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to be shallow or not to be shallow
Apr. 8th, 2008 09:50 pmMaybe I am shallow. I mean, really, i cannot imagine dating someone who has more shoes than books. (ok, that's a stolen thought from some CL ad, sue me.) i have friends who have way way more shoes than books. that's fine. i've slept with people who failed the above. note the lack of relationship equation .... ok, i have even dated such folks (but note the past tense).
i may disagree with parts of the article. i want to belive that a liking for jonathen franzen would not be a deal breaker. i really do. but i also hate buying books with the oprah sticker on them. and movie tie-ins? boo, i say, boo.
but a person, by no means, has to love anything in The Canontm. (though, if that's all they love, that's as much of a death knell as not owning any books... ok FINE i'm SHALLOW.)
i really do think that bridget jones's diary is no worse (or better) than pride and prejudice, (except that austen didn't have a word processor to go and do a million edits. silly plots are still silly, no matter how many revisions.)
It’s Not You, It’s Your Books
By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: March 30, 2008
Some years ago, I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from a friend. She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!”
What are your literary dealbreakers?
We’ve all been there. Or some of us have. Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast. At least since Dante’s Paolo and Francesca fell in love over tales of Lancelot, literary taste has been a good shorthand for gauging compatibility. These days, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, listing your favorite books and authors is a crucial, if risky, part of self-branding. When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. Sussing out a date’s taste in books is “actually a pretty good way — as a sort of first pass — of getting a sense of someone,” said Anna Fels, a Manhattan psychiatrist and the author of “Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives.” “It’s a bit of a Rorschach test.” To Fels (who happens to be married to the literary publisher and writer James Atlas), reading habits can be a rough indicator of other qualities. “It tells something about ... their level of intellectual curiosity, what their style is,” Fels said. “It speaks to class, educational level.”
Pity the would-be Romeo who earnestly confesses middlebrow tastes: sometimes, it’s the Howard Roark problem as much as the Pushkin one. “I did have to break up with one guy because he was very keen on Ayn Rand,” said Laura Miller, a book critic for Salon. “He was sweet and incredibly decent despite all the grandiosely heartless ‘philosophy’ he espoused, but it wasn’t even the ideology that did it. I just thought Rand was a hilariously bad writer, and past a certain point I couldn’t hide my amusement.” (Members of theatlasphere.com, a dating and fan site for devotees of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” might disagree.)
( cut for your pleasure )
link
p.s. bob dylan won a pulitzer. LOL- Y/N?
i may disagree with parts of the article. i want to belive that a liking for jonathen franzen would not be a deal breaker. i really do. but i also hate buying books with the oprah sticker on them. and movie tie-ins? boo, i say, boo.
but a person, by no means, has to love anything in The Canontm. (though, if that's all they love, that's as much of a death knell as not owning any books... ok FINE i'm SHALLOW.)
i really do think that bridget jones's diary is no worse (or better) than pride and prejudice, (except that austen didn't have a word processor to go and do a million edits. silly plots are still silly, no matter how many revisions.)
It’s Not You, It’s Your Books
By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: March 30, 2008
Some years ago, I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from a friend. She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!”
What are your literary dealbreakers?
We’ve all been there. Or some of us have. Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast. At least since Dante’s Paolo and Francesca fell in love over tales of Lancelot, literary taste has been a good shorthand for gauging compatibility. These days, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, listing your favorite books and authors is a crucial, if risky, part of self-branding. When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. Sussing out a date’s taste in books is “actually a pretty good way — as a sort of first pass — of getting a sense of someone,” said Anna Fels, a Manhattan psychiatrist and the author of “Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives.” “It’s a bit of a Rorschach test.” To Fels (who happens to be married to the literary publisher and writer James Atlas), reading habits can be a rough indicator of other qualities. “It tells something about ... their level of intellectual curiosity, what their style is,” Fels said. “It speaks to class, educational level.”
Pity the would-be Romeo who earnestly confesses middlebrow tastes: sometimes, it’s the Howard Roark problem as much as the Pushkin one. “I did have to break up with one guy because he was very keen on Ayn Rand,” said Laura Miller, a book critic for Salon. “He was sweet and incredibly decent despite all the grandiosely heartless ‘philosophy’ he espoused, but it wasn’t even the ideology that did it. I just thought Rand was a hilariously bad writer, and past a certain point I couldn’t hide my amusement.” (Members of theatlasphere.com, a dating and fan site for devotees of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” might disagree.)
( cut for your pleasure )
link
p.s. bob dylan won a pulitzer. LOL- Y/N?
