Hooey

Someone wrote:
"No, it's a load of
hooey--unless 'accessible' is very narrowly
defined."

Accessible, as I define it, means something akin to canonical
-- topics that have become part of the QB
mainstream.

Accessibility and difficulty are two different qualities, in my
opinion. As I stated earlier in the ACF Nationals
announcement, questions about Mann are preferable to Klopstock;
i.e. Mann is more accessible. A TU on Mann's "Felix
Krull" is more difficult (i.e. more challenging) than a
TU on his "The Magic Mountain," yet "Felix Krull" is
still accessible since it's a work by a canonical
author.

Also, keep in mind that these terms are all relative.
Mann is more accessible than Klopstock, but maybe not
as accessible as Goethe, for example. And "Felix
Krull" is more difficult than "The Magic Mountain," but
perhaps not as difficult as, say, "Tonio Kroger."
Finally, more accessible could still mean more difficult.
If we assume Goethe to be more accessible than Mann,
we can still say "Elective Affinities" is more
difficult than "The Magic Mountain."

I hope this
clarifies the accessible/challenging issue. But I guess
that all depends on your definition of
hooey.

R. Bhan
Editor
ACF Nationals 2002

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:45 AM EST EST