Comments on: It’s Literally Wednesday: Life Changing Writers

By: Parker Cross

Parker Cross — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 19:01:48 +0000

Re: Confederacy of Dunces. A workplace conversation about that book (with the cute new guy) led eventually to my marriage. So I guess it was a life changer. Thirty years later, the book and the guy still make me laugh.

By: At Home in Decatur

At Home in Decatur — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 18:03:46 +0000

That’s was my point at the time. How could as big a deal as the Holocaust, with information about it everywhere, never have come up as a topic at home? My parents had plenty to say about World War II, just nothing about the Holocaust. It was as though it had never happened. I read the book sometime between 5th and 7th grade. I don’t know why it wasn’t taught at school; it should have been. Maybe because U.S. History was repeated year after year after year in elementary school and it never seemed to make it much past the Civil War.

By: Can We Talk?

Can We Talk? — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 17:05:04 +0000

Mad at your parents? Geez, Holocaust information is/was everywhere when I grew up (not so long ago). What were you doing that you did not notice it?
I don’t think anyone can blame their parents for that one….

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:33:26 +0000

I read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment in high school and was strongly impacted by it. Brothers K had a similar effect when I eventually got to it.

I also had to read The Fountainhead in high school. Entertaining, especially for a kid who wanted to be an architect, but I found Rand’s message alarming. (As summarized in that masterpiece of film Dirty Dancing: there are some people that matter, and others that don’t.)

By: KatieKerrite

KatieKerrite — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 14:09:48 +0000

Diamond brings up some interesting points in GGS, but I feel like he also swings way too far over to the geographical determinism side. He doesn’t seem to want to deal with the deep cultural aspects of “how we got here”. The greatest example is the lack of Chinese colonization in the period leading up to the European conquests. The Chinese had the technology first but for cultural/political reasons did not use it as the European explorers did. In Diamond’s world this shouldn’t happen. The simple reason is that we are not all the same and that our cultural bearing has a lot of impact on history regardless of what geographies may be involved. My view is that history plays out in a symbiosis or feedback loop similar to the nature/nurture argument in biology. I get suspicious of anyone arguing too strongly for geography or culture.