Quote: There are good writers who see this (don't like it) and write a 'response'.Which is why I stated it gets down to the point of "a dull pot of badness and stagnation". The good writers that get annoyed and
actively write against it are attempting to inject 'new blood', a fresh perspective into the Literarily inbred group. They flip out when you do that.
Parody is often a response to literary inbreeding. (I think this is an issue of phrasement rather than actually being counter to each other.
Not that literature and English classes are the only classes that are 'quote my response or fail' classes. I took the mandatory intro to Philosophy
course.... and got a lot of... "Though I have no actual specific coherent counter to your rebuttal, as its not the one that some guy came up with 500
years ago, your wrong. Dramatically wrong, for no reason I can specifically share at this point. Now copy down this rote response the other guy gave, the one
that is textbook canon, word for word, and therefore where I'm going next."
One of the things I did in school that most baffled a teacher was in ninth grade English. The teacher was teaching the normal English, this is important
because the previous year she was teacher AP 12th grade, Honors English and the English department head. This was the kind of teacher that literally assigned
us 10 vocabulary words a week... and required so much info on each word that each word took up Ten hours a week on words I mostly knew was insane. So in
the middle of year we got a book that contained both 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'West Side Story'.
We read R&J and I told the class and teacher that I hated it. Clearly, I must not have understood it or I'd love was the jist of the teachers
response. So I answered every question correctly, and explained all the plot elements of it they requested, even answered some of the classes questions. Then
I reminded them I hated this story. They asked me again how I could hate it, its a great story... I pointed out again that I was the only one in the class who
understood the story and the only one that hated it. They where confused that I pointed out there could be a connection there.
Next we read West Side Story. We where mostly done with the thing (reading the lines as the teacher read the stage notes... and we should read them at home
beforehand)... when I brought up that the two stories where the same story. This universally startled the class, the teacher told them I was right. They
where stunned. I pointed out that they were in the same book (all two plays of it) for a reason... this hadn't occurred to them. I pointed out the two
pages in the front of the book explained this point, as did the back cover. None of them knew this. I have one of the low scores in the class somehow... many
where honors students.
I think I hated it so much because they are both stories written for a romance with the rest of the plot as dressing and to make it a tragedy. On the other
hand having to read Paris' deadpan death speech, in class, left me crippled with laughter for over a half hour. Added to Macbeth and Hamlet in later years
Shakespeare made up for it. Then later the move the Globe Theatre across the river in one night to dodge taxes thing amused me greatly.. I've also seen
other stuff of his since and enjoyed it. The abridged works of Shakespeare as a two man show notably.
I also remember a college teacher telling us about how many of the Dickens era writers he liked... and that what they all had in common was that they all were
heavy drinkers, got lead poisoning from the lead crystal containers the booze was aged in and all had syphilis destroying there brains. Apparently this is a
large part of what made them good... this also happened with the academics of the time.