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Harper Lee has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Harper Lee has died

#111

Post by douche »

moron4hire wrote: post #110
dvt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to be some literature snob, but GRRM can't hold a candle to the profound impact Harper Lee has had on American culture as a whole (not to mention that she won a Pulitzer and a Presidential Freedom Medal). It's almost insulting even bringing up a quote from ASOIAF.

Funny how people forget that the classics were once populist pieces.

Case in point, Shakespeare. Some people like to forget that he was a huge fan of sprinkling in dick jokes and clowns smacking each other over the head with inflated bladders to play to the groundlings.

Re: Harper Lee has died

#113

Post by karmelapple »

dvt wrote: post #39
3minus1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer George R.R. Martin “Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?' 'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him.”

Not trying to be some literature snob, but GRRM can't hold a candle to the profound impact Harper Lee has had on American culture as a whole (not to mention that she won a Pulitzer and a Presidential Freedom Medal). It's almost insulting even bringing up a quote from ASOIAF.

A truly powerful statement is powerful regardless of the background of the person who wrote it.

Sometimes statements can be powerful because of who said it... but dismissing a quote just because someone has a certain background? I don't like an idea being discredited because of a person's impact of society.

I really appreciated reading both of these quotes. I'm glad they were contributed.

Re: Harper Lee has died

#115

Post by morley »

guylepage3 wrote: post #77
616c wrote: post #45

Nothing blew my mind in the last few years like discovering how close Harper Lee and Truman Capote were, as they were both authors I idolized at different stages of my life. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/books/harper-lee-and-truma... And that Dill was partially based on her childhod friendship with Capote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee#Early_life This seems to be well established now in pop culture and…

Oh wow. I had no idea they were friends. Thank you for posting this article.

Harper Lee (played by the great Catherine Keener) is a major supporting character in the film Capote.

Re: Harper Lee has died

#116

Post by ktRolster »

cm2012 wrote: post #68
dvt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to be some literature snob, but GRRM can't hold a candle to the profound impact Harper Lee has had on American culture as a whole (not to mention that she won a Pulitzer and a Presidential Freedom Medal). It's almost insulting even bringing up a quote from ASOIAF.

You are in fact being a huge literature snob saying that it's insulting to even compare the two. To Kill a Mockingbird was culture changing because it touched on such an important issue to American culture (race relations, etc.), while also being a well written book grounded in the human spirit. It is not objectively better written than ASOIAF, which has surprising depth and a keen understanding of the human spirit i…

If Atticus were a one-dimensional character, then a complex analysis like this one couldn't have been written:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/the-courthouse-...

He wasn't one-dimensional, he was very complex and real.

Re: Harper Lee has died

#117

Post by ktRolster »

jackbravo wrote: post #57
haberman wrote: post #13

I loved "To Kill a Mockingbird" so much when I read it as a kid. The moral of the story seemed really obvious. In the last few years I came across this article which blew my mind and changed my perspective about the book's meaning a lot: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/the-courthouse-...

What a great article. I specially liked this bit: Orwell didn’t think that Dickens should have written different novels; he loved Dickens. But he understood that Dickens bore the ideological marks of his time and place. His class did not see the English social order as tyrannical, worthy of being overthrown. Dickens thought that large contradictions could be tamed through small moments of justice. He believed in the…

It's also the only practical thing to do if the status quo is against you.

Re: Harper Lee has died

#118

Post by foldr »

rayiner wrote: post #89
douche wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree. I wonder if part of the general illiteracy is a reaction to the dreck that we are forced to read in school. At least in high school English classes you get to read some legitimate literature. In middle school, I remember being subjected to an unending string of aggressively mediocre young-adult historical fiction and science fiction that featured teen-aged girls as protagonists by my all-female Engli…

Tolkien is dreck. There I said it. It took my over a year to read Fellowship of the Ring because of how indescribably boring it is.

Dreck isn't really fair. Tolkien definitely isn't a great prose writer. But you only have to look at his imitators to see how much worse LOTR could have been without Tolkien's uniquely scholarly take on the elves+dwarves+dragons formula. (A formula which he partly invented.)

edit: I suppose I should add a note indicating that I'm aware of the absence of dragons in LOTR.

Re: Harper Lee has died

#119

Post by dvt »

cm2012 wrote: post #68
dvt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to be some literature snob, but GRRM can't hold a candle to the profound impact Harper Lee has had on American culture as a whole (not to mention that she won a Pulitzer and a Presidential Freedom Medal). It's almost insulting even bringing up a quote from ASOIAF.

You are in fact being a huge literature snob saying that it's insulting to even compare the two. To Kill a Mockingbird was culture changing because it touched on such an important issue to American culture (race relations, etc.), while also being a well written book grounded in the human spirit. It is not objectively better written than ASOIAF, which has surprising depth and a keen understanding of the human spirit i…

I think it's fairly obvious that TKAMB is objectively better than ASOIAF.

What next? You'll tell me that Dante Alighieri's 'Divine Comedy' isn't objectively better than Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code'? Or that 'The Grapes of Wrath' isn't objectively better than 'Fifty Shades of Grey'?

I don't buy your bullshit relativism.

Re: Harper Lee has died

#120

Post by douche »

dvt wrote: post #119
cm2012 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are in fact being a huge literature snob saying that it's insulting to even compare the two. To Kill a Mockingbird was culture changing because it touched on such an important issue to American culture (race relations, etc.), while also being a well written book grounded in the human spirit. It is not objectively better written than ASOIAF, which has surprising depth and a keen understanding of the human spirit i…

I think it's fairly obvious that TKAMB is objectively better than ASOIAF. What next? You'll tell me that Dante Alighieri's 'Divine Comedy' isn't objectively better than Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code'? Or that 'The Grapes of Wrath' isn't objectively better than 'Fifty Shades of Grey'? I don't buy your bullshit relativism.

Standing a questionable comparison next to two others that are more clear-cut doesn't make the first more true.

One of these is an engrossing tale that gets richer on every read-through. The other has a character named Scout.

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