I don’t mean to be on a John Hodgman kick as of late (though I am thinking I need to go and buy a book of his soon), but while looking for something else, I came across this old Hodgman piece at McSweeney’s, “Fire: The Next Sharp Stick?” For English 505 next year, I think I’m going to include all or some of Foucault’s lecture “The Discourse on Language” because this is where he talks about how before Mendel’s breakthroughs in plant genetics, to speak of traits being passed down from plant to plant was crazy; after Mendel, it was crazy to do any different. Or something to that effect.
In any event, Hodgman’s “Fire: The Next Sharp Stick?” could be an interesting and amusing counter-balance to that more complex work that oddly says about the same thing.