I found this story link on the Poetry Foundation's website. I thought that I ought to share it, not to elicit comment favorable or negative, but because there are things that astound me and this story is full of many of those astounding things.
Another link found on that site is a commencement address that segued my mind into thinking about the novel Infinite Jest which I (finally) finished reading a couple of weeks ago. The gist of the address is to not let your mind settle for the easy entertainment and to present it with lifelong challenges. The novel is mildly futuristic; it is more similar to the present than it is dissimilar. The idea of being happy and being entertained have become inseparable. (I could talk in more detail, but you'd get bored having not read it (or if you have read it perhaps we should have a cup of coffee))(and I'm not suggesting you necessarily read it. It's long, gruesome at times and doesn't have an "ending"--which may have ruined the ending for you)(I'm not suggesting that you not read it either. It's insightful and amazing). I know that in a single day I probably hear 10 SNL or Seinfeld references in a day... I wonder what would be different if I heard 10 references to some literary classic every day--would the world be more enlightened or just making different allusions?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I'll bet you hear 50 allusions to literary classics every day, but they are so deeply ingrained in our culture that they are no longer discernable. Shakespeare's plays were first and foremost entertainment which were directed at the lowest cultural denominators.
you are probably right. I'll count today. I'm afraid today day will have a petty pace.
btw-- I didn't hear any Shakespeare references... a reference to the "Where's the Beef" ad campaign. This morning I heard the word harangue which always feels like a literary reference because Melville used it so much in Billy Budd (It is bb right?)
Get Fuzzy. I think it was Sundays.
Post a Comment