Re: Warranty

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Thu, 10 Dec 1998 16:03:50 +1100 

J J R wrote:
> Nah...I think you both may not be giving your instructors enough credit. 
> If I were teaching a course involving Paz and Derrida, I'd first want to
> see my students present a valid reading of either of them before I heard
> the opinion of a student on the subjects those authors addressed.  It's
> almost the same type of complaint I had about Warren French.  Let me hear
> everyone else's opinion first--show me that you understand all the other
> points of view--THEN I'll listen to yours.

Well, yes and no. I don't think you necessarily have to know the other
opinions to form your own, although sometimes it helps to know what you're
up against (: . What I *did* object to though was the fact that he was not
at all interested in my own opinions, which I attempted to form as
independently from the critics as possible, where it would have in fact
been easier for me to just summarise their opinions. This was supposed to
be a course on Modernism in Art, which was a misnomer - we barely studied a
picture the whole time - all it was really was a Paz Comprehension Test, a
What Critics Say About Modernism In Art 101. 

In the case of Warren French (and I quite liked his book without finding it
spectacular) he had a slightly different task at hand and yes, it might
have been more productive to touch upon all the major strands of thought in
a book such as his. There's nothing I hate more than (and I'm not
necessarily accusing French of this) biographers and critics saying `And
then of course there was book/album/movie X which as we all know was
godawful' when I'm saying `Hey! Well actually I happen to think it's pretty
darn good!' I think in the case of biography it should be all or nothing -
the biographer should always be there or he/she never should. If it's 50-50
it just gets distracting and annoying.

Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest