Final Evaluation

Hello everyone!

Well this was a really interesting course. I learned a lot on bad literature and I really enjoyed the discussions/debates we had in class. I just wish I was better at speaking Spanish because there were many times when I wanted to say something but I was not quick enough to find my words, I tried as hard as I could but it frustrated me at times especially when the discussion would get heated and really interesting. Good thing we had the blogs so I could get my point across but it's hard to know, other than by getting a comment, how many people read your entries. I think the debates (for vs against) and the blogs are both necessary so we all get a chance to voice our opinions either way.

I learned a lot on the low and high brow concepts (Bourdieu...etc) and the different types of "literature". I realize it's not all that simple to answer the question: is this book literature? or is it good/bad lit?...etc. I find it hard to criticize (positively or negatively) a book without mixing my personal taste into it. I guess we can't avoid hiding our biases of what we like or don't like.
There are many topics in literature in which we still base our own "view" on what is considered a book of quality. I recently watched the movie "Stranger than fiction" with Will Farell (not sure the spelling) and I really liked the way the movie mixed fiction of a book with the life of a real man (I guess fictional reality since it's a movie). The movie talks about this successful writer unknowingly writing about a man's real life and was looking for a really tragic ending but got the "writer's block". It's really hard to explain, I thought it was weird at first but then I discovered piece by piece the rest of the story and was amazed at how the movie portrayed both fiction of the book and "fiction" of the movie. I don't want to give away too much on this movie but I find it interesting that some books would not be considered a "great piece of literature" without a tragic ending for example. How do we know that the end of the book will be better if tragic or not? I guess that would be another subject to discuss :)

Anyways, even if I didn't like most books we had to read for the class, I'm still glad I read them, it was a great experience to work with material that was "bad" and be able to look for clues on how to judge a book from the cover to the main plot and characters.

No matter what, we will all still come across other "good" and "bad" books no matter how popular they are. It's funny because I found it difficult to judge "classic" books. It's easier to judge best sellers or more current novels but "classic" books will always mean more than just "good" literature. I suppose it came from being "conditioned" early on that we "had" to like them but when I look back I feel that these books are somehow a piece of precious history from where I grew up (Europe) and I'll always admire authors such as Victor Hugo, Moliere, Eugene Leroy, Jules Vernes...etc. I just hope that some of today's contemporary books will later be considered good enough and follow the legacy of thousands of previous nobel classic writers for the next generations to come.
Was great to meet you all and I wish you all the best!