Another sick-of-my-degree rant

Literary critics are always talking about how things reveal the characters' or author's repressed sexual desires. As in, as though that's something to be ashamed of or whatever - something that reveals their underlying weakness. It's so dumb. Repressing sexual desires is part of life. It's easy to take pot-shots at people who don't exist. You can judge and assess and criticise people in ways that you can't do with real people. Seems almost cowardly. But then again, I suppose these ideas need a forum like fiction in which to be explored, without getting personal.

I am once again in a 'books are for reading and that's all' kind of mood, and wondering if spending a whole semester critiquing Dickens will spoil him for me. Probably not though. He's too good for that. It's not that I doubt that literature has a huge impact on society and is useful and interesting to study for all kinds of reasons - it's just that the whole machine of academic study of literature is such a funny sort of a thing when you step back and look at it.