In love with the idea of love (gag)

[kelric]

I've been at my current job for going on 8 years now. Working at a university, one of the benefits that we get is the opportunity to take evening classes without being charged tuition, which is pretty nice, when it comes down to it. For years, I told myself that I'd sign up for a class, but this is the first semester that I've actually gone ahead and done it (better late than never, i say), so I've been going to a fiction writing class once a week for a couple of months each Wednesday. So far, so good.

I should say that I love to read, but I've always had very little patience with "literature" of the sort that gets covered in English classes. My fiction class, although generally enjoyable, certainly touches upon all of the bad stereotypes I've always associated with English classes ("read Joyce and Faulkner", "Science Fiction isn't real literature", etc.). Slogging through "the classic" short stories for discussion points inevitably leads to me coming up with some non-standard explanation for what was going on in a story that I considered too vague and dull, proposing my explanation in front of the class, and getting shot down. Today, it happened again. At least the professor wasn't condescending about it (he's generally a good guy).

So the story was "Araby" by James Joyce. Well written, great description, I can see why it was in our anthology. It's about a boy who's infatuated with an older girl and gets his hopes dashed (yawn), but what really got me was the horribly tired old cliche that came up in class. I could see the conversation plodding along to the inevitable conclusion... and I hoped I would be proven wrong. But no. It came out... "he doesn't know her well enough to love her - so he's obviously in love with the *idea* of love!" followed by minor oohs and aahs from the class.

Thank goodness it's pass/fail. Now I just need to get started writing my next story. But not now - it's time for bed. Good night.