You know what's almost as bad as homossssssssssssssssssexuals?

[james_davis_nicoll]

English majors! Elitist English majors!

Contains OSC

Comments

[bibliofile]

BOO.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

still shaking his cane at youngsters who write in the present tense, I see.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

It's perhaps not unexpected to see that he's a multi-dimensional crank rather than merely being a homophobic one. I'm also deeply amused as his characterization of all atheists being cut from the same confrontational and antagonistic mold as Richard Dawkins - especially in Western Europe (which seems entirely invisible to Card, perhaps he believes this entire region of the world only exists in liberal propaganda), people who rarely think about religion seem far more common.

I followed some of the links, and my one criticism with comments about "what happened to OSC" is that it's pretty darn clear what happened - the seeds of all of the creepy are clearly present even in his writing from the 1970s, it's just that his ideas were far more mainstream then and so he felt far less need to speak out about them. I challenge anyone to read Songmaster (1980) and not conclude that the author has some serious issues regarding both children and homosexuality.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

I do love how he criticizes the present tense as artificial impossible language only appropriate for jokes - in the present tense.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Am I to understand that I am the only person here who has experienced the self-absorbed crap he describes so vividly from English "teachers"?

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

That book is possibly the creepiest thing I ever read and when I read it, it cast a pall over everything else of his I read. Because once you see it so clearly in that book, it's impossible to ignore in all the others.

One thing I would say though is that his ideas were not mainstream then: they were just not as embattled, Now there are far more people who embrace his wacky, creepy, vile ideas, and also more people who actively oppose them. Then I think people thought it was jus eccentricity rather than politics.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

No. There is in fact a reasonable critique to be made of the various (different) teaching methods out there for high school and college students. But Card doesn't make that critique.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Dear me, but the man is deluded about porn.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Point well made.

Still, it is difficult for me to take seriously any "authority" who refers to the tiny fraction of reality and potential reality covered by mundane fiction as "mainstream".

(Except as a burden on literacy. As that, the people who demonstrate the view that SF stands for "sneering face" are to be taken very seriously.)

EDIT: Ironically, a typo needed correcting.

[bwross.livejournal.com]

To be fair, he claims it isn't a "natural narrative choice" except for "jokes and anecdotes", and that "natural spoken English" does use the "true present tense". So it is appropriate for answering interview questions, because that would be speaking, not narrating.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

It's part and parcel of his issues concerning sexuality.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That book is possibly the creepiest thing I ever read and when I read it, it cast a pall over everything else of his I read. Because once you see it so clearly in that book, it's impossible to ignore in all the others.

Well said, that's exactly what happened with me. In the late 70s, I was a happy teenage reader to Card's fiction in Analog, then I read and enjoyed a couple of his novels (Hot Sleep & A Planet Called Treason). I loved his work, until I read Songmaster. After that, I largely stopped reading his work. I enjoyed the first three Alvin Maker books (the only works of his I read after Songmaster - I tried them because I loved the setting, and the books had considerably less creepy in them than his other work), but then I read his story "Lost Boys" and decided he was way too creepy to ever read anything by again.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Indeed. AFAIK, consuming porn has been clearly proven to have no effect on violence (sexual or otherwise). However, I've seen conflicting studies about the relationship between videogame violence and actual violence - from what I've read the truth about this relationship is at minimum complex and non-obvious, so Card has no clue about the effects of either porn or videogames. Then again, the statement "Card has no clue" can be widely applied.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Plausible, but I haven't looked into it personally for long enough to be willing to generalize that far myself.

(I realize generalizing is an indispensable adjunct to reason, since without it you smother in detail; but I overdid it as a kid, and still have the bite marks on my metaphorical ass.)

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

He's basically a Tea Party intelectual.

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

I must admit that I at first read that as a problem involving English military people. We don't major at UK universities, we read a subject, and retired English majors are known to be reactionary, writing incensed letters to newspapers. (I'm sure disgusted of Tunbridge Wells was a retired major.)

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Well, one does one's best.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

English majors are terrible, but captains and colonels are all right. It's a phase they go through, like teething.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

.... how would that even work? Teabaggers are antiintellectual - that's one of the two things (the other being racism) that DEFINE the movement.

Saying "Teabagger intellectual" is like saying "non-racist Teabagger" or "non-homophobic NOM member". It's adding a trait that is the opposite of a requirement for membership in that group.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Every time I watch Americans discuss English classes, the more respect I have for the teachers at Waterloo Oxford DSS.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Saying "teabagger intellectual" is like saying "everything in his imagination of himself exists to support and nurture his self-hatred".

Which is the sad thing about Card, nearly drowned out in the tidal way of loathsome and creepy; there's a capable mind in there. It's been absolutely convinced that it should hate itself for possessing some of its particular fundamental traits, and it works really hard at doing just that.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

It's not all like that, though. Really. I've seen plenty of reasonable English classes where the kids were engaged and learning how to communicate in useful registers in the language of public discourse of their community and their country (not always the same thing). And I've seen plenty of classes in which the kids were having a reasonably fine time reading and understanding and independently critiquing a wide variety of influential, interesting, and insightful written works.

There are ral problems, though. Which are not improved by simplistic "reforms" driven by politics and graft.

[bedii.livejournal.com]

If they never subjected you to "Watch 'Dream of the Wild Horses' and write an essay about it" then you should respect them. (Someone has posted a digitized version of one of the 16mm prints on YouTube. Ugh.)

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Except if I tell a story out loud, I am narrating it.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

"There is no human being without religion."
OK, I think we're done here.