More like Poorly-Argued Myopic Guide to English and American Literature...

So ... occasionally there are these books in the store at soon-to-be-left menial job, and they're called The Politically Incorrect Guides (P.I.G.) to whatever. I skimmed through their anti-feminism book once, basically seeing the old standard, "Oh, well you may think that you're happy with your jobs but you're totally miserable and you're totally going to miss out on the joy of having babies" in the pages. Now I skimmed their PIG to English and American Literature, specifically writer Elizabeth Kantor's section on Charles Dickens, as he's my favorite writer and all.

Sheesh. I can't believe this woman has a Ph. D. Her attempt to re-cast Dickens as a champion of conservative values (and not a great liberal reformer) could have worked ... especially because the true Charles Dickens was a fully formed human being with complex feelings and contradictions whose opinions changed over time and some of those feelings were, indeed, conservative. Unfortunatley, she made her point pretty much through anecdotal evidence. A Tale of Two Cities is anti-liberal because it's anti-revolutionary and this is true because Margaret Thatcher said so! Dickens is anti-liberal because of my interpretation of one character in Bleak House. Granted, I haven't read either but considering that those two statements are pretty much the crux of her argument, she sounds like she's reaching. However, I have read Hard Times, which she claims has anti-liberal sensibilities because Dickens criticizes "radical education systems." Oh, you mean that system that reduced children to learning facts at the expense of imagination and creativity? Oh yeah ... that totally sounds like something that a liberal would like. Her assertion that Dickens is also anti-liberal because he ignores unintended consequences (which is a dubious claim to begin with) and then not backing it up with any examples from the book was also special (unless she counts Mrs. Jelby, but even that's only one).

As for the rest, the book seemed rather myopic. She dismissed even analyzing Steven King, comic books and pornography because they're not "real literature". Look, you may prefer them, Dr. Kantor, you may even believe that they're not as valuable as a Shakespeare play, but that doesn't mean that they don't have effects on pop culture in general and shouldn't be analyzed. I also wasn't fond how she dismissed Virginia Woolf's analyses because she's just a "petty and catty feminist". She would probably argue that this feeling just makes me another "petty and catty" feminist. Actually, the part of the book where she called feminists crazy, foot-stamping nuts who just can't accept the truth of the natural roles of male and female was rather telling ... in the face of a disagreeable viewpoint, just dismiss the other side as "crazy." It's the written equivalent of "Well, I'm right and you're a butt-face!"

Still, I have to say that I was sad Dr. Kantor didn't review Jane Eyre (she did say that she liked the Brontes). I would have liked to have seen her ignore the challenges to gender roles and interpreting Jane as a wonderful Christian who wouldn't have pre-marital sex and was rewarded with a man ... who now has to totally depend on her for everything but that's just evidence of how a woman should give up everything for a man, really! The cognitive dissonance would have been cute.

Seriously, though ... trying to crunch the culture of the past into the narrow political boxes of today -- liberal or conservative -- is pretty much a huge mistake. You end up seeing what you want to see and not the whole picture ... but I guess that's the point of the P.I.G. series.

Next time I'll review a book that I read the whole way through, though. Tune in for ... comic book porn! (No, really.)

An Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my new blog! I figured it goes with my new life in which I don't live in New Jersey and don't have a menial job.

Basically, here's the short story of who I am. I'd lived in New Jersey for all my life with my Mom, Dad and little brother. Other than getting picked on a lot in school, life was pretty uneventful until I was about twelve. When I was 12 my Dad came out as gay to me, and I was molested by a classmate. Things felt pretty uncool for a couple of years after that, especially around 16 when one of my uncles got ALS and had to come live with us (he eventually died about a year later) and my Dad left the house. Lucky for me, high school was fairly pleasant, despite attending during the years of the Columbine High School massacre and the 9-11 attacks. After that, I went to college, eventful years where I went to very few parties but met some friends and a boyfriend. In the end, I recieved a BA in Communications with a specialization in Journalism (I also minored in Political Science) and graduated with a manga cum laude.

And now, after six months of menial job purgatory, I've gotten to use that degree in the lovely land of ... Delaware. Or I'm going to do so. I'll be doing that in a week. Until then, I shall be around with harrowing tales of what I read today, because from everything I heard there's not much to do in Delaware.