be youre wunna them fay-gits who thinks Shakespeare is better than Scrubs, too, huh?
Yeah I definitely like Shakespeare, but Macbeth is the only play I've done a serious close reading of. Most people's experience with Shakespeare comes from being forced to read it in secondary school. I didn't like it much then either. I found, on revisiting it though, and reading the play and discussing it with smart people, and reading some of the great works of Shakespeare criticism alongside, that my appreciation for Shakespeare has skyrocketted. Most people won't be willing to do that, though, and will stop as soon as they decide that the language is too hard and its "hella boring". And I know that almost nobody thinks that Shakespeare is the greatest writer ever anymore, mainly because believing so doesn't seem sufficiently individualistic. That's fine though. I'm not here to argue that Shakespeare is the best ever, just putting a book that caters to nothing but the hormonal problems of 8th graders (Catcher in the Rye) above Hamlet is absolutely nuts, and shoots that particular list's credibility to nothingness.
well thats comforting to know, you can apply it to Shakespeare who was inifinitely more popular than any of those things, smartarse
Thats irrelevant! I didn't say "if its popular, then its bad", I said "its being popular does not necessarily mean it is good". I know young CFCish males these days think its blasphemy to assert that there is such a thing as expertise in anything but math and science, but the sheer fact that almost every great critic throughout history has thought Shakespeare #1 ought to give you pause.
As for 1984, I certainly think its a good book, I just think it is a ridiculous exaggeration to call it the best book ever. Of course, I know young CFCish males these days think its blasphemy to assert that there is such a thing as objective facts about anything other than math and science, but I happen to think that there are such things as objective aesthetic facts, and 1984 just doesn't make the cut. Here's why:
It admits maybe 2 serious readings before you've had everything it has to offer. You can go through it, make a little tally chart of "things Orwell is warning against", and once you get done with that, the book is
over. I mean, you can argue about plot details (was the war real, is big brother an actual person or just an image, or whatever) but that gets boring fast enough. There are no good characters. Political novels are, in general, a notch below more traditional novels, and so on and so forth.
