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Lampbane (lampbane) wrote in fandom_wank,
@ 2003-09-22 19:38:00

Being well-read will not necessarily make your wanks more intelligent
Stephen King is awarded a medal from the National Book Foundation for distinguished contribution. Harold Bloom is not happy. Neil Gaiman posts a link in his blog to Harold Bloom's (petulant) article. Said blog is syndicated to LiveJournal.

Ladies and gentlemen, choose your sides and commence the literary wanking. Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Harold Bloom, Shakespeare and... Socrates?

(Personally, I think my favorite line had to be "I'd read the cereal boxes and can labels and condom box inserts if there was nothing else." Also: "why do my favorite entertainers always have to open their mouths and spoil the pleasant image i have of them?")

(Post a new comment)

	pipssister 2003-09-23 03:13 am UTC (link)
	Ohhhhh... THAT asshole, huh? Bah. King has said himself that he's the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries. Silly people. (Reply to this)

ruaki
2003-09-23 03:53 am UTC (link)

I think King probably was pretty surprised himself about getting that award, considering his self-esteem about his books. Anyone got a link to King's reaction?
Even in the NYTimes article, it's pretty much spelled as a publicity stunt:

Under pressure from publishers to shake up its sleepy image, the organization that presents the National Book Awards is planning to give its annual medal for distinguished contribution to American letters to Stephen King.

Mr. King's selection is the first time that the organization, the National Book Foundation, has awarded its medal to an author best known for writing in popular genres like horror stories, science fiction or thrillers. Very little of Mr. King's work would qualify as literary fiction.

(....)

Mr. King's award comes when publishers are pushing the foundation, which they largely finance, to stir up more attention for its prizes and for books in general.

Watching the asshat get so wanky about what is pretty much accepted as a publicity stunt is the best part of all. The literary debators on the Gaiman feed is like dessert.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	ruaki 2003-09-23 03:54 am UTC (link)
	Are. Are like dessert. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

yhibiki, 2004-09-27 01:24 am UTC

ruaki, 2004-09-27 02:42 am UTC

lampbane
2003-09-24 12:34 am UTC (link)

Watching the asshat get so wanky about what is pretty much accepted as a publicity stunt is the best part of all. The literary debators on the Gaiman feed is like dessert.

Which is funny to me, because I thought Harold Bloom being an asshat was old news and so never bothered with posting anything about him in the first place. How wrong I was.

WRONG! So WRONG! I must commit sepukku or something now... wait, this is still funny. Never mind.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

ruaki, 2003-09-24 02:17 am UTC

(no subject) - lampbane, 2003-09-24 05:38 am UTC

mariagoner
2003-09-23 04:43 am UTC (link)

Harold Freaking Bloom is a hack himself, period. I once suffered through voluntary thumbing through his nonfiction book "On Reading" and hated it. Professor of Harvard University or no, his criticism of books are incredibly numbing, unoriginal, and always always *always* managed to reference his idol Shakespeare at some point.

Did you know he's even on a crusade against J. K. Rowling? Seriously. He read only her very first book, denounced it as populist trash, and refuses to read any subsequent Harry Potter works. That condescending, obsequious, ubiquitous, literary wanker.

I *hate* that man. He gives all literary snobs out there their bad names.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	nevadafighter 2003-09-23 07:41 am UTC (link)
	You're not the only one who feels that way. He's very much a joke at my university, too--I've heard his name used as the punchline of many a joke in the teacher's lounge. ;) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

mariagoner, 2003-09-23 07:41 pm UTC

Re: -

nevadafighter, 2003-09-23 09:45 pm UTC

mariagoner, 2003-09-24 02:12 am UTC

Re: -

nevadafighter, 2003-09-24 05:33 am UTC

phosfate, 2003-09-23 09:10 pm UTC

	nevadafighter 2003-09-23 07:44 am UTC (link)
	Oh, and don't you find it funny that he denounces JKR's work as "populist trash" when his idol is Shakespeare? If I recall my Tudor lit. class correctly, his plays didn't attain legendary literary status until well after his death. I wonder if Bloom had been writing back then if he'd called Shakespeare's works "trash." Hmmm . . . very interesting, but stupid. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - snowball, 2003-09-23 08:27 am UTC

(Anonymous)
2003-09-23 08:54 am UTC (link)

Professor of Harvard University or no,

Ack, sorry, can a random lurker jump in real quick and correct this? He's over at Yale. I know it honestly doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, as Harvard has committed enough wanky sins to last three hundred more years. But this time, the Keeper of the Canonical English Literature Asshat is not our fault.

Thank you.
--former Harvard wanker

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

mariagoner, 2003-09-23 07:42 pm UTC

(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2003-09-24 03:01 am UTC

	pipssister 2003-09-23 05:28 pm UTC (link)
	I have a question. Has Mr. Smarty-Pants-Ever told people what they SHOULD be reading, or does my six-year-old have to suffer through Shakespeare? (Hee-hee, on a snobby note. I actually remember hearing some eleven year old complain that she didn't understand Harry Potter. I just thought, "What's going to happen to you when you get to Shakespeare?") (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

trismegistus, 2003-09-23 07:02 pm UTC

trismegistus, 2003-09-23 07:08 pm UTC

Highlights of the BN.com entry... - lampbane, 2003-09-24 12:54 am UTC

Re: Highlights of the BN.com entry... -

electricchick, 2003-09-24 11:29 pm UTC

coyotegirl, 2003-09-23 08:30 pm UTC

iczer6, 2003-09-23 09:32 pm UTC

Re: -

coyotegirl, 2003-09-23 09:58 pm UTC

iczer6, 2003-09-23 10:12 pm UTC

Re: -

coyotegirl, 2003-09-24 03:14 am UTC

trismegistus, 2003-09-24 12:15 am UTC

iczer6, 2003-09-24 01:10 am UTC

Bl00m suX0rs!!! -

necronomist, 2003-09-24 01:46 am UTC

pipssister, 2003-09-23 10:08 pm UTC

trismegistus, 2003-09-24 12:23 am UTC

sewingmyfish, 2003-09-24 02:21 am UTC

lcsbanana, 2003-09-24 02:37 am UTC

Re: -

sewingmyfish, 2003-09-24 02:40 am UTC

necronomist, 2003-09-24 05:25 am UTC

Re: -

sewingmyfish, 2003-09-24 05:28 am UTC

trismegistus, 2003-09-24 06:14 pm UTC

sewingmyfish, 2003-09-24 07:18 pm UTC

mariagoner, 2003-09-24 02:15 am UTC

starkeymonster
2003-09-23 07:00 pm UTC (link)

Professor of Harvard University or no,

Or no, since he teaches at Yale and NYU.

his criticism of books are incredibly numbing, unoriginal, and always always *always* managed to reference his idol Shakespeare at some point.

My theory is that he has a program on his computer to automatically write articles for him. He types in the title and author of the book along with some key words, and the program busily generates whines, rants and obnoxious literary references.

On a side note he's also a wanker as an academic. At a previous position, I saw a reference letter he wrote for someone. It was two short sentences, had nothing to do with the candidate's area of study, managed to reference his own brilliance, and was sent in 2 months late. Twit

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - lampbane, 2003-09-24 12:59 am UTC

mauralabingi
2003-09-23 11:26 pm UTC (link)

Minor point: Bloom tortures students at Yale, not Harvard (where the running joke when Shakespeare and Originality was published was that Harold Bloom shouldn't be considered an authority on either.) What an ass... his mouth-breathing worship of Derrida alone guarantees that five minutes after you meet him, your palm is itching to slap him. Plus he wrote the worst introduction to Moby Dick EVER.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

morganya
2003-09-23 05:24 am UTC (link)

I began as a scholar of the romantic poets. In the 1950s and early 1960s, it was understood that the great English romantic poets were Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But today they are Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Smith, Mary Tighe, Laetitia Landon and others who just can't write.

I have the image of him stamping his feet and screaming, "I gave my lifeblood for you jackals! And you give me Stephen King! Jesus fucking Christ!"

I have that image because it amuses me more than Bloom's actual article.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

maev_connacht
2003-09-23 05:41 am UTC (link)

You know, I took a class called "The Romantics" once. It covered all the people in the first list. I've never heard of the people in the second.

That's beside the point, though. We had a debate about this in another of my classes a couple weeks ago, when one of the students found an article in which the author expressed his distaste at Shakespeare courses no longer being required of English majors in a number of schools. It all goes back to the "I learned it, so you should learn it" principle-- people are bound to have literary aneurysms whenever something in the accepted canon is changed. Personally, I don't much agree with it. Yeah, I *like* Shakespeare, but I understand that some people might not, and I don't see the point in forcing people to take classes they have no desire to be in, at least in college. High school's a different story. But, well... Meh. *shrug*

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

biichan, 2003-09-23 05:52 am UTC

dawnswalker, 2003-09-23 10:37 am UTC

biichan, 2003-09-23 10:41 am UTC

minibalrogmum, 2003-09-23 11:42 am UTC

arien, 2003-09-24 04:13 am UTC

heyoka, 2003-09-23 10:38 am UTC

(Anonymous)
2003-09-23 07:01 am UTC (link)

Jeebus strike me down for the blasphemy I'm about to commit.

Wordsworth sucks. Big, green, pretentious, dull, trite donkey dick.

Byron and Shelley are good mainly because of the copious amounts of opium that went into their work, and Coleridge got better after listening to Wordsworth broke something inside him.

Being a literary snob does not necessitate pretending that all the Romantics shat gold. Sometimes, they just shat turds.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

nevadafighter, 2003-09-23 07:45 am UTC

romanesque, 2003-09-23 07:55 am UTC

Re: *snickers* -

beccastareyes, 2003-09-24 02:47 am UTC

Re: *snickers* -

amakath, 2003-09-24 09:30 am UTC

(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2003-09-23 10:24 am UTC

sorchar, 2003-09-23 12:21 pm UTC

phosfate, 2003-09-23 04:48 pm UTC

maev_connacht, 2003-09-23 06:29 pm UTC

phosfate, 2003-09-23 07:09 pm UTC

nixnivis, 2003-09-23 08:22 pm UTC

nita, 2003-09-23 08:45 pm UTC

dae, 2003-09-23 08:58 pm UTC

(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2005-03-26 05:20 pm UTC

electricchick, 2003-09-24 11:36 pm UTC

arien, 2003-09-24 04:20 am UTC

iczer6
2003-09-23 07:20 am UTC (link)

[But today they are Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Smith, Mary Tighe, Laetitia Landon and others who just can't write.]

Maybe I'm reading a bit too much into this but did anyone get a whif of misogyny when they read this sentence?

I couldn't help but notice that all the writers he slammed seemed to be female. [ I could be wrong on that though.] He did mention Shelley but still....

And I must state how much I adore Gaiman.

Icz

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

morganya, 2003-09-23 07:30 am UTC

amakath, 2003-09-23 07:49 am UTC

(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2003-09-23 10:15 am UTC

Re: -

amakath, 2003-09-23 11:52 am UTC

mariagoner, 2003-09-23 07:45 pm UTC

trismegistus, 2003-09-24 12:26 am UTC

sewingmyfish, 2003-09-24 02:25 am UTC

trismegistus, 2003-09-24 06:13 pm UTC

starkeymonster, 2003-09-23 07:03 pm UTC

(no subject) - lampbane, 2003-09-24 01:09 am UTC

Re: -

amakath, 2003-09-24 01:24 am UTC

starkeymonster, 2003-09-25 07:16 pm UTC

Re: -

amakath, 2003-09-25 07:31 pm UTC

trismegistus, 2003-09-23 07:04 pm UTC

amandatwop, 2003-09-24 01:31 am UTC

phosfate, 2003-09-23 04:46 pm UTC

	amakath 2003-09-23 07:29 am UTC (link)
	"But today they are Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Smith, Mary Tighe, Laetitia Landon and others who ~~just can't write~~ had vaginas." (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Also amakath 2003-09-23 08:05 am UTC (link)
	Heh. He reminds me of Dana Carvey's Grumpy Old Man. "In my day, we read deadly dull books full of prose you couldn't cut with a weedwhacker, and WE LIKED IT!" (Reply to this)(Parent)

amand_r, 2003-09-23 08:42 am UTC

limyaael, 2003-09-23 07:23 pm UTC

	from the lit geek (Anonymous) 2003-09-23 05:40 am UTC (link)
	There's Cormac McCarthy, whose novel "Blood Meridian" is worthy of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick," laughs until he earns strange looks I hope that was meant to be a witty insult. Looks like old Moby's back in style again... (Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: from the lit geek - lampbane, 2003-09-23 07:00 am UTC

Re: from the lit geek -

lcsbanana, 2003-09-23 09:15 am UTC

Re: from the lit geek - (Anonymous), 2003-09-23 05:32 pm UTC

Re: from the lit geek -

senor_pinata, 2003-09-23 08:10 pm UTC

Re: from the lit geek - lampbane, 2003-09-24 01:13 am UTC

Re: from the lit geek -

mariagoner, 2003-09-24 02:20 am UTC

Re: from the lit geek - lampbane, 2003-09-24 05:39 am UTC

Re: from the lit geek -

phosfate, 2003-09-23 04:51 pm UTC

Re: from the lit geek -

trismegistus, 2003-09-23 07:10 pm UTC

Re: from the lit geek -

phosfate, 2003-09-23 07:18 pm UTC

Re: from the lit geek -

iczer6, 2003-09-23 09:40 pm UTC

Re: from the lit geek -

phosfate, 2003-09-23 09:45 pm UTC

Re: from the lit geek -

necronomist, 2003-09-24 01:59 am UTC

mauralabingi, 2003-09-24 06:10 pm UTC

Re: from the lit geek -

tiffers, 2003-09-23 08:14 pm UTC

Re: from the lit geek -

amakath, 2003-09-24 01:34 am UTC

Re: from the lit geek -

tiffers, 2003-09-24 06:57 pm UTC

	loafing_oaf 2003-09-23 07:36 am UTC (link)
	Was I the only one who found the comment: some people's opinions are better informed than others in response to "everyone is entitled to an opinion" the most wanky part of all? (Reply to this)(Thread)

Obligatory Animal Farm Reference: - (Anonymous), 2003-09-23 03:13 pm UTC

Personally ... - (Anonymous), 2003-09-24 12:47 am UTC

psychofangirl, 2003-09-24 04:12 am UTC

dawnswalker
2003-09-23 10:49 am UTC (link)

Reading anything by Harold Bloom actually brings back memories of high school, because my English 20 and 30 teacher had newspaper clippings of various articles about him taped all over the walls of her classroom.

One of which was this article about how he (Bloom) thinks that Shakespeare is the only author the world needs, or will ever need, EVER. I mean, holy shit... I like Shakespeare too (though I commit the supposedly horrid sin of liking "Macbeth" more than "Hamlet"), but to say that he's the only author worth reading or studying is a bit much. ~~Especially with the "Shakespeare ripped off Bacon" controversy that makes the rounds every couple of years.~~

As was mentioned earlier, does the supreme irony of his panning a contemporary favourite like King while upholding a posthumously-acclaimed-only wonder simply not register with this man?

(Reply to this)(Thread)

(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2003-09-23 05:37 pm UTC

trismegistus, 2003-09-23 07:11 pm UTC

(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2003-09-23 07:35 pm UTC

trismegistus, 2003-09-24 12:28 am UTC

greekhoop, 2003-09-23 11:41 pm UTC

trismegistus, 2003-09-24 12:29 am UTC

greekhoop, 2003-09-24 01:07 am UTC

OT: Titus Andronicus -

beccastareyes, 2003-09-24 02:54 am UTC

pipssister, 2003-09-23 11:52 pm UTC

cmikhailovic
2003-09-23 11:03 pm UTC (link)

Bwahahahahaha!

PhD candidate in English, here, and yeah, seconding the "Bloom=joke" thing. Many of the professors around here can just barely refrain from snickering when his name is mentioned, and as for the rest, steam starts coming out their ears. The man is a spoiled, snot-nosed, whiny misogynist who resents the hell out of anyone who dares to produce literature that isn't all about sucking the dick of the Great White Male Canon. Not to mention the fact that his attitude towards children's literature is "it sucks, unless I like it, and if I like it, it's not really children's literature." Nice way to denigrate an entire field of scholarship, asshole.

(Reply to this)

	lcsbanana 2003-09-24 02:07 am UTC (link)
	relatedly.... (Reply to this)(Thread)

dawnswalker, 2003-09-24 03:38 am UTC

Cool site - (Anonymous), 2003-09-25 10:00 pm UTC

	Triumph!! mariagoner 2003-09-24 06:47 am UTC (link)
	Hahahaha! I was right. You (you = a startlingly large number of people) were wrong. Harold Bloom is "a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard." Turns out I didn't pull that fact out of my big arse. I now renounce any and all apologies I may have given! (Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: Triumph!! -

mariagoner, 2003-09-24 06:47 am UTC

mauralabingi, 2003-09-24 05:28 pm UTC

	(Anonymous) 2003-09-24 11:50 am UTC (link)
	Possible wank update (http://www.livejournal.com/users/officialgaiman/66123.html). -- KJB (Reply to this)(Thread)

sewingmyfish, 2003-09-24 08:20 pm UTC

	electricchick 2003-09-24 11:43 pm UTC (link)
	I read that article in the newspaper this morning. I'm dead until about ten AM, so it didn't really register at first. I went outside and started the car, then burst out with "What the fuck was that?" Heh. Gotta love delayed reaction. (Reply to this)

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