I mean, no. I feel happy. I feel successful after I do something cool, well. I feel successful after I write a good paper, or do some smart shit. I feel success (and pride!) when my dog is well-behaved at the dog park. But not generally.

Yeah this has been proved quantitatively untrue many times. The shit that makes you popular in high school makes you popular in real life. Popular people make more money than unpopular ones, etc.

"Let loose the hounds of war!" —Julius Caesar, Shakespeare

Right, this is like the joke about the Koch brothers.

Hahha, I totally understand. There's been a marked increase in my comments on Jezebel because I'm in the middle of finals.

Which is not to say that your reading of The Great Gatsby is like reading the Bible and shooting an abortion doctor. Just wanted to make that clear. I'm just saying. Freedom of interpretation isn't unlimited.

But that's not really what it's about. I mean, yes, that's obviously part of it. But it's not like Madam Bovary, in which the failure of a marriage is the central premise of the book. To say that TGG is about a failed love affair is to radically reduce it's complexity and nuance and depth.

Seriously, I did not spoil anything. Gavagirl is right, it's like saying, "Oh my god when James Bond banged that lady." Not spoiled, the reference doesn't make sense until you read the books.

Wait, spoiler alert a book that came out several years ago? Also I didn't really give anything away...

I have literally blocked out most of the plot because it was so depressing. I remember when I finished it I felt like I was suffocating with sadness.

I would definitely put Jude the Obscure in with books written in not-modern times.

I think it's mostly to do with the fact that it's canonical English (or European) literature and the Europeans who have had time and money to write books and who decide what gets to be put into the canon are only interested in rich or rich-ish white people.

You think that The Great Gatsby was a story about a man who's punished for his choices in love?

I won't be able to see The Hunger Games film. Not only will it surely be too violent (the end, when Katnis has to mercy-kill the douchebag, oh god oh god oh god!), but it will fail to live up to my expectation. I loved the books, the character is great, but they'll inevitably make everyone white and pretty and not…

I'm not implying that men can—or do—just walk away. Nor am I implying that women are automatically attached to their offspring. Neither is true. However, it is true that only a woman grows a baby in her body. That shit is a serious consequence of having sex. The consequences of growing another person inside your body…

Indeed, it is.

First of all, I'm pretty sure that in the US you can force a paternity test. Second of all, I'm not sure where you're idea that women have a priori rights to a kid comes from. In the US, if a father sues for custody of his kid, he gets it almost every time. It's just that fathers rarely sue for custody.

Have you read it recently? It's implied—more than implied—that the first Mrs. Rochester is not entirely English. They make it clear that her craziness is a taint of the blood which comes from the swarthy, wild-haired, barbaric ancestors on her mother's side, and it's made clear that not all of her ancestors are white:…

Well, in my opinion the BEST literature can actually present women as fully human. The best of the best is literature that depicts women as humans who are treated as less than human, because they're women.

Any historian (or, I suppose, student of olde timey literature) can tell you that the idea that men are super sexual compared to women is total bullshit. In the middle ages and the renaissance, women were considered insatiable sex maniacs whose "open" body was constantly looking to be filled. This is why the Greeks…