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illu45  ·  2611 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Books you just couldn't fucking get into?

This probably isn't worth writing, given that your perspective is so very different from mine, but I feel the need to rebut some of your claims.

    The truths they wish to expose are lies, the perspectives they grant are flawed, and the characters mouthing the prose are repellant.

Well, these are very broad claims. I would start by pointing out that searching for "truth" via novels is usually an ill-fated endeavour. It's even one that Austen herself mocks and cautions against. Rather, novels offer ideas and arguments about those ideas. Reading a novel doesn't mean you have to agree with it. You just have to think about the ideas it presents. And that's what great novels do: they make you think. They absolutely offer flawed perspectives and loathsome characters, but hopefully those flaws and characters are rendered in ways that are at least interesting (and might get readers to see things from a different perspective).

"Great Books" programs and "the canon" certainly have problems. But books do not survive simply because instructors wish to use them to prove a specific point (which really isn't really what instruction in literature aims to do). I think Barbara Herrnstein Smith is quite apt in pointing out that books survive the "test of time" because they are able to offer different readings that are of interest to different generations of readers. Today, we venerate Shakespeare because of the psychological depth of his characters. Restoration audiences liked his complex plots (and would often cut out soliloquies in order to place more emphasis on plot). Early Modernists enjoyed his jokes and his class subversiveness. Tastes change over time. Multi-dimensional works are able to survive because they remain interesting despite changes in taste.

Orientalism is certainly an issue of concern to many academics and readers. Orientalist depictions of 'the East' still being created in all sorts of media. Are you going to "cast aside" newspaper articles about the US invasion of Iraq because they "other" the East, or are you going to accept that the articles have a flawed viewpoint but still treat them as worthwhile texts?

I absolutely agree with you that we bring our baggage to the books we read, just as we do with pretty much anything we consume (from the food on our plate to the music we hear and even the people we meet). Good critics are able to separate their baggage from the text. The rest of us just enjoy what we enjoy and don't enjoy what we don't, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's foolhardy to try to tell someone that they have to like a book, whether it be Pride and Prejudice or Gormenghast.