October 17, 2007 archive

C’mon, Nancy – the Republics are falling apart

– as in, decomposing?

You know – rotting away?

The ones in office are “retiring” or changing parties, the ones who would otherwise vote Republican are defecting in huge numbers – hell, even the ones who should be manning the ramparts, the architects of the Thousand-Year Republic Majority, those who you would think would form the bulwark of Republic stalwartness – BushCheney’s Republican Guard, if you will – are shedding their uniforms and melting into the general populace, in Shock and Awe at the reversal of their fortunes.

Profiles in Literature: Debating the Canon!

Greetings, literature-loving dharmiacs!  Last week we discussed the bizarre and wonderful Oulipo, who helped free us from notions of rules and rule-breaking by refocusing our attentions on structure and organization.  This week we’re going to take a step back and throw ourselves into one of the largest debates around literature: the canon.

What is the canon?  It’s that generally accepted corpus of books that we consider “great”, even if there’s a bit of variation about the specifics.  It’s why our high school reading lists are similar without being identical – Homer, Shakespeare, Twain – and why certain books get the deluxe leather-bound treatment centuries after they’ve been written.  But the canon is also a  problematic concept, and today we’re going to talk about why.

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