I can’t resist it, I have to go on a rant here about the two worst books of all time – I’m sure there are more, but these will do for now. At the outset let me clarify that I am a bibliophile, I love reading, spending time prowling through book stores, especially used book stores and whenever I stop at a yard sale, I always look for gems that might have been overlooked by other book lovers. As a testament to my love of the written word when I moved back to Iowa a few years ago, I shipped almost a ton of books, yeah, that’s right as in 2-0-0-0 pounds. They were mostly non-fiction history and reference books, but each one of them is a cherished part of my ever-growing collection and although one of my New Year’s resolutions was to read all my books before I die, along with running a marathon and losing 20 pounds, I somehow think THAT will never happen.
Anyhoo, back to the subject of my rant; first off I have to admit to something else – I have sometimes been called a cold-hearted so-and-so without compassion, etc, etc, etc. An appropriate description I suppose, but I like to think my compassion and passions run deeper than most and never facile. But, what you may ask does this revelation have to do with books that I hate? How could they garner the epithet of “the worst book in history?” Well, truthfully, there are only two as far as I’m concerned. Both of which I was forced to read in college and then after I finished, I had to write about “how I felt…”– come on, you know what I’m talking about, one of those awful attempts to force you to bear your soul to some prof to prove that you read the book. Anyway, I digress (Sorry, I do that on occasion).
I’ve been kicking this idea around for some time and have finally decided to rant about it. I absolutely detest two perennial best sellers, “Zen and the art of Motorcycle and maintenance,” and “Tuesdays with Morrie.” gasp if you must but please don’t waste your time writing to me about how much these books changed your life – I was forced to read them for a couple college courses and hated EVERY SINGLE WORD. Pirsig’s self-aggrandizing journey of “enlightenment” is hardly worth the paper it is written on with his silly comparisons between keeping his piece of crap motorcycle on the road, his mental breakdown and his shaky relationship with his son. You have problems…. Deal with them or get over them! After I finally waded through the morass of Pirsig’s mind I then had to write a response paper and since I hated it, I told the prof why. In my critique I also speculated at the moral code of a society that would accept OR approve of this clown making a buck talking in circles. Oh well, to the professor’s credit he respected my opinion and graded my evaluation based on its own merits not the pre-disposed belief that Pirsig somehow had a greater grasp on life than this simple warrior-scholar. Anyway, I got a passing grade and later joined some classmates at a “barbeque” shortly after finals. I didn’t want to have that awful book in my possession one second longer than I had to – and it made a helluva bonfire.
Morrie’s is another awful trip into self-loathing that I detested from the moment I picked up a copy – what really ticked me off was there were no more used copies and I had to buy a new edition. Anyway, in yet another class that the instructor wanted us to get all touchy-feely, we were forced to read this sorry piece of crap so we could understand how to grieve. Since I had buried my father just a few years before, I found the instructor’s assumptions terribly insulting. Nonetheless, beyond that, my resentment exploded when I discovered this Morrie person reveled in the fact that he used to give “A’s” to male students during the Vietnam War. This was apparently to ensure their academic deferments without them actually having to earn them! As a recently retired soldier I was incensed at this for a couple reasons: first and foremost that he believed that he had the right would assume the responsibility over some lowlife who couldn’t even maintain a passing grade while others who might not have had the opportunity to get a break OR who had accepted the mantle of responsibility to serve their country was insulting at best. I would suggest that this mentality fostered during the Vietnam era is at least partly to blame for today’s current plague of inflated college grades and lowered academic standards, but that is best saved for another rant.
Now, because of those rat-bastards, I had to sit through yet another half-baked college class that did little more than perpetuate a skewed sense of responsibility, and an elitist attitude that would get your ass kicked in the real world.
Finally, despite whatever this person’s influence on other people’s lives might have been, that somebody would turn his own self-hatred into a sob-fest that others with more backbone would have to endure to meet some “educator’s” idea of teaching the process of grieving. Give me a break. For anyone who has lost a parent, spouse or compadre they know how to grieve.
I hate these books for a multitude of reasons, some I can’t even put into words, but mostly I resent that I was forced to read them because some sorry excuse for an educator was too lazy to find a better (alternate?) book. Nonetheless, I had to read them and feel nothing but contempt towards the authors and resentment for the professors who forced me to endure them.
Unlike other required readings which I might not have cared for but still served a purpose, these sorry excuses for literature will continue to plague our society as long as there are wieners out there who say something like, “Oh, I just loved that book, it changed my life…” pardon me, but if you were living such a pitiful life that a book like this changed your life, then your life really did need changin’!
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