Never Sarcastic

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tylercoates:

bbook:

In its multi-decade, 500+-episode run, The Simpsons has sported all sorts of popular culture references, from the Immortal Bard (a Hamlet parody still shown in high schools all across America by English teachers who want to get hip with the young people) to Spider-Pig (does whatever a spider-pig does).
Last night, The Simpsons aired a surprising homage to David Foster Wallace, titled “A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again,” which borrows its title — and plot — from DFW’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. The episode, in which Bart assumes the role of Wallace on his disdain-inducing luxury cruise, also includes musical snippets from Hot Chip (“Boy From School”) and Animal Collective (“Winter’s Love”).
With a television run as long as the one Matt Groening’s iconic series has had, there have been a whole lot of other surprising, notable and overall funny salutes to important literary tomes, from Hemingway to Stephen King to the Bible. Here’s a look back at just a few of the other key Simpsons moments that went by the book.
A Supposedly Brief Chronology of “The Simpsons” Literary References

This is great!

bbook:

In its multi-decade, 500+-episode run, The Simpsons has sported all sorts of popular culture references, from the Immortal Bard (a Hamlet parody still shown in high schools all across America by English teachers who want to get hip with the young people) to Spider-Pig (does whatever a spider-pig does).

Last night, The Simpsons aired a surprising homage to David Foster Wallace, titled “A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again,” which borrows its title — and plot — from DFW’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. The episode, in which Bart assumes the role of Wallace on his disdain-inducing luxury cruise, also includes musical snippets from Hot Chip (“Boy From School”) and Animal Collective (“Winter’s Love”).

With a television run as long as the one Matt Groening’s iconic series has had, there have been a whole lot of other surprising, notable and overall funny salutes to important literary tomes, from Hemingway to Stephen King to the Bible. Here’s a look back at just a few of the other key Simpsons moments that went by the book.

A Supposedly Brief Chronology of “The Simpsons” Literary References

This is great!

#A+ #the simpsons #lit

1 month ago on 05/01/12 at 06:47pm

280 notes

via Blackbook

infiniteadventure:

lupinatic:

here-is-the-place:

When people say these books are children’s books, as if to demean them, I balk. These books dealt with themes that adults do not fully understand or wish to. It dealt with racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, prejudice, and general ignorance. These books taught us that it doesn’t matter how you were raised, but that you get to choose to be kind, loyal, brave, and true. They taught us to be strong under the pressures of this world and to hold fast to what we know to be right. These books taught me so much, they changed me as a person. So just because they’re set against a fantastical backdrop with young protagonists does not mean that their value is any less real.

This.

First book: Starts with the double murder of a pair of twenty-one year olds who were much missed and leaving their baby son a war orphan. A child growing up in abusive conditions that would give Cinderella the horrors. Dealing with peers and teachers who are bullies. The fickleness of fame (from the darling of Gryffindor to the outcast.) The idea that there are things worth fighting and dying for, spoken by the child protagonist. Three children promptly acting on that willingness to sacrifice their lives, and two of them getting injured doing so.

Second book: The equivalent of racism with the pro-pureblood attitude. Plot driven by an eleven year old girl being groomed and then used by a charming, handsome older male. The imbalance of power and resultant abuse inherent in slavery. Fraud perpetuated by stealing something very intimate.

Third book: The equivalent of ableism with a decent, kind and competant adult being considered less than human because he has an illness that adversely affects his behaviour at certain times. A justice system that is the opposite of just. Promises of removing an abused child from the abusive environment can’t always be kept. The innocent suffer while the guilty thrive.

Fouth book: More fickleness of fame. The privileged mistreating and undermining the underprivileged because they can. A master punishing a slave for his own misjudgment, and the slave blaming herself. A sports tournament which involves mortal risk being cheered by spectators. A wonderful young man being murdered simply because he was in the way. A young boy being tortured, humilated and nearly murdered.

Fifth book: PTSD in the teenage protagonist. Severe depression in the protagonist’s godfather, triggered by inherited mental health issues and being forced to stay in a house where abuse occured. A bigoted tyrant who lives to crush everyone under her heel, torturing a teenager for telling the truth in the name of the government (and trying to suck his soul out too). The discovery that your idols can have feet of clay after all. An effort to save the life of someone dear and precious actually costing that very same life. The loss of a father-figure and the resultant guilt.

Sixth book: The idea that a soul can be broken beyond repair. Drugs with the potential for date rape are shown as having achieved exactly that in at least one case, resulting in a pregnancy. Well-meaning chauvinism trying to control the love life of a young woman. Internalised prejuidce resulting in refusing the one you love, not out of lack of love but out of fear of tainting them. The mortality of those that seem powerful and larger than life.

Seventh book: Bad situations can get worse, to the point where even the privileged end up suffering and afraid. More internalised prejudice and ~~fear~~ hysterical terror of tainting those you love. Self-sacrifice and the loss of loved ones, EVERYWHERE. Those who are bitter are often so with a reason. The necessity of defeating your inner demons, even though it’s never as cool as it sounds. Don’t underestimate those that are enslaved. Other people’s culture isn’t always like your own. Things often come full circle (war ending with the death of a dearly-loved pair of new parents and their orphaned baby son living with his dead mother’s blood relative instead of his young godfather). Even if ‘all is well’ the world is still imperfect, because it’s full of us brilliant imperfect humans.

So… still think that Harry Potter is a kid’s series with no depth?

Note to self: Print this off, give to English teacher.

(via merewetherdreams)

#accurate #harry potter #lit #reading #education #important

1 month ago on 05/01/12 at 02:31pm

56,078 notes

via fhloston-paradise

Reading Hurts

treesquirrrel:

That moment when you finish a book, look around, and realize that everyone is just carrying on with their lives as though you didn’t just experience emotional trauma at the hands of a paperback.

(via mildlyamused)

#emotional trauma #reading #lit

3 months ago on 02/15/12 at 04:33pm

143,072 notes

via treesquirrrel

Happy Valentine’s Day!

(via A Love Poem For Girls Who Read)

#valentines day #reading #the best #love #poetry #lit

3 months ago on 02/14/12 at 03:15pm

3 notes

via BuzzFeed

You said one of the best things about Steinbeck is that he writes things that are realistic, but I don’t see what’s so realistic about having a terrible life.

one of my boyfriend’s very privileged 7th grade students in a discussion about John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony

#lit #john steinbeck #the red pony

3 months ago on 02/08/12 at 07:13pm

8 notes

Fan Fiction and Why it Matters

findingsherlock:

FS says: Fan fiction is one of those guilty pleasures of fandom that people pretend not to know about, or read, much less write. But its been done for ages from Hellenistic Greek Tragedy to the first of the Sherlock Holmes pastiches (did you know that Mark Twain wrote one?) to the latest BBC Sherlock crack-fic.

The quote below suggests that, fanfic is just a legal category, not a creative one, which I buy as a reminder of the actual artistic value of fanfic, but I would argue isn’t that helpful to us communication and media theorists who really study fan culture.

Because in essence, fanfic functions theoretically differently than “regular” fiction, and here is why:

1. First the challenge is greater in some ways because the writer must stay in character since their audience consists of experts of those characters.

2. The distribution of fanfic is different. The internet has increased the access of fanfic writers, many who have never been officially published, to an audience directly.

3. There is also an increase in actual interaction with readers, both through positive and negative commentary, and through fan creations like art and additional fanfic inspired by the stories

4. Because there is no actual profit involved, the writer can directly address issues that would not be faced by market driven publishers. More LGBTQ stories, explicit sex, BDSM, trans* issues, consent, disability, and more, are addressed in fascinating ways that allow scholars to really use this fiction to analyze a broader range of actual cultural make-up than officially published material.

5. The tropes of fanfic are different, by far, than those used by officially sanctioned media, which marks it as a unique category of text.

I could go on, and I will (in other posts today) because this is what I find so fascinating about the history of the Sherlock fandom. And (this is the main thrust of my comments) this is why fanfic is of extreme value to the cultural historian or communication theorist. To ignore fanfic as “amateur” or as “silly” and deem it not worth studying is to critically miss both the natural thrust of the reader/writer relationship, but also to loose something that is a valuable resource.

Never let someone tell you that fanfic is silly or stupid or dorky or wrong. Fanfic is something that is an inherent part of who we are as natural storytellers, and something that reveals far more about our daily lives/thoughts/understanding/issues than “published” works do.

I’ll be going on about this later today, but this, my dear fandom is why what we do everyday on here is vital.

saathi1013:

“Storytelling is basic to our species. It’s one of the ways we parse our experience of the universe. Whatever moves us or matters to us will show up in the stories we tell, whether or not we have a socially approved outlet for those stories. It might surprise you to find out how many writers have works of personal erotica tucked away in their unpublished-or-unpublishable manuscript trunks. There’s no good way to get those published, but they write them anyway, because they’re writers, and eroticism is an important part of our lives.

“Good fiction gets under our skin. It can change the way we see the world. But whatever its effect, it’s a significant experience. It would be a bizarre thing—unnatural, even—for writers to not engage with that experience. They always have. I could show you stuff centuries old—heck, some of it’s millennia old—that’s fanfic by any modern definition.

“Of course, it would have to be a modern definition. In a purely literary sense, fanfic doesn’t exist. There is only fiction. Fanfic is a legal category created by the modern system of trademarks and copyrights. Putting that label on a work of fiction says nothing about its quality, its creativity, or the intent of the writer who created it.

“The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year went to March, a novel by Geraldine Brooks, published by Viking. It’s a re-imagining of the life of the father of the four March girls in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Can you see a particle of difference between that and a work of declared fanfiction? I can’t. I can only see two differences: first, Louisa May Alcott is out of copyright; and second, Louisa May Alcott, Geraldine Brooks, and Viking are dreadfully respectable.

“I’m just a tad cynical about authors who rage against fanfic. Their own work may be original to them, but even if their writing is so outre that it’s barely readable, they’ll still be using tropes and techniques and conventions they picked up from other writers. We have a system that counts some borrowings as legitimate, others as illegitimate. They stick with the legit sort, but they’re still writing out of and into the shared web of literature. They’re not so different as all that.

“Fanfic means someone cares about what you wrote.

“Personally, I’m convinced that the legends of the Holy Grail are fanfic about the Eucharist.

“This really is a basic impulse.”

— “Fanfic”: force of nature

by Patrick at Making Light

(Full Article at Making Light)

(via homoerotics)

#THIS #THIS #THIS #fanfiction #fandom #writing #reading #lit

4 months ago on 02/01/12 at 12:39am

671 notes

via saathi1013

Newt Gingrich is an idiot of great renown. …There is something so hopelessly gross and vile about him that it’s hard to take him seriously. So let’s not take him seriously.

Some small-time children’s book author named MAURICE SENDAK, to Stephen Colbert, on The Colbert Report.

Where the accurate things are.

(via inothernews)

#maurice sendak #lit #newt gingrich #politics #smart people saying smart things

4 months ago on 01/25/12 at 12:27am

363 notes

via inothernews

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idontgettobeasaint:

Firstly, angels simply don’t dance..

(via ewannmcgregors)

#Good Omens #lit #queue

4 months ago on 01/15/12 at 10:10am

46 notes

via amorphous-abstraction

My dick is the enemy of Penguin Classics

(via feckyeahrussellhoward)

#russell howard #comedians #lit

6 months ago on 11/21/11 at 03:38pm

414 notes

via bloodydeath11

Terry Pratchett starts process to end his life | The Observer ›

Sir Terry Pratchett, the fantasy writer who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2008, said yesterday he had started the formal process that could lead to his own assisted suicide at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.
Pratchett, whose BBC2 film about the subject of assisted suicide is to be shown on BBC2 tomorrow, revealed he had been sent the consent forms requesting a suicide by the clinic and planned to sign them imminently.

“The only thing stopping me [signing them] is that I have made this film and I have a bloody book to finish,” he said during a question-and-answer session following a screening at the Sheffield documentary festival Doc/Fest.

He said that he decided to start the process after making the film Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die, which shows the moment of death of a motor neurone sufferer, millionaire hotel owner Peter Smedley.

Pratchett, the creator of the Discworld novels who was 60 when he was diagnosed, said his decision to start the formal process did not necessarily mean he was going to take his own life.

According to Dignitas, 70% of people who sign the forms do not go through with taking their own lives.

I’m glad this is a decision that he is legally allowed to make for himself, but the world will certainly be a sadder place without him. Is it selfish of me to hope he’s one of the 70%?