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FranB's avatar

Great essay and I agree with everything you say. For me, it was Animal Farm and then 1984. Great stories, but also a powerful indictment of communism/authoritarianism.

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Lancelot Schaubert's avatar

Nothing irritates me more than going to a literary reading where people were taught to drone because inflection might spoil the text. Or to an MFA class where absolutely no one understands how a basic scene even works.

The funny thing about Ulysses is it seems to be written to troll these very academic types. Meanwhile the best academic writing is also immanently readable — that doesn't necessarily mean simple (as Pinker argues), but clear (as Hart argues).

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