Brevity by Dan Thompson for February 16, 2013

Yeah, I’ve heard not-good things about CitR too, but I will still have to read it someday just as part of my self-education. But it will have to be after I read “Canterbury Tales”, “Little Women”, “The DIvine Comedy”, “The Iliad”, and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, so I figure it will be, oh, maybe 2016. (I’m now reading “Thus Spake Zarathustra”; I strongly recommend that nobody ever reads it ever.)

Wow… what can I say….different tastes….

As a child, reading two or three books a week, I made time at least once or twice a year to re-read Little Women, because, mawkish sentimentality notwithstanding, I adored it so.

And in high school, Holden Caulfield spoke to me… Catcher in the Rye was a revelation…I don’t know how many times I read it… but at least a dozen.

I even loved the Canterbury Tales.

The rest of the books pschearer mentions, though, I can pretty much live without….

In fact, Nietzche, I’m afraid, was the undoing of my 17-year-old ambition to steep myself in existentialism…after falling with teen age abandon into the rather pretentious despair of more accessible proponents like Sartre, I just couldn’t slog through One. More. Page. of Zarathustra…. didn’t care whether he Spake or not. He spake not to ME.

Al that aside…the “comedy” of today’s strip eludes me…Is it just another slam at Hollywood ethics?Dan?

Hope it has nothing to do with Guy and rOdd, who work in Hollywood.

I never read it just for the fact that it was the book Mark David Chapman had with him when he killed John Lennon, I guess I’m blaming the book.

Isn’t CITR the book that they use in movies to Activate Sleeper agents? Mel Gibson was in one with Julia Roberts that used that book as a trigger.

Probably best that you stay away from any reading with multiple paragraphs and/or ideas that can’t be put into Cliff’s Notes.

Holden Caulfield would make a good Hollywood actor. He lied just like those celebrities do. That’s also true of the writers of the articles about today’s celebrities.

nonsense how? An imbecile says Catcher in the Rye is among the worst written books ever. Sorry that is just not the case and anyone with the slightest bit of literary acumen would refute this ridiculous opinion. I’ll not let trolls of the other kind spout such idiocy and sit idly by in some tacit approval of this slack-jawed troglodyte. And before you defend him so quickly maybe you should take a long hard look in the mirror and to reflect on up what exactly you’re defending.

Does the fool even understand that it was written in the voice of a teenager? Maybe it’s too sophisticated for him/her?

what is next out of this dolt? Tolstoy too wordy? Shakespeare too old-fashioned? Keats too short?

Where’s my comic? Is that your criteria for being able to critique or defend something artistic? DO you see the hypocrisy in your own question? Where is yours?You made a point about the 100 words or so of the comic being too much for you to handle and I called you out for the ridiculousness of the statement.But to answer your silly question. They are ALL my comics. And if you attack something I enjoy with specious reasoning, I shall defend it. So maybe you should think twice about how you sound before you go around criticizing things. And know that if you make such laughable commentary on a comic I am a fan of, you shall expect my rebuttal. Some people may think they can say whatever they want and be free of return critique, but I do not suffer these fools.

Just for the record, this is a comic strip and the things in it are jokes.