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Happy Ides of March! Presumably none of you need beware.
And in a non-sequitory kind of way, let me make it perfectly clear that I understand Walt Whitman's place in the American canon, but I still don't like his poetry very much. And the same can be said of Watchmen.
One of the books that I'm reading at right now has a huge chapter on Whitman that I just finished slogging through, which kept reminding me of a friend I had back in undergrad who, when I said I didn't like Whitman's stuff, went on and on about his importance to the canon etc. Which I understand perfectly well, but it's not going to make me rush out and buy Leaves of Grass and read it of an evening.
The same sort of thing happened with another friend and Watchmen a few years later - I told him I was not blown away by it because the themes in it were not new to me, coming to it so many years after it had been written. His response was to tell me, over and over, that nothing like it had ever been written before. Which I know perfectly well. But it doesn't change the fact that my reading experience was less "WOW! This is AMAZING!" and more "Been there, done that, don't like any of the characters, whatever." I don't think I'm going to all of a sudden turn around and go "OH MY GOD I am BLOWN AWAY by this!"
And in a non-sequitory kind of way, let me make it perfectly clear that I understand Walt Whitman's place in the American canon, but I still don't like his poetry very much. And the same can be said of Watchmen.
One of the books that I'm reading at right now has a huge chapter on Whitman that I just finished slogging through, which kept reminding me of a friend I had back in undergrad who, when I said I didn't like Whitman's stuff, went on and on about his importance to the canon etc. Which I understand perfectly well, but it's not going to make me rush out and buy Leaves of Grass and read it of an evening.
The same sort of thing happened with another friend and Watchmen a few years later - I told him I was not blown away by it because the themes in it were not new to me, coming to it so many years after it had been written. His response was to tell me, over and over, that nothing like it had ever been written before. Which I know perfectly well. But it doesn't change the fact that my reading experience was less "WOW! This is AMAZING!" and more "Been there, done that, don't like any of the characters, whatever." I don't think I'm going to all of a sudden turn around and go "OH MY GOD I am BLOWN AWAY by this!"
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I mean, I don't care for avocadoes. Mention that to an avocado-lover, and 9 times out of 10, they'll say something like "Oh, well, more for me! But I think I saw some baba ghanoush at the other end of the buffet-- do you like eggplant?" Every now and then, they'll question my taste, which is their right. But I've never had someone sit me down and earnestly explain the profound importance of guacamole to Tex-Mex cuisine and the role of oily vegetables in a balanced diet and how the avocado was one of the first domestic cultivars in the new world and much more important to Mesoamerican milpa agriculture than most people know.
Because that would be SILLY.
(And I did like Watchmen, and did find some parts of it new to me, but the novelty was all because I hadn't read a lot of comics and was still learning the conventions of the medium.)
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Speaking from the point of view of someone who has lectured
more thana few poor unfortunates on the importance to art history of Andy Warhol; for me at least, it happens when someone says, not "Eh, Warhol doesn't really do it for me," but some variant of "I'm just not all that impressed by Warhol. I've seen that stuff a million times before."no subject
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My oldest daughter turns THIRTEEN today.
...I had the same experience with Asimov. My dad (who actually looked enough like Asimov to have been mistaken for him on occasion) was a huge fan, and kept trying to ge me into the Foundation books. I read the first, and while I was willing to admit that it was obviously Important Science Fiction, it really didn't float my boat. He never quite understood.
I have come to realize recently that I feel the same way about Akira, which for years I tried to convince myself I LIKED because no self-respecting anime fan would NOT like Akira. But I never just want to watch it.
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While, totally bias-ed-ly, I think Tezuka's works are mostly in the second, because people are still saying new things about them even though they've been imitated right down to the protagonists' outfits for fifty years. For all that everyone calls it a classic, I don't think I've ever heard anyone having a conversation about Akira that lasted more than three minutes.
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(The Dylan Thomas thing was helped by the professor being a distant relation of his, and telling us that the family never considered him a genius poet, he was always that lazy bum who never got a proper job. The professor knew a lot of the writers we were reading, actually: the Anglo-Welsh literary world is small enough that everyone knew everyone else, so he could tell us gossip about their lives and give us more insight into the motives and themes in the works.)
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And Gandalf with the popping in and out. I couldn't finish the Lord of the Rings, and I will read the backs of cereal boxes in boredom.
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I like Watchmen and hope it gets a movie. V for Vendetta was good. League of...was, well, let's skip that one. Any author would have full rights to be annoyed at how that turned out. As I've heard, though, Moore tends to get upset at the slightest deviation or reinterpretation of his work being translated to the big screen.
Kind of funny, to me, since in Whitman's case, that's mostly all he has, isn't it? I mean, he published, what? Four collections of poetry? Instead, the fascination with Whitman far outweighs his actual produced works. Even in his lifetime, I think Whitman reveled in the attention, unlike Moore.
I also think of Tolkien at times like this, and the wonderful LotR movies. What would Tolkien have thought of them? Would he have commented at all? Would he have been angry? Happy? One never knows.
Still, I wander too much. I think what we see here is a universal truth: there's fanboys everywhere. Now, who to be stuck in a room with, Whitman fanboys or Moore fanboys? Can I be in the Pratchett room down the hall? I think Discworld fans are possibly the safest of this lot.
bink
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beware the ideas of march
not only can one not step into the same river twice, but sometimes the riverbed looks like just another canal years later, and who wants to step in it then.
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