How can a non English major learn to analyze texts at the depth that English majors do? Do I have to read literary theory and to apply it to my reading? Where do I start? I've always enjoyed reading and have read quite a bit of lit in my days, but wanted to see if I could take my reading even farther.
yes. learn theory.
you're going to get a bunch of community college dropouts who will try to tell you there's nothing you learn in uni that you can't learn as an "autodidact." they are almost certainly retarded. ignore them.
>>8141920
Don't "learn theory" but read some critical texts. Read some essays.
But the biggest thing is to take one text and to reread it a bunch of times. Even just one in-depth reading of something will make you read more attentively in all other things.
>>8141934
Where would you find these critical texts? JSTOR and such?
Is thomas foster wallace the PDQ Bach of literature? I would honestly kill for a good satirist to give that a go.
Do what English majors do. Learn theory, read essays, and write your own essays (or at least outlines) and review them to gauge how well your studies went.
>English majors
>analyze texts with depth
HOLY FUCK
I love how people think the Humanities are still trades with actual training or rigour. Being an English major is like signing up to be a crab fisherman, and when you get on the boat and set sail, everyone on board has no idea what the fuck they're doing except for like one dude and he's really lazy about it anyway, and everyone else is just picking up the crabs once in a while and going "this is a red one, so I think we're supposed to keep it?" and "do we.. smash the crabs together? Are we supposed to eat the crabs?" and then some fucking broad is running around cover in crab shit screaming about crab deconstruction
NO ONE IS CRAB FISHING
NOTHING IS HAPPENING
IF YOU READ BOOKS AS A HOBBY UNTIL THE POINT THAT YOU ARE "MILDLY WELL-READ" ON THE LEVEL OF SOME RANDOM PERSON FROM THE 50s BEFORE ALL ENTERTAINMENT WAS BEAMED INTO YOUR BRAIN OVER TWITTER, YOU ARE ALREADY A THUNDER GOD OF LITERACY COMPARED TO ENGLISH MAJORS
STAB ENGLISH MAJORS
>>8142109
>IF YOU READ BOOKS AS A HOBBY UNTIL THE POINT THAT YOU ARE "MILDLY WELL-READ" ON THE LEVEL OF SOME RANDOM PERSON FROM THE 50s BEFORE ALL ENTERTAINMENT WAS BEAMED INTO YOUR BRAIN OVER TWITTER, YOU ARE ALREADY A THUNDER GOD OF LITERACY COMPARED TO ENGLISH MAJORS
thanks anon
This
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0415974100
+
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0743273567
Everything you need.
>>8141920
The point with english majors as opposed to a run off the mill well read person is that a well read person had a chance not to waste half a decade going down a rigid list to fill out his diploma requirements.
Even if you read trash novels, you still read something you liked and what inspired you. Most of the people flaunting their degrees on /lit/ are just hikikomori scared that Foucault isn't standing the test of time the way their professor who got his phd for "What if Dickinson had a Dick: A left-right-left swing of the pendulum" under Dyke McGraw mentorship told them it would.
In short, some theory and Canon is fine, but critical theory is an IQ test.
>>8142180
>"What if Dickinson had a Dick: A left-right-left swing of the pendulum" under Dyke McGraw mentorship
kek
>>8142109
actual kek. there is an english graduate in my circle of friends - they have read less than most of us
>>8142109
Rhetorician trying to look funny, failing. Thinks we're /v/.
Im seriously debating an english major as someone going back to school. I want to write for a living whether it be fiction or not: is an English major necessary?
>>8142109
Would be funny if it weren't true
>>8141920
Just from my experience in one upper level lit class in college, I really don't think it's as hard as you might think. It took me a semester (and 4-5 papers) of work to get good at it, going from a high C on my first paper to a 100% on the final paper, and this was without any literary theory—all we did was discuss the meaning of the separate works and the history surrounding them.
Read some papers for a novel or short story you like. You'll probably find that at least a few of them are mostly understandable, and a bunch more require some further reading, but all of the arguments people make tend to be in more or less plain english.
