virgil, Plato, St. Augustine, and Aristotle is not snobbish, nor elitist. How could an educated person not have read Persuasion, nor Pride and Prejudice? I expect an educated person to have read Aesop's Fables. I expect an educated person to have read some Dickens. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. Madame Bovary. I would say you were an elitist snob if you expected the other person to have read Martial, Tacitus, or Boethius.>> The thing that struck me about X's list was that with the possible exception of Tacitus and Aristotle, all of this stuff is fiction and none of it meets even minimal standards of naturalistic truth. Not a single author is still alive. Some of them (e.g. Homer) never were alive. I like a good story (Iliad) as well as the next elitist snob, but how could having read stories have anything to do with "being educated." According to this standard, a bunch of educated people are simply those who have read a set of tribal fables. The list is astoundingly parochial and ethnocentric. Not a single plagiarized book by an oppressed third-world woman. One thing I liked about it was no Bible, Zend Avesta, or other fantasies, but I defy a person I consider educated to read even part of Augustine without throwing up. My test of a "must read" book is "is it worth learning the language in order to read it?" That's what I liked about Bloom was his insistence that his students learn Italian to read The Prince. On the same principle, I am putting off reading Dostoyevsky until I can handle it in Russian, any more Marx until my German improves of itself, Aesop's Fables until I can handle 6th Century BCE Greek far better, oh, you know. The problem is that there are lots and lots of books of varying quality. Some may be very good of their kind "P & P as a comedy of manners of 18th C. english gentry." Now exactly how many English comedies of manners or dead eras do I really need to read? I am sure I prefer reading fake 18th century ward-room comedies (Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, or even O'Brien's Post-Captain) but I am not so vain as to imagine that anyone is made any better by reading them. I believe that people should read what they wish to read, what they need to read to understand what they want to understand. I can assure you that there is no general cultural literacy exam at the end of life which one must pass or ever be condemned to rub ghastly elbows with hoi polloi. As much as I respect my fellows on this thread for their intelligence and industry, I think they waste their time if they give a damn what others or they think of the breadth of their education. Can anyone make a convincing case for reading any single classic? When I read of Jefferson spending time that he could have used stirring up rebellions or making love to his mulatto de facto wife pasting up the words of Jesus in his little book I am disgusted at the waste of his valuable time. On the other hand, if I could read their love notes, transcripts of their assignations, endearments, apologies, passionate discoveries. It would I am sure add it to my personal list of things that should be read.