• Reading Slant During Covid-19: A Contrarian List

    Author(s):
    Subhasis Chattopadhyay (see profile)
    Date:
    2020
    Subject(s):
    Reading, Christianity, Hinduism, Philosophy, American literature, Horror, Romanticism, Great Britain
    Item Type:
    Essay
    Tag(s):
    Arthur Avalon, covid-19, Listopia, Plagiarism, syllabus
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/s7ve-7w11
    Abstract:
    Today's academia is obsessed about writing and speaking gobbledygook. It has little time in sitting still and actually reading fiction, poetry and say, Wittgenstein. One pretends to say fancy things about these authors but one does not actually read books anymore. COVID 19 Lockdown prompted this author to answer queries from students and peers about a reading list. So prepare a wide ranging list he did which covers everything from the version of Mahabharata one ought to read to novels on celibacy. But then he chose to publish at Prabuddha Bharata over all other platforms because the Ramakrishna Mission has the finances to keep this list alive 200 years hence. This was written during COVID 19 Lockdown in India at the end of April, 2020. Nirad C Chaudhuri insisted on making a good bibliography in his magnum opus. This author follows Nirad C Chaudhuri in this. Incidentally showing how Harold Bloom plagiarised one Professor John Senior's reading list. The list also comments on Romanticism and the art of writing itself. The list on Hinduism is truly contrarian. These COVID 19 days, while the First world moons over syllabi for their kids and third and fourth world folks like me are tackling Umphan; I chose to prepare a new kind of syllabus. In these days of mostly meaningless webinars which my students can only spread memes about and, only the poor and doctors will actually travel to white nations which are killing their own; here's a list which ends with Hindu classics which are contrarian. I used some of the Hindu resources on recognition mentioned here and tried to work on Stephen King; a privileged white tenure track person from Trumpland snowballed me. Now, this list is syllabi and is a list of a bunch of books to read during Lockdowns which will be more common in the future because COVID 19, as Dr Fauci tells us; is here to stay. Even if one COVID 19 person is there; then along with Ebola, my white privileged tenure track friends; off you go to gaga land.
    Notes:
    My gratitude to the Ramakrishna Mission who published this in their Journal which has never skipped an issue from 1896 onwards. Go figure it out. Duh. I have also commented on the iterative nature of American Studies. & I have tenure! Go figure that out too. When GoodReads and I won't be there, Prabuddha Bharata will be there. I feel insulted by white tenured and tenure track iterative scholars. Thank God, I'll never have to go to whiteland in this COVID 19 world. Pity my country(wo)men there.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Publisher:
    Advaita Ashrama and the Ramakrishna Mission
    Pub. Date:
    1st June, 2020
    Journal:
    Prabuddha Bharata
    Volume:
    125
    Issue:
    6
    Page Range:
    491 - 494
    ISSN:
    0032-6178
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    7 months ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
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