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Ellie: I had a slice of ham in my hand. I was going to drop it, so I slapped it hard. It attached itself to the wall
Wait...you're saying Jane Austen isn't relevant?You do realize that she is one of the most famous authors of her time, correct?
Wait, I'm starting to piece something together.You want to be an author.You loathe this literature.This is inconsistent. I don't think you deserve to have an opinion.
I don't think you need to like everything that they manage to squeeze into the lit curriculum. I haven't read any Jane Austen, but I was forced to read "A Farewell to Arms," an awful, awful book that taught me nothing significant except for how not to write a novel, and that "Hemingway is a talentless hack who is in no way deserving of the ridiculous praise mounted on him." (Though I will admit I haven't read anything else of his.)Seriously, I would have had a better time reading the phone book, or maybe a stock ticker. Or the Nutrition Facts on the back of a cereal box.Point is, a lot of stuff that was a big deal back in the day is nigh-unreadable to modern audiences. Five-page-long descriptions of buildings have fallen out of vogue. Modern audiences like every page to keep them in thrall, with ongoing action or at the very least interesting dialogue, whereas in the past writers seemed to get away with a lot of mundane transition. Some old works survive (I think "Don Quixote" is still pretty amusing despite being 400 years old), and some just don't.
Don Quixote