Wednesday 4 May 2011

Here come the Vargons

One of the things I do in my (cough) professional life is try to erase the gap between outmoded concepts of 'high' literature that's worth studying and 'low' literature that isn't. I'm not saying that there isn't bad literature - but I am saying that the grounds for deciding what's in and what's out are distinctly ideologically and socially loaded. For me, anything that's popular is of interest to the literary scholar per se, regardless of quality. See, mother? All that SF you tried to take off me has come in useful!

That's all background. Or defence - because I've just bought these cartoons by Tom Gauld of the Guardian, and they've just come back from the framer. They're going to occupy pride of place in my office. Click to enlarge.



D H Lawrence fans and those with an interest in publishing should see this one (which I can't copy) and I also like this one about the perils of reading serious literature:



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