thesaurus? dictionary? anyone?
I think sometimes that either university was such a waste or that authors (particularily English Lit. profs turned writers) are using the thesaurus far to much.
I am currently reading A Whistling Woman by A.S. Byatt - I have ready a few of her other novels (Possession and Babel Tower) and quite enjoy her range and knowledge. She makes me really think about what I am reading. Which frankly, doesn't happen all that much with modern novels.
Anyways - I came across a word I didn't know. Actually a word I had to look up.
In my defence, I have read about 60% of the 100 novels and classics in English Literature and graduated 4 years of university with a degree in English Literature. I also still read quite a bit. Arguably some are trash, junk food novels just for fun but I do read modern classics as well.
So how, I ask, can I have not known this word? My guess is that she - the author - put it in there to make everyone reading it question themselves and their literacy. Or she got thesaurus happy after a bottle of MASI.
posted by alisa at
7:51 p.m.
1 Comments:
That's not fair! -- You didn't tell us what the word is!
I didn't quite get an degree in English. In fact, i didn't quite get a degree at all. But, for a time, i was making quite an effort to be well-read -- i'd try to mix classics with modern novels, and fiction with non-fiction. And still i'd stumble upon (and over) words that i wasn't familiar with ... and i had that feeling that i didn't belong in that book! It annoyed me. Have you ever tried reading John Ralston Saul? Ugghh. That guy made me feel so brainless, dazed, deficient, dense, dim, dodo, doltish, dopy, dotterel, dull, dumb, dummy, foolish, futile, gullible, half-baked, half-witted, idiotic, ill-advised, imbecilic, inane, indiscreet, insensate, irrelevant, irresponsible, laughable, loser, ludicrous, meaningless, mindless, moronic, naive, nonsensical, obtuse, pointless, puerile, rash, senseless, short-sighted, simple, simple-minded, slow, sluggish, stolid, stupefied, thick, thickheaded, trivial, unintelligent, unthinking, and witless. Ya know?
2:19 a.m.
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