tonight i went to some friends' house for dinner for dinner. i helped them decorate their christmas tree. tried my first stinger - brandy and creme de menthe over ice. refreshing.
then i watched part of the movie version of the heart of darkness because their daughter had a test on it the next day and she hadn't read the book - but had read the spark notes version (what happened to cliff notes?). not apocalypse now, but some version with tim roth and john malkovich where everyone looks brooding and delivers their stilted lines really slowly. it was pretty bad. while watching the movie, she also finished her essay on the metamorphosis by kafka. you know, where the main character has turned into a giant cockroach.
i read heart of darkness in high school but don't remember any of it. didn't read any kafka, but i do recall a lot of hermann hesse. my general impression is that high school english curriculums are mostly based on how damn depressing the stories are. although i do love to kill a mockingbird. but everything else made me want to slash my wrists. i mean, i alread listened to morrisey and the cure a lot then - how did i not actually jump off a bridge? who picks these books? go ahead and chime in with the books you loved or hated in high school.
4 comments:
your description of high school english is perfect. I too can't believe that i survived. I was sooo emo before emo was emo and tight blk jeans. i just found a tape of the smiths and depeche mode. yikes.
oh, the books. are you kidding? we weren't really required to read "real" stuff. I did my senior project on Alice in Wonderland, with all the drugs and political refs included.
I did read Crime and Punishment for a book review in HS. My teacher didn't know what to do with it. or was that me? dunno.
emo - different packaging with every generation, but still basically the same.
man did i ever love nirvana. what did i really have to be so angry/angsty about?
Um, Jeff...I did a book review on Drew Barrymore's "auto"biography...hmmm what does that say about me? Talk about depressing (and lack of motivation for difficult reading). And for the record, one of the many concerts I went to in high school I might have been Morrissey.
Ann Rice! I wrote a senior paper on Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles!
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