The Valuable Eccentricity of English Majors
Weirdness as the key to success
No one really understands what they are talking about.
There they are in their little circles, contemplating Lord Byron’s fantastical sex life. In that hidden café, knitted beanies and earth-friendly tumblers. Sipping a decaf while scribbling marginalia in their Norton Anthology.
Who are these people? What goes on in their heads? How can they write 3,000 words on a 4-line poem, and most exasperating of all, why?
Let’s dig a little deeper into the hazy recesses of this rare college breed.
They consume some pretty strange material.
If you are what you read in college, English Majors are pretty much Kaonashi in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001). A black faceless ghost that eats absolutely everything in sight; from the icky to the downright uncanny.
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) chronicles the passionate desires of a matured college professor, for a 12-year-old girl. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) goes beyond a children’s text to inform modern…
