If you haven’t spent a lot of time in university Englishes classes, you might be unfamiliar with the debate around The Canon. By which is meant the collection of literature that all humanity must aspire to read in order that they be well-rounded, humanistic, logical and intelligent fellows interacting with other well-read and therefore, well-rounded, humanistic, logical and intelligent fellows.
One of our favorite games in grad school — being the lame-ass Literature students that we were — was to sit around and play true confessions on the Great Books we never read. Mine happens to be Moby Dick. Haven’t read. No desire to read. Not going to read before I die.
The past twenty years or so, there’s been a fair amount of attention paid to expanding the canon. You know, get some women in there. And maybe a minority or two (who isn’t Ralph Ellison so let’s choose Toni Morrison because she can cover a couple of slots). In fact, maybe somebody not Western even. And maybe somebody born after World War II (current literary fave is Jonathan Franzen but I bet David Foster Wallace will end up with that permanent slot in the end … probably because he’s already dead).
But none of this takes away from the fact that sometimes books on the Great Literary Canon list (no matter who you get them from) are really not that great. Second Pass has a short list of the ones you should avoid. I don’t agree with all of them (haven’t read White Noise but good to know I can move it way to the back of my “to be read later” pile and I actually liked The Road ) but hey, that’s the whole point of posts like theirs … to argue and debate.
My addition to the list? Silas Marner by George Eliot. Man, of all the awful excruciating books to have to muddle through, that is high on the list. Read Middlemarch instead; it’s twice the length but definitely infinitely more interesting. And avoid anything by D.H. Lawrence. He was scandalous in the 1920s but now? You can’t figure out what all the fuss is about.
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I’d agree that some of the books in the canon are not quite as great as they’re made out to be. Personally, even though I love the story of the Odyssey, I find the repetitive language tiresome. But at the same time, I think it’s fair to say that it deserves its place in the canon. It’s not just great books that should go there, but important ones. If Silas Marner had influence on a lot of other writers, it should probably be in there (I haven’t read it).
If you’re interested, I’ve written a mini-essay on the literary canon on my blog: http://www.perplexicon.net/2009/08/do-we-need-a-canon/
I don’t disagree. I totally think War and Peace belongs in the canon even though I personally can’t manage to ever get through it. The thing about Silas Marner is that I don’t think it’s actually an important at all. If writers were influenced by Elliot, they tend to be much more into Middlemarch (that’s the one Virginia Woolf liked). So I think it has something to do with the fact that Silas Marner is a bit of a morality tale … and we do love ourselves some morality tales.
Um, I looked at this list, and there is not ONE that I have voluntarily read. Is that sad or what?