And here we go!

Okay…  So, I don’t really do this blogging thing.  I have no desire really to have a blog page, but for the sake of the class, we’ll see what I can do. 

ANYWAY, let’s get cracking.  Talking about myself and my preferences within the written word, as anyone can tell from class yesterday, I enjoy High Fantasy- not that dribble released en masse by TSR and Tor books.  I enjoy Tolkien, Pullman, Lewis, the masters.  This probably comes from my desire to be a medievalist.  I’ve been hooked on Arthuriana since I was three.  That’s right.  I heard my first King Arthur story when I was three.  I watched “Sword in the Stone” at four.  I saw “Camelot” by six.  And one of my first full books was “King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.”  Probably why I sit around at nights writing screenplays revolving around Arthurian literature.  Honestly, I love the stuff. 

But moving beyond that, I enjoy greatly all forms of media.  To me, a week isn’t complete without a trip to the movies- preferably the Spectrum.  I prefer to see movies that have some plot and that make me think.    But I’ll sometimes indulge in an action flic or a comedy simply for the thrill. 

It’s important to me to read all sorts of work, even if I don’t particularly enjoy it.  I think it actually expands our minds and forces us to take new perspectives doing this.  I mean, we don’t always change from reading things we don’t wish to, and, if we did, I suppose we’d simply be zombies to the ideas of the author, but we should be mindful of other ideas and we should work to explore them to the best of our ability to do so.  If we gain nothing, we’ve lost nothing in the attempt.  If we gain something, then we come away somewhat more experienced, somewhat more learned.  I suppose we do that even if we don’t agree. 

Anyway, I don’t believe that there is a cut-off point in literature, only different methods and modes.  As I said in class yesterday, it’s like being in an animal family.  Wolves and dogs are related, but they aren’t the same animal.  It’s the same with, say, novels and screenplays or poetry.  And only a step further away are the performed works: performance poetry, theater, cinema.  They all tell a story, they all try to make us think about some issue, and all of them try to entertain.  This, then, is what I believe literature to be- It’s a work created to entertain and to enlighten.  Even a bad Hollywood comedy is trying to make us think about some issue.  Literature is intended to develop the mind in a manner that is exciting and entertaining.  Nobody in the world has ever said, “Gee, I think I’ll go out and write a really BORING novel.  Yeah, that’s what I think I’ll do today.” 

That said, there’s a lot of really BORING novels out there.  There are some really bad movies.  There are pieces so bad that they make you want to run for the hills.  If that’s the case, ouch.  But we’ve all been there, haven’t we?  Still, the lack of worth in these pieces doesn’t make them any less literature. 

So, there you have it folks, Ryan’s own rundown of literature.  If I have shown a preference for what I believe literature par excellence to be, I apologize to everybody who finds their own preferred works missed in the text above.  Still, I suppose this whole blog thing is to post our thoughts, so here they are. 

See you all in class.  Upwards and onwards.  To Be or Not to Be.  And all that.

Ryan