December 14: National Bouillabaisse Day

In English class today, we discussed Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, which we just finished reading. Luke, who has been making snide comments about the book for weeks, started off by calling Austen an overrated “writer of Victorian soap operas.” I led off in Austen’s defense. I said it wasn’t so easy to write a page-turner love story that was also a literary masterpiece—one chock-full of incisive social commentary that was still pertinent to today’s social milieu. He agreed that it was obviously supposed to be a love story but contended it was a boring one at best and flat-out refuted that it contained even the slightest modicum of “social commentary.”

To her credit, Ms. Cloisters said that oftentimes a critique says more about the reader than the writer. One other girl in class called Luke a misogynist. I grandiloquently argued that Ms. Austen wrote social satires in the same vein as modern movies like Best in Show, and that it was my understanding that Luke particularly enjoyed satire, so it seemed ironic that he didn’t dig Austen.

“At least Best in Show is funny,” was all Luke could manage.

Petulant little brat. What’s funny to me is that Jeremy could be jealous of such a clown. And that Nikki could like him and want to share herself with him. I just wish he would go away.