"To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people. One has only to spend a term trying to teach college literature to realize that the quickest way to kill an author's vitality for potential readers is to present the author ahead of time as'great' or 'classic'. Because then the author becomes for students like medicine or vegetables, something that authorities have declared 'good for them' that they 'ought to like,' at which point the students' nictitating membranes come down, and everyone just goes through the requisite motions of criticism and paper-writing without feeling one real or relevant thing. It's like removing all oxygen from the room before trying to start a fire."
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Quote about icons/objectifying people
"To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people. One has only to spend a term trying to teach college literature to realize that the quickest way to kill an author's vitality for potential readers is to present the author ahead of time as'great' or 'classic'. Because then the author becomes for students like medicine or vegetables, something that authorities have declared 'good for them' that they 'ought to like,' at which point the students' nictitating membranes come down, and everyone just goes through the requisite motions of criticism and paper-writing without feeling one real or relevant thing. It's like removing all oxygen from the room before trying to start a fire."
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