Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
It really kind of disturbs me when people imply that an arbitrary list of authors in an article needs to conform to some Politically Correct distribution model that equally highlights gender and/or nationality/religion/culture.
Roger Ebert is an older, English-speaking, male reader. What classic authors did you think he would mention?
It seems that every time something like this comes up, it invariably gets examined with an Affirmative Action microscope.
Sorry faithbw, I wasn't singling you out, my post just happened to follow yours.  |
Ebert's dire list made me get Harold Bloom's "Genius" from my bookshelf. Harold Bloom is a "white male" - born in 1930 - and as a literary critic he is probably as conservative as it gets. Yet even he looks at a much wider scope of authors whom he considers as literary genius, encompassing Muhammad and Murasaki Shikibu. You don't have to hold the opinion that no literary canon is complete unless it also features a female, Marxist writer with a disability from Guatemala to consider Ebert's list as parochial and limited. His college reading list from the 1960s doesn't even meet the criteria of the traditional canon as it does not feature any of the ancient authors.