Sunday, June 12, 2005

YET I'VE SEEN CRUEL INTENTIONS ABOUT 6 TIMES: In a kind of follow-up to the series of "stuff you never really got" threads, I submit to you this--what are your yawning and shocking gaps in cultural knowledge? The stuff you're scared to admit. For instance, until last year, when it was serialized in the Times, I'd never read The Great Gatsby. (No, really--somehow I had teachers in 10th and 11th grade that didn't assign it.) As for some still-existing gaps?
  • Books--While I read more chicklit than I should probably be willing to admit in public, I've never read anything from chicklit's literary mother, Jane Austen, and the only Dickens I've ever read is Tale of Two Cities. Heck, the whole 19th Century novel is more than a little bit of a vacuum. So is medieval British literature--nope, never read any of the Canterbury Tales or Beowulf.
  • Movies--Among the movies I've never seen? Casablanca, Psycho, Citizen Kane, and Lawrence of Arabia.
  • Music--I have never owned nor listened to (at least all the way through with any degree of deliberateness) an album by Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, or pretty much any of the major "classic rock" acts.
  • Television--I don't think I've ever seen an episode of Thirtysomething, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or The Honeymooners.

So, folks, spread your secret shame here--what's your scary gap?

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