(no subject)

[beccaelizabeth]

I'm two thirds of the way through a book we have to read for class next week.
... how do texts for class get chosen?
Because it seems to me, from Beloved last year and now this thing I'm reading, there's some unusual criteria at work. Starting with: how much of it wouldn't get on television even late night on one of the expensive channels.
There's slavery and prostitution and dead babies and murders, random murders all over the place that have bugger all to do with plot, which incidentally I'm not sure exists as such. There's several forms of sexual perversion, and not the fun kinds, the really icky sorts that leave you wanting to wash your brain. Yes, that's possible even with fairly ordinary acts - the kind of description adds the ick. There's alcohol and drugs and people going insane. And there's dung everywhere. Literally dirty, stinky, focusing on that kind of detail in every description.
Why?
I mean, I read a lot. As in, fairly continuously. I've read bazillions of books. And yet I've never read anything as plain mucky as stuff set for college.
From this we're studying feminism? Okay, there's stuff in there, and it's not exactly subtle. But really, we couldn't study something PG rated? Is there a rule?

Also, and I realise this makes me old fashioned, I quite like it when a story happens in a fairly straight line, follows one or two people around, stays in a particular point of view, and doesn't randomly head off into the life story of whoever just stepped into view. I can see the stories all wind together to create interesting effects, I just don't like it. I actually find it really boring. Yet I have to go back and read another hundred pages of it.

Comments

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

When I worked in the Civil Engineering office at USF, I ordered the books - generally the teachers select what they want to use. If there's a class with different sections and different teachers, they may get together to agree on the same thing, or they may all use whatever they want. I don't know if that's how they do it over there, or anywhere but where I worked!

I'm not wild about Beloved myself, but it is considered a classic - maybe the teacher figures all the unpleasant stuff sort of illustrates how hard women's lives can be?

[beccaelizabeth]

yeah, I guess, but... well, it's like with Beloved, the thing with the cows seemed a little bit much. And if people are busy going 'eeew' they aren't so much having deep thoughts.