THE BEST OF APRIL

CARROLL - ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

"As an English teacher, this might come as a rather surprising view. I could not find a deeper layer of meaning to the novel & really my impressions sum up to this: CS Lewis was on drugs when he wrote it, CS Lewis had a fascination with narcotics (the constant shrinking, growing, sniffing, references to mushrooms), CS Lewis could be interpreted as a peodophile (controversial I know but there's room for interpretation), the plot & characters lack depth neither do they make sense :(.

I'm baffled as to why this is a classic. I even went in sparknotes to see what analysis was written and interpretations made; for me they are rather far-fetched & personally applied poorly. But hey, maybe you need to be stoned to appreciate this or a different kind of 'intellectual'."


NIETZSCHE - THE ANTI-CHRIST

"Would you say 'Santa Cluas is dead' or 'the Easter Bunny is dead'? No. God will never die because you can’t kill imagination and God is the king of the imaginarium."


MENANDER - SAMIA

"for all their sophistication in philosophy, law, and the arts--they were a failed people ... HOW WAS THIS STUFF POPULAR?"


ELIOT - THE WASTE LAND

"The web page assignment was the most difficult thing I have had to endure during my time as an English major ... I think I hate poetry. But, more than I hate poetry I hate T.S. Eliot and that James Joyce story was the most boring story I have ever read in my life. I don't understand Eliot and nothing happens, whatsoever, in The Dead."


JOYCE - A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

"It was SO WHINY. Poor me, poor me, blah blah blah ... James Joyce doesn’t write because he likes to write. James Joyce writes because he likes to make lit students suffer when they try to puzzle out what the hell he means. This, friends, is not art. This is evil, pure and simple. And that is why I hate A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ... I am placing much of the blame on my AP Literature teacher from my senior year of high school. First of all, she was really short (possibly less than 5 feet)"


SHAKESPEARE - THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

"of course Shakespeare isn’t known for having written female characters particularly well ... there’s no one in his work that measures up to Antigone, Cassandra or Euripides’ version of Elecktra."

"Person: Oh my God, I just love Shakespeare!
Me: Ew, why?
Person: Because he captures my emotions in such a poetic way.
Me: John Green does the same thing and you don't need to translate his words in order to read his works, let alone enjoy them."


WHITEHEAD - THE CONCEPT OF NATURE

"Science will one day make philosophy obsolete when the human condition is finally understood"