History Literature / WhyLiteratureIsBadForYou

# Seven Types of Immaturity.[[note]]Consisting of "Growing Down With the Victorian Novel: The Transformation of Barbara Tieterman", "How Literary Folk Thrive on Crisis", "The Fine Art of Uncooperation", "Fate and Determinism as Cop-Outs", "Turning Self-Knowledge into Self-Centeredness", "How Literature Gives Us the Lust for Revenge", and "Learning to Hate the Older Generation".[[/note]]
# Seven Avenues to Unawareness.[[note]]"Misunderstanding Motivation", "The Art of Categorizing Individuals and Oversimplifying Human Nature", "What's True of Me Is True of Everybody: How Literature Makes Us Project", "How Literature Separates Us from Our Feelings", "How Reading Makes Us Lazy", "Our High Toleration of Incompetence", and "The Virgin and the Crowbar: Increasing our Hostility".[[/note]]
# Five Avenues to Unhappiness.[[note]]"Does Literature Cause Insanity?", "Getting Hung Up on the Past", "Traveling in the Realms of Gold: Does Literature Make Us Materialistic?", "Being Naive about Ingratitude", "How to Get Ulcers from the Great Books".[[/note]]
# Four Ways to Decrease Our Mental Powers.[[note]]"The Misuse of Opinion", "The Misuse of Memory", "The Misuse of Evidence" and "The Misuse of Ideas".[[/note]]
# Four Ways of Failing to Communicate.[[note]]"Why We Distort the Language", "Why We Write Badly", "Why We Gossip", and "Does Literature Cause Censorship?"[[/note]]

!Tropes discussed in the book:

-->"Several years ago I heard an eminent English professor give a speech attacking a retired millionaire industrialist who wanted to endow a professorial chair dedicated to "The Fight Against Communism." The professor correctly argued that an endowment based on a preconceived thesis would go against the very purpose of the university which was the free and open pursuit of truth, whatever that truth might turn out to be. Nobody stopped to consider that the discipline of the "humanities" also went forward on a preconceived thesis---that art is good for people. Perhaps we were too busy dragging reluctant science majors and engineers into our classrooms to "broaden" them by force-feeding them with famous works of art. We felt it was our responsibility to "humanize" these "rigid technicians" before they got out into the world where they could damage civilization with their weapons and pollutants. Now, years later, as I look back on it I feel that we not only failed to humanize them but actually succeeded in making them more inflexible and Insensitive than they might have been before they were sent up to us. I feel that in those required courses we gave them enough exposure to the corrupting powers of art to make them more narrow, immature, and dishonest than they might have been before. We called this "awareness" and told them they couldn't achieve dignity without it."

-->"Art is usually viewed, and taught, as something that's broad, deep and flexible, packed with the variety of life itself. But there is more propaganda than truth in this. I think it would be more accurate to say that art is a rather narrow kind of phenomenon, capable of doing only a few things over and over. One of these things is approval of its subject, regardless of what it is and regardless of what the artist may have intended. Even a satirist is prohibited by the nature of art from taking a stance against the things he purports to attack, because his artistry always makes his target too natural, too interesting and attractive. We can see this in Juvenal's Third Satire, a lengthy attack on Ancient Rome, in which that decadent city is described with such detail that we'd all like to go there. The angry Juvenal well illustrates the principle that it's hard for art to be against anything. Genuine art is simply too good to repel us. It is an affirmation, often a joyous one, of practically everything that exists, whether it be good or evil. But ninety percent of art is about evil, for that's the most interesting thing to write about---the universe being cruel to people and people being cruel to each other and to themselves."

* {{Paranoiac}}: Only one of many ways studying too much literature can drive someone nuts, according to the book.

* MeasuringTheMarigolds: Discussed in "The Art of Categorizing Individuals and Oversimplifying Human Nature," which essentially argues that spending too much time with characters, rather than real people, tends to make people want to put real human beings into types or [[TvTropesWillRuinYourLife tropes.]]

* BadWriting: Discussed in "Why We Write Badly"--more specifically, how the work of good writers can attract people to attract people who write badly.

--> "But our authors, and our psychiatrists too, are interested primarily in the unique individual, the singular and even the abnormal man or woman. Because creative geniuses themselves tend to be 'different', full of peculiarities and hangups, it's not surprising that they choose abnormal people like themselves to write about.

* FailureHero: In "Our High Toleration of Incompetence," Thorpe argues that overexposure to this trope leads to people accepting incompetence as a way of life. He goes on to point out how [[TheIliad Achilles]], Literature/DonQuixote, Literature/HuckleberryFinn, and others all made significant mistakes in some way, and how literature often bases itself on someone screwing something up.

* SmallReferencePools: The opposite of this is addressed and a wide body of literature is referenced, such as ''Literature/TheOdyssey'', ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'', ''Literature/{{Beowulf}}'', ''Literature/ParadiseLost'', "To His Coy Mistress", "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", "[[Creator/TSEliot The Second Coming]]", ''[[Theatre/OedipusTheKing Oedipus Rex]]'', ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', ''[[RestorationComedy The Way of the World]]'', ''[[Literature/TheHistoryOfTomJonesAFoundling Tom Jones]]'', ''Literature/TheScarletLetter'', ''Literature/MadameBovary'', [[Literature/TheBible the King James Bible]], and essays by Montaigne, Johnson, Emerson, and Thoreau, but not in a good way. The book talks about how wide exposure to all of the "great books" can actually be detrimental in the long run.

* SmallReferencePools: The opposite of this is addressed and a wide body of literature is referenced, such as ''Literature/TheOdyssey'', ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'', ''Literature/{{Beowulf}}, ''Literature/Paradise Lost', "To His Coy Mistress", "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", "[[Creator/TSEliot The Second Coming]]", ''Theatre/OedipusTheKing Oedipus Rex'', ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', ''[[RestorationComedy The Way of the World]'', ''[[Literature/TheHistoryOfTomJonesAFoundling Tom Jones]], ''Literature/TheScarletLetter'', ''Literature/MadameBovary]]'', [[TheBible the King James Bible]], and essays by Montaigne, Johnson, Emerson, and Thoreau, but not in a good way. The book talks about how wide exposure to all of the "great books" can actually be detrimental in the long run.

* SmallReferencePools: The opposite of this is addressed and a wide body of literature is referenced, such as The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, Beowulf, Paradise Lost, To His Coy Mistress, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, The Second Coming, Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, The Way of the World, Tom Jones, The Scarlet Letter, Madame Bovary, the King James Bible, essays by Montaigne, Johnson, Emerson, and Thoreau, but not in a good way. The book talks about how wide exposure to all of the "great books" can actually be detrimental in the long run.

* TrueArtIsAngsty: Skewered throughout the book, on the grounds that angsty works tend to make the people who over-consume them even angstier.

* BrilliantButLazy: Discussed in "How Reading Makes Us Lazy".

* MotiveMisidentification: Discussed in "Misunderstanding Motivation".

* NostalgiaFilter: Discussed in "Getting Hung Up on the Past"

* {{Revenge}}: Discussed in "How Literature Gives Us the Lust for Revenge"

* YouCantFightFate: Discussed in "Fate and Determinism as Cop-Outs".

->Odysseus was a negligent husband. Richard the Third was a cruel megalomaniac. Captain Ahab was an obsessive nut. Dean Moriarty was an irresponsible bum. An English professor grown skeptical looks at the moral turpitude embodied in the "great books" and wonders just what the literati are calling sublime.

!Tropes Discussed In the Book:

''Why Literature is Bad For You'' is a semi-non fictional book authored by English Professor Peter Thorpe, discussing many stories based on his own experiences of the detrimental effects literature can have in the wrong mindset. The book is divided Into five sections:

* PoesLaw: Discussed in the preface.

---

1. Seven Types of Immaturity.[[note]]Consisting of "Growing Down With the Victorian Novel: The Transformation of Barbara Tieterman", "How Literary Folk Thrive on Crisis", "The Fine Art of Uncooperation", "Fate and Determinism as Cop-Outs", "Turning Self-Knowledge into Self-Centeredness", "How Literature Gives Us the Lust for Revenge", and "Learning to Hate the Older Generation".[[/note]]
2. Seven Avenues to Unawareness.[[note]]"Misunderstanding Motivation", "The Art of Categorizing Individuals and Oversimplifying Human Nature", "What's True of Me Is True of Everybody: How Literature Makes Us Project", "How Literature Separates Us from Our Feelings", "How Reading Makes Us Lazy", "Our High Toleration of Incompetence", and "The Virgin and the Crowbar: Increasing our Hostility".[[/note]]
3. Five Avenues to Unhappiness.[[note]]"Does Literature Cause Insanity?", "Getting Hung Up on the Past", "Traveling in the Realms of Gold: Does Literature Make Us Materialistic?", "Being Naive about Ingratitude", "How to Get Ulcers from the Great Books".[[/note]]
4. Four Ways to Decrease Our Mental Powers.[[note]]"The Misuse of Opinion", "The Misuse of Memory", "The Misuse of Evidence" and "The Misuse of Ideas".[[/note]]
5. Four Ways of Failing to Communicate.[[note]]"Why We Distort the Language", "Why We Write Badly", "Why We Gossip", and "Does Literature Cause Censorship?"[[/note]]

''Why Literature is Bad For You'' is a semi-non fictional book authored by English Professor Peter Thorpe, discussing many stories based on his own experiences of the detrimental effects literature can have in the wrong mindset. The book is divided Into five sections: Seven Types of Immaturity, Seven Avenues to Unawareness, Five Avenues to Unhappiness, Four Ways to Decrease Our Mental Powers, and Four Ways of Failing to Communicate.

* DoNotDoThisCoolThing: "The Fine Art of Uncooperation" discusses this and how reading can encourage stubborn attitudes, usually for the sake of just being different than for any rational reason.

* NonIndicativeName: The book is less about literature being bad in itself so much as the bad effects it can cause on its readers. What the book encourages is not abolishing literature, but taking a closer, harder look at our beliefs about about literature and art in general to see what effects they really have on us.

* TrueArtIsAngsty: Criticized, since the author proposes that great art invites conflict.

* Nostalgia Filter: Discussed in "Getting Hung Up on the Past"

->"Several years ago I heard an eminent English professor give a speech attacking a retired millionaire industrialist who wanted to endow a professorial chair dedicated to "The Fight Against Communism." The professor correctly argued that an endowment based on a preconceived thesis would go against the very purpose of the university which was the free and open pursuit of truth, whatever that truth might turn out to be. Nobody stopped to consider that the discipline of the "humanities" also went forward on a preconceived thesis---that art is good for people. Perhaps we were too busy dragging reluctant science majors and engineers into our classrooms to "broaden" them by force-feeding them with famous works of art. We felt it was our responsibility to "humanize" these "rigid technicians" before they got out into the world where they could damage civilization with their weapons and pollutants. Now, years later, as I look back on it I feel that we not only failed to humanize them but actually succeeded in making them more inflexible and Insensitive than they might have been before they were sent up to us. I feel that in those required courses we gave them enough exposure to the corrupting powers of art to make them more narrow, immature, and dishonest than they might have been before. We called this "awareness" and told them they couldn't achieve dignity without it."

->"I return to Barbara Tieterman to think again of her lust for unstable and rapidly shirting human relationships. O where are you tonight, Barbara? Where do you wander? I heard you got your Ph.D. (with honors, of course) and that you got an instructorship at one of the Big Ten. Was it Wisconsin? Minnesota? I heard that you had tired of the Victorians and moved into the Renaissance, after which you switched to the French Symbolistes, having gotten hooked on Mallarme. I heard that you were doing well. You're a rather extreme case, but you make a beautiful symbol. You stand so well for mutability. You stand so well for the truth that those who live with the great books become not more grown up but more childish, more intolerant of those stable, long-term relationships which define responsible adult life. Anyone who puts art before family and friends is a child, and children are often cruel."

->"Art is usually viewed, and taught, as something that's broad, deep and flexible, packed with the variety of life itself. But there is more propaganda than truth in this. I think it would be more accurate to say that art is a rather narrow kind of phenomenon, capable of doing only a few things over and over. One of these things is approval of its subject, regardless of what it is and regardless of what the artist may have intended. Even a satirist is prohibited by the nature of art from taking a stance against the things he purports to attack, because his artistry always makes his target too natural, too interesting and attractive. We can see this in Juvenal's Third Satire, a lengthy attack on Ancient Rome, in which that decadent city is described with such detail that we'd all like to go there. The angry Juvenal well illustrates the principle that it's hard for art to be against anything. Genuine art is simply too good to repel us. It is an affirmation, often a joyous one, of practically everything that exists, whether it be good or evil. But ninety percent of art is about evil, for that's the most interesting thing to write about---the universe being cruel to people and people being cruel to each other and to themselves."

* YouCan'tFightFate: Discussed in "Fate and Determinism as Cop-Outs".

->Odysseus was a negligent husband. Richard the Third was a cruel megalomaniac. Captain Ahab was an obsessive nut. Dean Moriarty was an irresponsible bum. An English professor grown skeptical looks at the moral turpitude embodied in the "great books" and wonders just what the literati are calling sublime."