Post # 3: How it all ties together.

I am starting to understand more clearly as we read more information on literature and genres that Chandler is indeed accurate in assessing that defining genres "can be problematic".

All of the authors we have read seem to be on the same page though in describing what is and what makes a genre a genre, or literature literature. Eagleton proclaims that the idea of a piece of literature being bad or good rather then just being literature as a whole is very interesting. Who decides if something is bad or good? Is it because the reader doesn't understand or they just don't ike it, but why is it bad? He also says, "What was emblamatic to literature was based upon the tastes and values of a certain social class." This really ties in to what Chandler says about genres being economically influenced, that genres are a genre because they will make big money in the box offices. What is good, what is bad, what is a genre and what isn't? Who decides all of this?

I really found Fish's experiment to be very interesting in "How to recognize a poem when you see one". This experiment completely ties together Chandler's idea that we will get out of a text what we assume and make of the genre. Fish had simply wrote a list of names on the blackboard and it was as simple as this. Yet, his class full of students "whose concerns were exclusively literary and were in fact confined to English religious poetry of the seventeeth century" were told that this list of names was actually a poem and they began to make a connection of the names to a religious meaning really scrutinizing over each word knowing that in a poem every word means something. They literally made something out of nothing which I found to be hilarious!! However, this is what we as students are taught "(because they were told by their teachers), that poems are ( or supposed to be) more densely and intricately organized than ordinary communications; and that knowledge translated into a wilingness--one might even say a determi-nation--to see connections between one word and another and between ever word and the poem's central insight." The class was told this was a poem so they made it to be so because of their educational backgroung that is drilled into our heads. Why would we ever doubt a teacher or professor when they say something is what it is. That would go against the very fundamentals of our education. This is why it is so hard to classify anything, a poem, a genre, a piece of literature whether, the reader thinks it is good or bad... who are we to put such classifications, on something, anything? As a society, we are forced into thinking something and perceiving things in the way that "someone" (although we don't know who or why) wants us to.

The most perfect example I can think of is something that I actually experienced yesterday afternoon. This gentleman was sitting at my table in my restaurant by himself waving his arms all around like a freak trying to get my attention even though I was taking antoher guest's order at a different table. I motioned that I would be with him in a second. I scurried to his side to give him the best service possible ( while gritting my teeth) and he proceded to order a burger melt for his daughter and a fresh mozzarella pizza for himself adding that he was in a huge rush. His daughter finally makes it to the table and I get the food rushed out to him!!!! However, the entire order was wrong, and not because I made a mistake but because he got the enire order wrong!!!! When someone goes to a restaurant, they have a certain expectation already embedded in them of how the experience should be, and I agree that a guest should get the best experience because that is what they are paying for. However, if it didn't meet your expectations and it is your own fault, why would you call the server who is trying so hard to please you and trying to make an honest living a "STUPID B...CH"?!!! I tried to fix the problem by offering to make new, accurate food immediately and he got up and walked out saying that his dining expereinced had been compromised and he wasn't hungry anymore!!! Are you kiding me? Just because you have in your head how a meal at a restaurant should go, when did courtesy and manners and just being a normal human being go out the window?