I hate literature. I do. Well, to be specific the way that literature and English are taught have ruined the experience of reading short stories or fiction. With the focus on the underlying themes and reading between the lines, people lose sight of the important question. Is it a good story? Did you enjoy it? Were the characters compelling? Was it a vacation from reality? Not what does the train on page 47 say about conservatives in this country. That's horseshit. Anyone who tells you it isn't is also horseshit. I was taking a test today in some G.E. class and all I could think was this is the most meaningless and arbitrary attempt to invent meaning and I hate it. Literature classes have ruined literature for me.
Perhaps I'm just not appreciating a sophisticated approach, but why does it have to be sophisticated? Reading used to be fun for me, I wouldn't have to think about life and racism and politics or whatever. Reading was a simple pleasure, and higher learning is trying to take that from me. It's upsetting, because I feel that education is extremely important, but I really hate it right now.
Oh, and sophisticated sounds a lot like sophistry. And this whole talk of themes is sophistry, pure and simple. I always thought sophistry was to be avoided in an intellectual setting, but I guess I was misinformed. Thanks literature class, you are skewing me towards the cheap entertainment of eating for fun, not reading. So now I'm going to just get fat and probably diabetic because of this class. Make sense? No. It's sophistry, fallacious reasoning.

Can I have a class where we just read books, don't tear every scrap of invented meaning from them until all that's left is a tattered binding?