snap!

[adelaidesean]

Of his experience studying English at university level, Garry Disher says (in the latest issue of Lumen, the University of Adelaide Alumni Magazine):

"I hated it. Back then I was already keen on becoming a writer, and it seemed to me that English was going to ruin my love of reading and books. I found the analysis of the novels we were reading too academic, too difficult, and in some respects wrong-headed. But I was just a kid, what did I know? I wasn't ready for that way of looking at literature."

I had the same experience at high school. It feels very weird to be a PhD candidate now.

(Received my first knock-back for a conference paper the other day. It didn't occur to me that by entering this world I'd be opening myself to rejections from a whole new sector!)

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Listening to: Harold Budd & Robin Guthrie - How Close Your Soul

Comments

[mikandra.livejournal.com]

LOL!

As author, I'd be worried that some English teacher decides to study your work in class, and you'd have thirty students going: oh no, no way I'm ever reading (insert name of author) again!

In this way, my kids have developed a solid hate for Bridge to Terabithia which is being flogged to death in schools right now. They didn't even want to see the movie.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Ah, it's a shame when good books are killed by school! There should be a law against it. Or at least a law forbidding the forcing of books on kids who already have a feel for what they like. They should be able to analyse a book they already know, perhaps, rather than be dragged kicking and screaming through something they're only going to end up hating forever.