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Notes -
Madame Bovary was probably assigned to me in high school because my high school English teacher had to read it in college...
But seriously, Flaubert is important (at least, knowing how he influenced literature) and Madame Bovary has something to say, it's just maybe not a message that a teenager will be receptive to. My personal reading list for high school students might be very different, but I'd still make them read some "difficult" and "old" books, and if they ask "Why should I care about Dickens or Tolstoy or Flaubert?" I'd say "Because these are a few of the small stones in the foundations on which your culture was built. And you should also have some understanding of history, not just seen through history books."
Yeah, I understand the skepticism towards the "literary establishment" and teachers who decide on the curriculum for high school English students. But what I got from you and coffee was a general disdain for literature as something worth studying, or even appreciating beyond the enjoyment you get from any given story. And I think literature is worth studying and appreciating, for its cultural relevance, for its insight, for its facility with language and showing us what can be done with words in the hands of a master.
Fiction can teach a lot about history and psychology and human relationships. (Obviously it can teach incorrect things and even bad things, but then, how much do you trust any given supposedly non-fiction book?)
If we're complaining about whoever the NYT or the London Review of Books has anointed as the latest Important Writer To Read, sure, a lot of the literary establishment does seem like a self-regarding, incestuous coterie. But, ya know, just like Hollywood. Or Wall Street. Or Washington. There is still (arguably) something being produced there that is of value.
I've read some Pulitzer and Man Booker Prize winners that had me going "Why?" But when I reflected honestly, they were actually well written and had something to say - it just wasn't for me.
I think we maybe don't disagree that much, I just dislike seeing people dismiss Literature as if it's all something invented by hoity leftist college professors.
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