Anne of Green Gables, 80s Allan Bloom Closing of the American Mind series

Thu Jan 31, 2019

as someone born in the 70s and grew up in the 80s, before there was the internet as we know it.

i had no access to information. specifically information about how this society works.

as a kid one PBS show i enjoyed was Anne of Green Gables



one issue for Anne, apart from her red hair and freckles, was that she was "smart" a bookworm, but her smartness was in literature and what we would call the great books.

she was able to correctly spell chrysanthemum which i only know how to spell from this show. gilbert blythe and crissy andrews was unable to do.

the show opens with Anne reciting Tennyson's the lady of shalot, and she is always seen reading books, even when the subject was math.

so it presents Anne as intelligent, but intelligent in literature and poetry.

one of the questions she asked was it is it better to be divinely beautiful, dazzlingly clever, or angelically good.

the impression i got from watching this was that to be smart is to read classic literature of the great authors and poetry.

one thing Anne repeated is you can imagine yourself to be this exciting person.

i do think prince edward island canada was very beautiful.

i tried reading classic stories and it just didn't make any impression, nor poetry either. tennyson's lady of shalot is a whole lot of words.
that don't mean anything to me, like the bible.

my concern though is that the top universities like harvard yale stanford princeton want anne of green gables types who read alfred tennyson's poetry, for example, but don't care for people like me who like to read comic books.

so while i could talk about wolverine and the mutant massacre, or storm shadow and the sleeping phoenix after being shot by the baronness,

anne of green gable types, could go to harvard and discuss how tennyson in 18th century poetry you know something or whatever.

havard select admissions cared about students who like anne liked classic literature, not students who read comic books.

if i were a kid next to anne

we both have active imaginations, but my imagination would be along the lines of 10 meters, 9, meters,
wait that's not possible they'd be in the room right now

7 meters. i'm reading this right.
17 days? we're not going to last 17 hours. they're going to come and they're going to get us.
why don't you put her in charge.

but yeah elite liberal arts colleges do prefer students like anne who can discuss literature,

if there were 2 applicants for 1 spot at harvard, one is an anne of green gables who discusses tennyson and me, talking about how to deal with corporal hicks in an alien infestation, i suspect harvard admissions officers would send an acceptance letter to anne and a denial for me.

Anne of Green Gables put into my head that there are these classic authors in the english language and that the "smart" kids read tennyson and if you want to go to an elite university that's what u have to read.