Private Message to Antonin Dolohov
Sep. 14th, 2012 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_poppyAntonin,
I thought it well to follow up with you about the fact that I have now seen three students who were directed to present me with the quite penetrating questions and concerns they've conceived while completing the (supposed) assignments for your course. (To be fair, all of them have acknowledged it was their own fault they'd given insufficient regard to the discrepancies in author and date of publication between the assigned text and the work they bought instead. Moreover, all of them confess they realised their error quite quickly, yet chose to continue reading.)
While I'm always pleased for the opportunity to educate students about their physical and psychic health, I regret to say that these particular students were rather badly upset by some of the details they've gleaned from Ms Reville's novel.
I've now read it myself, and I must say its mistaken ideas about the human body are lamentable. I doubt even contortionists are capable of certain acts described there, but more than that, I suspect the author has actually had very little in the way of direct experience of the things she attributes to her characters. So, not only are our students having their minds' eyes trained on things they've never before imagined, they are being fed a great load of rubbish about the mechanics, dynamics, sensations, emotions, and consequences of these things.
When you promised you'd do your best to limit the number of casualties you sent me, this was not the sort of damage I imagined.
How are you getting on? I doubt this business was much help with your insomnia. Or is the Pliny's doing for you, after all?
I thought it well to follow up with you about the fact that I have now seen three students who were directed to present me with the quite penetrating questions and concerns they've conceived while completing the (supposed) assignments for your course. (To be fair, all of them have acknowledged it was their own fault they'd given insufficient regard to the discrepancies in author and date of publication between the assigned text and the work they bought instead. Moreover, all of them confess they realised their error quite quickly, yet chose to continue reading.)
While I'm always pleased for the opportunity to educate students about their physical and psychic health, I regret to say that these particular students were rather badly upset by some of the details they've gleaned from Ms Reville's novel.
I've now read it myself, and I must say its mistaken ideas about the human body are lamentable. I doubt even contortionists are capable of certain acts described there, but more than that, I suspect the author has actually had very little in the way of direct experience of the things she attributes to her characters. So, not only are our students having their minds' eyes trained on things they've never before imagined, they are being fed a great load of rubbish about the mechanics, dynamics, sensations, emotions, and consequences of these things.
When you promised you'd do your best to limit the number of casualties you sent me, this was not the sort of damage I imagined.
How are you getting on? I doubt this business was much help with your insomnia. Or is the Pliny's doing for you, after all?