If you don't start nuttin, there won't be nuttin!
For most of us this would be nothing but a fantasy, however, if you spend enough time locked away with your consistently spoiling nemesis in an icy hell world, well, it may just become a reality.
I JUST KNEW that Mobey Dick would eventually cause one human being to kill another just by being a book they shared. It's evil. It's the worst piece of shit it was ever my displeasure to read.
I tell this story often.
I once got so fed up with the minutia of Mobey Dick that I tossed it across the classroom in disgust. The teacher told me to pick up my book or I wasn't going to get to see the movie. "THERE IS A MOVIE" I replied with a combination of disgust and profound betrayal of the sacred bond between teacher and student. I had no idea they had made a movie of this abomination of a book. You have no idea what you didn't know about everything when you didn't have the internet.
"Why aren't we seeing the movie and reading a GOOD book?" I asked him. He saw most kids agreed with me and that grade nine was not the freakin time for Moby Dick but he didn't care. I sat down and refused to turn a page out of spite for the rest of the class. I just muttered to myself, "There is a movie."
So I know of the muderous rage a book can create in the reader.
9 comments:
No jury will ever convict that Antarctic researcher.
Read them the first five pages and they will try to kill his lawyer for do so.
If you stop reading after "Call me Ishmael", you're ahead of the game.
you are preaching to the converted here.
I felt that way about "Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham, which I was assigned to read in 12th grade. It is an 800 page behemoth of endless whining by a guy with a club foot. Holy fuck it was awful. I read about 600 pages before I couldn't stand it anymore. When the test came, I asked the guy behind me, how it ended. He told me they got married. There was only one question on the test about the last 200 pages -- what happened at the end. That's how awful it was. NOTHING ELSE WORTHWHILE HAPPENED IN THE LAST 200 PAGES! Just more unbearable whining, I assume (as if there wasn't enough of that in the first 600 pages.) I don't believe in burning books, but if I ever was trapped in a library like in The Day After Tomorrow and I needed fuel for the fire to keep from freezing, I'd hunt every copy of this bitch down first (followed by Moby Dick, Silas Marner and EVERYTHINBG written by Ayn Rand.)
I am glad someone shares my pain. When we had to read books I would have hoped the teacher would have picked a good book but they never do.
I did have a tenth grade teacher who assigned us "The Odessa File" to read. THAT was awesome!
If only more teachers/schools would understand that if you want kids to read DON'T assign them reviled garbage "classics" that make them HATE READING!
It's like that South Park Episode where Officer Barbrady can't read, so once he learns how to, he ends up reading every last word of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" which, being the ungodly piece of shit it is, causes him to swear NEVER to read ANYTHING ever again!
Just remembered -- same teacher also assigned us "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" and "Flowers for Alegernon" -- GREAT books that are still favorites to this day. Ms. Paige. She was awesome.
I loved Mutiny on the Bounty and Cue for Treason and To Kill a Mockingbird but I read my share of classic crap growing up. So much so that I DEMANDED that my free book choice was The Godfather by Puzo despite his and my own Mother's objection. I was indignant about things like that. Was the Odessa File Robert Ludlum because I loved his stuff too.
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