> So Greg might still be a twat, but the one thing that you actually can't accuse him of is obliviousness towards his own behaviour.
I don't think so. The author of the blog projects their own view onto the situation. As they say, when they were a kid they took it at face value. So Greg could also draw the situation without inferring that he is being a twat.
The proper term for those whom the author describes is subliterate.
The author can't really help herself either, sad to say. Losing the Tiktok habit would be a good start. But I get that that is like asking my parents' generation not to smoke cigarettes, or mine not to moralize intolerably.
> Taking the text at face value, Greg Heffley has an irony-tinged self awareness of his own shittiness.
I'm not familiar with this book, but just the excerpts shown really mismatch the NYT quote in terms of their self-commentary.
The blogpost supposes that Greg is aware he's being a twat, and so somewhat mocks himself for it through the drawings and diary entries. I can accept (and even find it obvious) this applying to the NYT guy, but not to Greg. Greg just comes off even worse for this, not like he'd be ashamed about it at all. More like proud in case he is aware, or indeed oblivious, if he is not aware. This is because despite the blogpost author's assertions otherwise, I really don't find it a slamdunk conclusion he'd be self-aware about being a "twat", or that he'd understand why he'd be a "twat". On the contrary, the diary entries come across as quite the on the nose lesson in not being obnoxious (i.e. bad writing), completely upending such an interpretation.
I notice the word "literacy" thrown around a lot lately, in part by myself, but there's an inherent dishonesty to this. Language does not have absolute meaning, and you cannot read another person's mind. Just because you interpret literal works of art differently, I don't believe that necessarily qualifies you as illiterate. These are not the same qualities.
Just the other day I was discussing shows with a colleague, and I was convinced that by willfully skipping on large swaths of the medium, he lacked the genre literacy to "correctly" interpret various motifs. In the end, it turned out he actually experiences shows very differently to me. For him, self insertion is simply never a thing. It was a complete whiplash to figure that out, and everything made a lot more sense in retrospect afterwards. I still maintain he misunderstands the medium significantly, but I no longer see it to be a matter of a gap in literacy. It's a genuine difference in how the medium can address him. It becomes a difference in knowing what someone meant, and actually taking it that way. He can only do (and can be expected to do) so much to bridge such a gap.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 30.1 ms ] threadI don't think so. The author of the blog projects their own view onto the situation. As they say, when they were a kid they took it at face value. So Greg could also draw the situation without inferring that he is being a twat.
The author can't really help herself either, sad to say. Losing the Tiktok habit would be a good start. But I get that that is like asking my parents' generation not to smoke cigarettes, or mine not to moralize intolerably.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/subliterate
I'm not familiar with this book, but just the excerpts shown really mismatch the NYT quote in terms of their self-commentary.
The blogpost supposes that Greg is aware he's being a twat, and so somewhat mocks himself for it through the drawings and diary entries. I can accept (and even find it obvious) this applying to the NYT guy, but not to Greg. Greg just comes off even worse for this, not like he'd be ashamed about it at all. More like proud in case he is aware, or indeed oblivious, if he is not aware. This is because despite the blogpost author's assertions otherwise, I really don't find it a slamdunk conclusion he'd be self-aware about being a "twat", or that he'd understand why he'd be a "twat". On the contrary, the diary entries come across as quite the on the nose lesson in not being obnoxious (i.e. bad writing), completely upending such an interpretation.
I notice the word "literacy" thrown around a lot lately, in part by myself, but there's an inherent dishonesty to this. Language does not have absolute meaning, and you cannot read another person's mind. Just because you interpret literal works of art differently, I don't believe that necessarily qualifies you as illiterate. These are not the same qualities.
Just the other day I was discussing shows with a colleague, and I was convinced that by willfully skipping on large swaths of the medium, he lacked the genre literacy to "correctly" interpret various motifs. In the end, it turned out he actually experiences shows very differently to me. For him, self insertion is simply never a thing. It was a complete whiplash to figure that out, and everything made a lot more sense in retrospect afterwards. I still maintain he misunderstands the medium significantly, but I no longer see it to be a matter of a gap in literacy. It's a genuine difference in how the medium can address him. It becomes a difference in knowing what someone meant, and actually taking it that way. He can only do (and can be expected to do) so much to bridge such a gap.