Carpe Dium

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mslestrades:

“Halfway down the hall was a fountain. A group of golden statues, larger than life-size, stood in the middle of a circular pool. Tallest of them all was a noble-looking wizard with his wand pointing straight up in the air. Grouped around him were a beautiful witch, a centaur, a goblin, and a house-elf. The last three were all looking adoringly up at the witch and wizard. Glittering jets of water were flying from the ends of the two wands, the point of the centaur’s arrow, the tip of the goblin’s hat, and each of the house-elf’s ears, so that the tinkling hiss of falling water was added to the pops and cracks of Apparators and the clatter of footsteps as hundreds of witches and wizards, most of whom were wearing glum, early-morning looks, strode toward a set of golden gates at the far end of the hall.”

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aigroe:

violentharlequinn:

bookshop:

haydeauxs:

lightspeedsound:

lebanesepoppyseed:

dinosaurjam:

quantasalmastenho:

iksandr:

unzerbrechlichkitsch:

inhaleairexhalelife:

the-unpopular-opinions:

I mean, really.

I am so tired of the “high art” and “low art” mentality when it comes to reading. People are READING. That alone is a victory to me. I mean, I am a PhD student in English and I fucking LOVED the Hunger Games. Yes, I read the classics. Are they relevant? Maybe. Remember Shakespeare was written for the masses and was the equivalence of SOAP OPERAS. Are the classics enjoyable? For some, but not for me. If I can enjoy something and see the influences of the classics, that’s awesome. If it can stand on its own, then more fucking power to it as a piece of literature.

Reblogging for commentary. Honestly. Shakespeare was like 78% dick jokes. And Wilde would think you’re an idiot. The end.

Commentary for the win.

Shakespeare routinely made up his own words and was something for the commoners too.  Or did you forget all the weirdly awkward fools interludes that involve codpieces and mammary puns?  

Jane Austen was considered romance novels, back in the day.

Oscar Wilde wrote about gay sex. And more gay sex. And more gay sex. And everybody was like, “Oh my god this is such sleazy gay sex.”

I’m pretty sure, 50 years from now, people are going to be comparing The Hunger Games to 1984 and they’re going to put it in a comparative lit class with Roman Lit and mythology. 

Harry Potter is already being study in college classes. I know people who have written theses on it. 

You want to read something REALLY badly written? Something featuring Long winded, run on sentences about Hell, featuring an emo protagonist who can’t shut up about how evil he is?

…No, not Edward Cullen. Lucifer, from Paradise Lost.

Suck it, elitist bitches.

Can I just add anime and manga to this idea? Because really, ‘Grave of the Fireflies’ is just a cartoon? Okay, world. Okay.

I’d just like to chime in here to say that I’m currently in a grad-level lit theory class.

This is the number of times, during a course about narrative theory, structuralism, and literary polemics, in which Tolstoy, Austen, Dostoyevsky, Hugo, Wilde, and Shakespeare have been relevant to our class discussions:

Zero.

This is the number of times that Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Homestuck, superhero comics, Kate Beaton, Twilight, Inception, and Avatar: the Last Airbender have been relevant to our class discussions:

Too many to count.

Anything that you can analyze i consider literature. Its genre doesn’t matter—it’s the fact that you can take a book and go, “hey wow, what a universal feeling. I have felt this but could never put it into words.” or, “Hey, that’s such a good symbol for this setting/feeling/idea because….” Video Games and movies are tuning into this, too. they’re our generation’s storytellers, and the lines between all these types of entertainment are starting to blur.

Take the game “The Path,” for instance. it’s a little indie game that you can but online for about 5 bucks. Honestly? I can’t call it a video game, really. It’s an interactive story. and the whole reason to play is to analyze and experience. One could seperate it into the “high brow/low brow” crap that was mentioned earlier. I spent double if not more time just analyzing the meanings of the symbolism in the game. Sound familiar to the way we treat classics?

I’ve read Crime and Punishment. I’ve read the twilight books. The difference between the two is not the fact that Dostoyevsky wrote a classic. It’s that Crime and Punishment is deep and rewards the reader with an epiphany on human nature, and that Twilight is unbelievably long short hand for what it feels like to be in love.

How about Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein versus the Hunger Games? I had to read Frankenstein OUT LOUD because the run-on sentences and lack of basic writing skills were so bad. Both were written as a social commentary on the same thing, “who is are the monsters here?” and forces the reader to consider what they have done and to identify with the “villain.”

I’m getting ahead of myself. Books are books. Classics have been mostly written by old white dead dudes, so when more stuff like the Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Uglies, and all that is not taken seriously, we are robbing ourselves of what our children/grandchildren would consider classics. New Classics will be written—why would anyone consider that a bad thing?

Yes, this. Also - it’s not anyone’s duty to regulate what they do in their spare time. Books are meant to entertain. Yes, some of the Proper Classics are good and make you think, and difficult reading isn’t the same as bad reading. But some of those books up there are awesome. (Hunger Games? Uglies? Gone? Tithe? Harry Potter? Do I espy A Series Of Unfortunate Events? Seriously if you don’t think Lemony Snicket’s writing is wonderful I have no words for you.)

The Proper Classics are dense, and full of cultural references I don’t understand, and frequently dull, and also they were all written in really patriarchal racist heteronormative times and it shows a lot. That’s not to say I don’t like them - I love 1984 and Brave New World and Catcher In The Rye (does that count?) and Pride and Predjudice and goddamn if someone used ‘let me talk to you about Shakespeare’ as a pickup line I would totally bone them, but I’m not obligated to spend my free time pandering to some old-white-guy idea of literature.

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