Re: alien worlds

Emily Friedman (bananafish_9@yahoo.com)
Wed, 17 Feb 1999 09:34:56 -0800 (PST)

---Scottie Bowman <rbowman@indigo.ie> wrote:
>
>     
>     Well, Matt.  If you say so.  But how depressing.
> 
>     You paint a picture of teenagers whose curiosity 
>     doesn't extend beyond the end of Main Street & 
>     whose emotional responses are limited to the tragedies 
>     of High School.  
> 
>     In self-justification, I should have to say that in 
>     a small provincial seaport in wartime Ireland there 
>     weren't too many cosmopolitans eager to reminisce 
>     about Paris in the Twenties or guide a newcomer 
>     through the intricacies of European cuisine.  
>     Finding out about all that stuff was simply an added 
>     excitement to the electrification of discovering this wholly 
>     new way the man had found to use words.
> 
>     If Bananafish are truly confined in their imaginations 
>     to what they already find familiar then the question arises: 
>     what the hell are they doing on a list ostensibly devoted 
>     to literature?
> 
>     Scottie B.

I agree. The reason why I read a lot of books from the 1920s era is
because I am very interested in history and by reading literature from
different eras one has an idea of what life was like. Matt does make a
good point that American teenagers are not interested in Hemingway
because the stories often take place in places they have never heard
of. Many Americans are very close minded and have no interest of the
rest of the world. Why watch a movie about WWII if you were not born
yet? Or why watch a foreign film if they are not speaking in your
language? Many American teenagers would feel this way, even though it
is very absurd, becuase they have no interest in anything that is
different or does not pertain to them and their world. In this way
Matt's post is sadly true. 
-Liz Friedman  
> 
> 
> 

_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com