“In the spirit of Christmas grumpiness,” The Times Online asked a bunch of arts-and-letters types to complain about the putative classics that they secretly despise. There were some outstanding nominations: Romeo and Juliet, Charles Dickens, Monty Python. On the whole, though, the contributors set their sights too low, I think. Tom Waits? Oasis? I’d argue that since neither of these acts qualify as classics, they don’t even deserve our secret disdain. I think most of us have been happy to scoff openly at Oasis for some time now.
I would save my spite for Moby Dick. Or the faux-populist preener Bruce Springsteen. Or the insistently hardboiled David Mamet. Or soccer. Lumps of coal all around, if you ask me.
But to friends of Catapult, and especially to everyone who talked back this year: Have yourselves some merry little Christmases.
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Heart of Darkness most especially when assigned as summer reading in high school, leaving poor unsuspecting teens to slog through unguided and as lost as Mr. Kurtz.
ReplyDelete"The insistently hardboiled David Mamet" made me guffaw...and I can't argue with anything on your list. Merry Christmas!
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