As we skip merrily toward Christmas, here is an angry letter to bring warmth to your heart. It relates to my review of the movie “Eragon,” and I heartily recommend that you first read the review and the comments that have been posted after it. Some of them are as good as any ol’ angry letter, especially the guy who defended home-schoolers as being normal yet misspelled every other word in his post and got angry at public schools for teaching evolution.
Anyway, here is the e-mail I received from one Andrew:
Hey Snider, maybe you should read the book before you bash the author.(Concerning Eragon) The movie sucked [swear word] and thats all there is to it. You could tell the books were written by an adolescent, but they were not that bad.
Merry Christmas
I replied: “Agreed that the movie sucked. But unless the book had a completely different story and characters, it must bear at least partial responsibility for the movie’s suckiness, mustn’t it?”
And Andrew said:
Well the book had an almost completely different story line, and the only thing that was the same is the characters. The books were not the best but the movie made Paolini look
absolutely horrible. He deserves more credit thsn that.
Where were you at when you were 15.
Where was I (at) when I was 15? Same place as Paolini: writing really bad literature.
Oh, and I should clarify something else. I made a crack in the “Eragon” review about home-schooled kids, and some people posted comments criticizing me for that, while others came to my defense. I surely appreciate folks sticking up for me, but let me just say for the record: I do think home-schooled kids tend to be social misfits and weirdos who don’t know how to relate to regular people, and many of them have been indoctrinated with whatever peculiar beliefs their teacher-parents chose to emphasize, at the expense of the child’s well-roundedness and social well-being. There are exceptions, of course — and my experience is that every home-schooled person I’ve encountered, while acknowledging the tendency, believes he or she is just such an exception. So stuff that in your stocking!
