One of my favorite anecdotes involves American novelist Kurt Vonnegut and American stand-up comic Rodney Dangerfield. It outlines one of the first lessons I learned about writing and literary criticism, and it came from a very unexpected source.
You see, Rodney Dangerfield once starred in this 1980s movie called "Back to School". There, he played Thornton Melon, a grown-up rich kid who decides to return to college in order to get the degree that he missed the first time he was there. Early on in the movie, Thornton thinks that, just because he's rich, he can breeze through everything with minimal effort.
Assigned to write a paper on Kurt Vonnegut, Thornton takes the easy way out and hires Kurt Vonnegut himself to write the paper.
The next thing we know, Thornton's teacher is handing back the paper, and it's got a huge "F" scribbled in the margin. "Whoever wrote this paper," she declares to a surprised Thornton, "knew absolutely nothing about Kurt Vonnegut."
Classic.
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