Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Defending the Arts!

Just sitting here in a post grading stupor. Well actually, I've been grading on specific days over the past week or so--tonight I just finished up the last of it, entering grades, merging spreadsheets etc. I've been sitting on this bed for hours, my bottom is SORE.

Grading 78 exams is tiring, to say the least. I don't mind grading that much, but not in these quantities... no one can like it in these quantities. Especially when you're trying to put Helpful Comments etc. which only 1% of your students will read. At least that's the advantage to grading final exams--no comments necessary.

I still have the mini tv in here from when I was sick, so I watched Henry V and Almost Famous while doing all the technical stuff. I can't wait to graduate and get to working on my Henry V story!!

Today in my pseudo-theory course I was trying to defend the point that Fiction isn't just Made Up... that nothing can come into an author's mind that doesn't already exist. All people look at is hobbits, and they don't see how connected to the world literature is--hell, even the mass market stuff.

The topic came up because we were debating whether much of what we experience as "the brute facts" of reality is as constructed as a work of fiction. My final view was that there has to be Some sort of difference, at the very least because we've given it that difference; my example being that Israelis and Palestinians fight over UN documents more than they fight over Israeli and Palestinian literature. But I still think the lit is only another step removed away from the histories and the UN documents. If these things didn't resonate, if they didn't hold some sort of reality for us--whether it's in fantasy form, or in the theme, or in the structure of the writing--then we wouldn't read them. Art wouldn't matter to us, or captivate us.

Kind of reminds me of when I was 20 and trying to argue with my step-mother that taking obligatory English classes in Cegep isn't useless, even for an adult student returning to school in aircraft maintenance. ;-)

Well... if poli sci-ers can't appreciate how *real* Lord of the Rings is, then poopoo on them! They don't know what they're missing. :-)

(Another day you'll find me defending empirical sciences just as strongly. Really, everyone needs both an Arts and Science education!)

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