Reading in USA Schools / A2A by that NSA-attracting author name

[Michael Bailey]

On 3/26/06, Henry Musikar <hmusikar at speakeasy.net> wrote:
> Doo, doo-doo doo-doo, doo-doo,
> Reading in the USA
>
> http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/education/14175174.htm
>
> Henry
>

from the article:
"In 1999, novelist Francine Prose decried the move toward digestible
literature."
-- with such a name, excellent career choice!

also this (referring to the College Board's "101 Great Books" for
college-bound students):  "Willa Cather, Ralph Ellison, James Agee,
Herman Melville and Thomas Pynchon all make the cut, but not the
perennial favorites of school districts like Amy Tan, J.R.R. Tolkien
and Ayn Rand."

Brings back some memories.
This was pre-Amy Tan but gee, Tolkien and Rand - nobody read those in
class!  Lord of the Flies maybe...

One girl from our school took Ayn Rand to heart, majored in physics
and philosophy in college, and worked at Bell Labs and NASA later.

But she certainly didn't read TF or AS as an assignment!  I remember
reading AS in my grandma's house, kinda wincing at times ("Hey
Frisco!"  "Hey Slug!") and skimming the long speeches...best part for
me was the cigarettes with the dollar sign logo...I guess I wondered
if all those smart people were so all-falutin' smart how come they
couldn't convince the rest of humanity to go their way...and also did
they never screw up, was it always somebody else's fault?

Still, hard to fault good old Ayn Rand - as Bonnie Surfus wrote,
"Rand, who died about 5 years ago, had rather a cult following,
particularly for her _The Fountainhead_ and _Atlas Shrugged_; the latter,
a title that is brilliantly simple yet so FULL.  In terms of Pynchon, you
can most likely "see" something of the associaten simply by considering
this title alone.  But the book is rather short and it _is_ compelling
reading, so you may want to have a look."
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9410&msg=391&keywords=bonnie%20surfus%20atlas%20shrugged

But they're making them read Ayn Rand in school now?
And Tolkien?  Gosh, that was practically subversive not so long ago...

(Was anybody else bummed out about Peter Jackson taking most of the
poetry and songs out in favor of more battle scenes?  (still enjoyable
tho - but no Tom Bombadil? He's only, like, the coolest cat in Middle
Earth!))

Kids these days!
---------
In between trying to move ahead in IJ, I've had a couple peeks at
"From Asininity to Assassination" by "Pyro Atomic Bomb"
Much in there brings to mind TRP's official opuses, but one thing that
may not even be significant is the citation of "Bodin" (French
philosopher who argued against revolution because progress occurs only
during political stability)
I've always held that Pig Bodine is meant among his other conjurations
to remind us of Bodin's valuable contributions


--
"Acceptance, forgiveness, love - now that's a philosophy of life!"
-Woody Allen, as Broadway Danny Rose