it is like being seventeen-year-old me reading Prufrock for the first time in AP English and knowing that it would be an awesome class and that here I had a poem that I could take with me for the rest of my life and just enjoy the language of it and wallow in the meaning and just hold. I--am having trouble articulating my relationship with Prufrock, which makes it difficult to explain just what about this loving parody touched me so deeply. But it did.
HUGS. I know what you mean EXACTLY. The first time I closed The Great Gatsby, and the first time I read my favorite Robert Frost Poem ever, and the first time I read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, it was this eerie experience where I saw them in my future.
And I have never discussed any of those works in any classes, so I just know what they mean to me, which - maybe? - is best.
Also: I feel so guilty that I don't love Maureen Johnson because I love all her opinions and writings on literature. (Also, I wish she had an LJ feed so I could keep up with her.)
And - I seem to be an aberration as well! Because I just counted the books on my shelf, and OH MY GOSH I DON'T EVEN BELIEVE IT but out of the 129 books on my bookshelf RIGHT NOW, FIFTEEN were written by men. Fifteen out of one hundred twenty-nine. The Great Gatsby, The Sound and the Fury, four Andrew Clements (I love him, haters-who-look-disdainfully-at-childrens-lit), four Gordon Kormans, Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, and The Name of the Wind (love love love). It will be fourteen son, because I am buying The Cardturner by Louis Sachar as soon as I can (also: I don't own Holes?!?). And it's slightly less because the Narnia books - all seven - are in my basement. But - I've got MWT, and Madeleine L'Engle, and Susan Cooper, and L. M. Montgomery, and Agatha Cristie, and Hilari Bell, and Ellen Emerson White, and Diana Wynne Jones, and (the sadly-underappreciated) Cinda Williams Chima.
Women authors ROCK and more people should know that. But I really think (and hope) that people do, and it just hasn't seeped into the curriculum yet. Although I did have an awesome professor who made sure to teach Gertrude Stein and Willa Cather in a semester of utter maleness. (And seriously, I couldn't care less what gender Fitzgerald and Faulker are, I just praise them to the skies for their works.)
I ... don't remember what I started off my comment by saying, but if you read this, you are awesome. And I'm glad you like Seattle, and how's their library system? (You have been there, right? It would be - my first stop. Or second, after the Barnes and Noble.
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sarken
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-26 03:54 am (UTC)HUGS. I know what you mean EXACTLY. The first time I closed The Great Gatsby, and the first time I read my favorite Robert Frost Poem ever, and the first time I read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, it was this eerie experience where I saw them in my future.
And I have never discussed any of those works in any classes, so I just know what they mean to me, which - maybe? - is best.
Also: I feel so guilty that I don't love Maureen Johnson because I love all her opinions and writings on literature. (Also, I wish she had an LJ feed so I could keep up with her.)
And - I seem to be an aberration as well! Because I just counted the books on my shelf, and OH MY GOSH I DON'T EVEN BELIEVE IT but out of the 129 books on my bookshelf RIGHT NOW, FIFTEEN were written by men. Fifteen out of one hundred twenty-nine. The Great Gatsby, The Sound and the Fury, four Andrew Clements (I love him, haters-who-look-disdainfully-at-childrens-lit), four Gordon Kormans, Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, and The Name of the Wind (love love love). It will be fourteen son, because I am buying The Cardturner by Louis Sachar as soon as I can (also: I don't own Holes?!?). And it's slightly less because the Narnia books - all seven - are in my basement. But - I've got MWT, and Madeleine L'Engle, and Susan Cooper, and L. M. Montgomery, and Agatha Cristie, and Hilari Bell, and Ellen Emerson White, and Diana Wynne Jones, and (the sadly-underappreciated) Cinda Williams Chima.
Women authors ROCK and more people should know that. But I really think (and hope) that people do, and it just hasn't seeped into the curriculum yet. Although I did have an awesome professor who made sure to teach Gertrude Stein and Willa Cather in a semester of utter maleness. (And seriously, I couldn't care less what gender Fitzgerald and Faulker are, I just praise them to the skies for their works.)
I ... don't remember what I started off my comment by saying, but if you read this, you are awesome. And I'm glad you like Seattle, and how's their library system? (You have been there, right? It would be - my first stop. Or second, after the Barnes and Noble.