I blogged recently about a contest at the Strand Bookstore in New York City. If you recall, the top 80 books to be named as favorites by customers would be featured at the front of the store, and certain prizes were to be given away.
The results are in:
1. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. Great Gatsby
4. Catcher in the Rye
5. Atlas Shrugged
6. The Fountainhead
7. Lord of the Rings
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Marquez)
9. Jane Eyre
10. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
11. Lolita
12. 1984
13. On the Road (Kerouac)
14. Gone With the Wind
15. Anna Karenina
16. Brothers Karamazov
17. Crime and Punishment
To see the rest, go to Strand's website.
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Monday, November 26, 2007
Friday, August 17, 2007
Technical Writers on Chaucer
From Writers Write:
(Four, it also made me much more likely to write things in ordered lists, a habit I'm still trying to break.)
Anyway, I think the professor may have a point, but I would disagree with his reasoning. The main reason, IMNSHO, is that real Literature and Creative Writing programs in most influential American universities were long ago murdered, cremated, and put away in ancient crypts to be treated as frightening relics of "The Old Establishment". These programs have mostly been replaced by so-called Critical (or Gender) Theory with its relativist yet at the same time dogmatic cultural ethos (meaning anything goes as long as it is anti-white, anti-male, and anti-corporation) and its non-existent writing standards.
Though neither Technical Writing nor modern Literature courses have anything to do with literature, at least Technical Writing has the distinction of teaching its graduates to actually write and to think intelligently and productively about what they're reading. How revolutionary.
A professor argues that technical writers are the future of American literature. Utah Valley State College English professor Scott Hatch says that the great American literature of the early 20th century was penned by journalists such as Ernest Hemingway, but in the future it is the technical writers who have the best training to be novelists.As you may know, I used to be a technical writer. Can't say that I loved it, but it was a good job for me in a couple respects. One, it made me learn to produce words even when I didn't want to. Two, it instilled excellent editing skills. And three, it made me say to myself, "Oh, look. It's a writer looking back at me in the mirror. Hey, that's really what I do for a living! Cool!"
(Four, it also made me much more likely to write things in ordered lists, a habit I'm still trying to break.)
Anyway, I think the professor may have a point, but I would disagree with his reasoning. The main reason, IMNSHO, is that real Literature and Creative Writing programs in most influential American universities were long ago murdered, cremated, and put away in ancient crypts to be treated as frightening relics of "The Old Establishment". These programs have mostly been replaced by so-called Critical (or Gender) Theory with its relativist yet at the same time dogmatic cultural ethos (meaning anything goes as long as it is anti-white, anti-male, and anti-corporation) and its non-existent writing standards.
Though neither Technical Writing nor modern Literature courses have anything to do with literature, at least Technical Writing has the distinction of teaching its graduates to actually write and to think intelligently and productively about what they're reading. How revolutionary.
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