Autochthonous

au•toch•tho•nous  (adjective)

(of an inhabitant of a place) indigenous rather than descended from migrants or colonists

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, well, well. The time has come. I've been postponing it for a long time until now, but here it is. 

I'm finally going to talk about the show I've only alluded to to you before. It's time for:

BEARS

 

BEETS

 

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

Oh yes, time to talk about one of favorite shows to ever grace the DVD shelf. 

So here's what I have to say about it:

It's pretty awesome. You should watch it when you have the time.

OK, moving on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have to say I really liked your post about Eukaryotic cells was really sweet and I really liked what you had to say about scientific definitions. 

It got me to thinking about literature, as most things do, and I was thinking about what defines something as legit literature (legiterture?). 

For example, BattleStar Galactica is actually really well written and (I like to think) has a lot of merit to it in terms of the real-life issues of slavery, abandonment, love, sex, betrayal, war, exodus, rebirth, and theological wrestling. However, does that make it worth studying? Is it something that can be directly descended from the inspirational lines of Western literary thought? Is it autochthonous and canon? 

Or, here's a novel example: there's a class going on right now that studies Fantasy throughout the history of the western world, starting with Beowulf and ending with Wizards of Earthsea, which we've already talked about.

Anyway, seeing as they will be studying Harry Potter (Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Ooh!), which raises the question in my brain, "Does that Make Blast-Ended Skrewts part of the Literary canon?"

And I think the answer I have come to in that same confuséd brain of mine is that the literary merit of something is dependent upon many factors, one of them being the degree of impact the book has.

Obviously that impact is dependent upon how well the book is written, which determines how many people read it and most importantly, how long it will actually stay in circulation. Or to put it another way, how many more individuals will be impacted by this book in the generations that follow? Will my children read this book and still find it worth their while? Will their children's children read it and find that despite its archaic language it still has a lot to say on love, the force of good and evil, and the human condition?

Personally, I think that the impact of Harry Potter won't just fade away and kids in the next few decades will still read it, in the same way that we still read The Chronicles of Narnia and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. But maybe that won't be the case. I can't truly know that, only God knows for certain.

However, I can tell you that I picked up a couple of books out of my cousin's house the other day that she said she had read and didn't want anymore. So I took them and me and my dorm mate read passages of these books to each other all last night. 

And now I can legitimately say I know enough about this series to say that there is no monkey-fighting way these books are literature. They only even attain the status of "book" by the mere loophole of each separate volume possessing a spine (something the main character seems to lack on every page). 

If I may quote a passage.

[From the beginning of Volume 4, Book 2, after quoting a line from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream] 

"Life sucks and then you die.

Yeah, I should be so lucky."

Good Lord, I just want to poke out my eyeballs with a sharpened metre stick and flambé them over a pyre of love letters written to Stephanie Meyer thanking her for blessing yet another self-deluding pubescent with the mindset of believing they will one day have the great fortune of being carried off by an aged somnipathic covered in glitter paint. 

Oh yes, there book have had an impact, there's no doubt. But to say that that impact will not only carry through the lives of our generation and share its precious influence with our offspring is as much a ludicrous statement as saying "Hmm, maybe genocide isn't all that bad".  The day that my children and all their friends are given a curriculum with these atrocities hastily inserted is the day I add broken glass into my daily diet. 

That being said, I would just like to conclude that yes, I have just proven that Harry Potter is better than Twilight. QED.

On that note, I will talk to you soon, Tim.

-Clayton