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Block Three - Varieties of the popular
TMA05 completed
Introduction
Block three helps answer the question 'What is popular Literature?', and explores the relationship between popular and high culture in literature.
This block has been a turning point for me - I'm still enjoying the course but I've decided to relax a bit and take stock of what I want from A300. I read Rebecca while on a diving holiday in Barbados and really enjoyed it. But surprisingly my favourite set text of this block has been Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Normally, I have no interest in science fiction, but I found Philip K. Dick a particularly good writer. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? can be dissected by literary criticism from several different angles, but it is also simply a good book to read. A quote from a letter Dick wrote in response to a critic, sums up parts of A300 for me, in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way:
"...Perhaps we are all spending too much time thinking and reading and writing when we should be out in the sun."
As with most poetry, Allen Ginsberg's Howl and other poems went right over my head. It may have been effective in the 1960's, but it does nothing for me - I just don't understand its popularity?
Manuel Puig's Kiss of the spider woman is unusual but interesting.
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Written by bill "at" larnach "dot" info
URL of this page: http://www.larnach.info/A300/three.htm
Block three
Daphne De Maurier
HOWL
Philip K. Dick official site
Guardian online Philip K. Dick
Allen Ginsberg
The beat page (Allen Ginsberg)
American classics (poetry.org)
Kiss of the Spider Woman eNotes
Useful DVDs
Rebecca
Blade runner
Useful Videos
Kiss of the Spider Woman