Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Why Readers Rarely Make it out of High School

Larry Correia (NYT Bestselling fantasy author) over at Monster Hunter Nation has a great post about how the "classics" we're all forced to read in middle school and high school pretty much lead to no one being interested in reading anything recreationally again. Ever.

A small sample:

Why is the Scarlet Letter a classic? Reading it gives you a sensation similar to repeatedly giving yourself paper cuts across the cornea. Let me ruin it for you. Spoiler alert. A woman has to wear a big read A. People suffer. All the light will flee your soul. Puritans are jerks. Yet, it is a classic because at some point in time, some dude with a doctorate in English proclaimed it to be a classic.
...
The one good thing about being forced to read The Great Gatsby was that I discovered Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft afterwards because I figured that not everybody from that time frame could have been that incredibly annoying.

My sophomore English teacher dismissed those works as “pulp” not “literature”. Really? Because who has influenced more people in succeeding generations? Cthulu or Gatsby? My money is on the big squid.


Go HERE to read the full article. Funny stuff.