It's lovely to see Tove Ditlevsen gaining her deserved recognition in the world! But it is not true that she is unanimously celebrated in Denmark. She has always been at the center of a almost century long discussion of taste and literary quality. Thread
@PenguinUKBooks @fsgbooks
\u201cSad girls in Europe\u201d have become a marketing clich\xe9, elevated from the domain of steadfast bloggers and thoughtful small presses to the interest of major cultural institutions, as with the @nytimes Overlooked obituary series."@laurenoyler https://t.co/wCag5XFGRG
— Harper's Magazine (@Harpers) January 10, 2021
You can read an interesting run-through of the debate at the time (yes, of course we have passionate literary debates in Denmark!)
More from World
MISREPRESENTED CONTEXT
1. I am indeed disgusted with attempts to misrepresent and take out of context what I wrote on my blog yesterday.
2. Those who did that highlighted only one part of paragraph 12 which read: “Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.”
3. They stopped there and implied that I am promoting the massacre of the French.
4.If they had read d posting in its entirety & especially the subsequent sentence which read: “But by & large the Muslims hv not applied the “eye for an eye” law. Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t. Instead the French should teach their people to respect other people’s feelings
5. Because of the spin and out of context presentation by those that picked up my posting, reports were made against me and I am accused of promoting violence etc… on Facebook and Twitter.
1. I am indeed disgusted with attempts to misrepresent and take out of context what I wrote on my blog yesterday.
RESPECT OTHERS
— Dr Mahathir Mohamad (@chedetofficial) October 29, 2020
1. A teacher in France had his throat slit by an 18-year-old Chechen boy. The killer was angered by the teacher showing a caricature of Prophet Muhammad. The teacher intended to demonstrate freedom of expression.
2. Those who did that highlighted only one part of paragraph 12 which read: “Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.”
3. They stopped there and implied that I am promoting the massacre of the French.
4.If they had read d posting in its entirety & especially the subsequent sentence which read: “But by & large the Muslims hv not applied the “eye for an eye” law. Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t. Instead the French should teach their people to respect other people’s feelings
5. Because of the spin and out of context presentation by those that picked up my posting, reports were made against me and I am accused of promoting violence etc… on Facebook and Twitter.
You May Also Like
I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
As someone\u2019s who\u2019s read the book, this review strikes me as tremendously unfair. It mostly faults Adler for not writing the book the reviewer wishes he had! https://t.co/pqpt5Ziivj
— Teresa M. Bejan (@tmbejan) January 12, 2021
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
