An audience poll in three parts!

[theweaselking]

1) In order to be considered educated in modern English literature (paper, so no movies or TV), one must (at a a bare minimum) be familiar with:

[Insert your answer here]


Me, I'm thinking:

Brave New World
1984
Animal Farm
Heart Of Darkness
Hamlet[1]
Romeo And Juliet[1]
The Bible[1][2]
A Tale Of Two Cities

Basically, a reference or allusion to the major points of any of those should be caught by anyone.

What else should be on that list?


2) I'm also thinking of an "honorable mentions" list, with stuff like The Lord Of The Rings, Treasure Island, The Lottery, Lord Of The Flies, I Am Legend, Ender's Game[3], Catcher In The Rye, Atlas Shrugged[3] - stuff where people CAN still be considered well-read without having read them, but they may be missing out. What should be on that?


3) It is not a coincidence that "grade school curriculum" heavily overlaps my essentials list, I think. Is this confirmation bias, or an indication that the Essential Reading list for schoolchildren actually starts with some really good choices?



[1]: gets "Modern English" cred by proxy and influence
[2]: No, seriously, INFLUENCE. But annotated, so people should know The Empty Tomb and The Brutal Torture Of Innocent Job By The Allegedly Benevolent Overlord[4], but who gives a shit about Zachariah? Point is, you need the highlights becuse they show up, a LOT, in other places.
[3]: Being able to recognise popular crap as CRAP, and dissect the failures of logic, worldbuilding, and persuasion is an important skill that more people should have.
[4]: The Book Of Job is a demonstration that not only CAN Satan win, but that he wins any time he feels like putting any effort in, because God is a gullible chump. But this is a diversion.

Comments

[glenn-3.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that "Don't be silly, of course God isn't tricked into doing something He doesn't want to do. He assigned Satan to the task of testing people in the first place, knowing both that Satan would go about the job by killing a bunch of people just to put one guy on the spot, and also that Job would pass the test!" is really helping. I mean, yes, I know that Satan=job title, and that job is basically prosecuting attorney, so it's not about the Devil getting one over on God. But if you're trying to reassure people that things happen for Reasons...shouldn't you think of at least one solid reason? Testing somebody by torturing them, when you already know how it will turn out, isn't much of a reason, as far as I'm concerned. If anything, it's worse than random, because if Job hadn't been a conspicuously pious man, nobody would have bothered heaping misfortunes on him to see if he'd stop being one. *shrug* Your mileage obviously varies.

[cosmiccat.livejournal.com]

"God was testing you" is pretty much the solid reason given for everything bad that happens, though.

The Book of Job provides a catch-22 for these questions, of course - trying to guess God's motivations is exactly what story is advising against, on the grounds that he is a pan-universal being of infinite intelligence and power, and I can't make pancakes without burning them to the pan. God, as a character, operates under a convenient Omniscient Morality License which results in his motivations and activities becoming basically incomprehensible because we are not in full possession of the facts. The Book of Job takes the position that if God's apparent reasons for doing something do not satisfy you, it's due to a lack of information on your end and nothing else.

This same issue gets explored in a slightly more modern style in Paradise Lost, which is also about the ineffability and seeming tyrannical cruelty of God, with much of it framed around Satan losing faith in God's omniscience. (It's kind of a weak defence of God, though, because Satan gets all the best lines and makes a much better case for his position).

Anyway, I guess my point is that The Book of Job isn't what we bring up when we want to chortle about how God is a buffoon, it's what we throw in fundamentalists' faces when they say stupid things like "that hurricane was punishment for their sins". People figured out that line was obnoxious bullshit three thousand years ago and Job is the resulting warning against pretending to know the mind of God.