Canon Fires

by publius

This weekend’s Book Review brought us a retrospective on the university canon wars. And I’m not ashamed to say I’m with Ross Douthat on this. I’ve always been a bit curmudgeonly on all matters Western Canon. In fact, defending the traditional canon illustrates one aspect of conservative thought that I’ve always found compelling. But first, to the wars.

Rachel Donadio correctly says that “it’s generally agreed that the multiculturalists won the canon wars.” Don’t get me wrong, I think adding some diversity to the required lists is good, but it’s important that the old books stay on the list. Douthat makes an interesting side point that the greater threat is not so much removal of the texts, but studying everything through “the ‘modes of inquiry’ (or in Harvard-ese, ‘approaches to knowledge’) view of education[.]” I tend to agree, but that’s a different debate. For now, I want to focus on the older one – i.e., why require those old books in the first place? Why call them a “canon”?

At the outset, I recognize that these are all dead white male books (except for Austen, who clearly belongs on any list). I also recognize that this disproportionate representation stems from social and political repression – and even slavery. I grant all that. But it doesn’t exactly answer the question. The question, after all, isn’t “how come these are all dead white male books?” We know that. The question is, “of all the dead white male books ever written, why do these particular ones stand out?” And the answer is because they are great books.

Fine, but what makes them great? Who gets to say? Tough questions, all. Books aren’t great because I say so. They’re not great because Harold Bloom says so (though his vote counts more than mine). To me, greatness is simply a function of appeal over time. If a book continues to appeal to generation after generation, then there’s probably some objective value lurking somewhere in the work. For instance, Shakespeare is still going strong at 400 not because a bunch of dead white professors pushed him for years on brainwashed students, but because the works have (thus far) appealed to each generation across cultures. Same deal for Homer.

The bottom line is that I think we should have a presumption of deep respect for books that have withstood the test of time. That’s why it’s difficult to put modern books on this list. They simply haven’t had a chance to age yet. Toni Morrison may well take her place beside the Austens and Shakespeares of the world, but it is simply impossible to know today. Her work might be similarly touched with the universal, or it might simply appeal to our current generation.

Again, I’m not opposed to introducing more multiculturalism, but I would prefer to see ancient (or at least time-tested) works from other cultures rather than modern writers. Again, in their respective cultures, these books have lasted – and so there’s probably some there there.

Taking a step back, this “test of time” argument is one aspect of conservative thought that I’ve always found compelling. That is, conservatism’s strongest argument is an epistemic one. Because human reason is frail and limited, we must look to the past for knowledge. Properly understood, it’s not an irrational embrace of the traditional-for-the-traditional’s sake, but an empirical argument. We look to the past – the collective wisdom of mankind – for guidance about the present. We test our theories against experience. We use history to obtain a bigger sample set.

Thus, the conservative argument against, say, the Iraq War might be that culture and ethnic loyalties have always trumped abstract ideology. Or, conservatives might have warned against democracy promotion given its terrible historical track record. Even the seemingly-irrational conservative embrace of stability and tradition could be rationally-based in this respect. Conservatives might argue that history has shown that rapid change causes far more problems than stable measured change.

The fear of course is that “history has shown” simply becomes an incantation for policy preferences. And yes, that is a possibility. But at least in theory, you can see how respecting history and tradition could be empirically-based, and how it might provide rational, epistemological guidance to modern people.

To be sure, I don’t personally agree with all of these views. Sometimes rapid change is necessary regardless of the costs (e.g., Civil War, New Deal). Plus, I tend to value economics more than culture in assigning cause. But still, there’s something to this – and the Western Canon has always been a good example to illustrate it.

Comments

[Jesurgislac]

Slartibartfast: I've read Space, and I anti-recommend it. It was awful. Hopefully his other works are better; I'd like to get some sense that that's true before investing any time in one.

The Novel is delightful, if you're the kind of reader who takes delight in a self-referential trope extended over an entire novel. I am, I did, and it was. Further, the opening chapter does not deal with prehistoric creatures, though rice pudding does make a subdued appearance.

SEK: The very worst, however, are the scifi Caribbean lesbians, who cut and consume highly symbolic mangos in a future in which there are no more bananas.

Yum, mangoes. (Yes, we have no bananas.) In non-words: *giggles*

[gwangung]

I wasn't advancing the updates-of-the-canon-are-pc argument, just noting that the claims are not equivalent. Assuming there is such a thing as quality, works showing it ought to be in the canon, not works which are recommended by their politics.

That's OK, when the proponents state that it's for non-quality reasons.

But I don't think it's OK to object when proponents assert the quality is there; it conflates the two arguments. (And under the Publius Test, anything that's recent would have trouble making it in the canon, which might prove troublesome for some classes) (like, um, late 20th century American Lit...)....

[von]

Sorry, let me rephrase that second paragraph so that it makes sense (typos corrected):

"A work is part of the canon because it has influenced the culture. Influence can in part be measured by quality and tenure (crap doesn't last). But quality and tenure are ways of measuring influence, not checkboxes for a canonical work."

I should also note that, although I like Gordimer as a writer, I think her politics are largely for crap. But that's neither here nor there ....

[Jesurgislac]

Von: As I understand it, Publius's point is that you don't really know whether a book has cultural influence until some time has passed and you can get some perspective on it.

Which is why I referenced HTPWW, in which Russ ably outlines how the cultural influence of some writers is ignored or belittled or outright lied about.

[Dantheman]

von,

"Influence can in part be measure by quality and tenure (crap doesn't last)."

I will dissent from this, but don't want to get into that discussion.

The circularity problem doesn't disappear by your method of determining what is canonical. The only way a book becomes able to influence future generations is if it is part of the canon and gets widely read. And once it is widely read, it naturally influences future generations and stays within the canon. As a result, the canon is self-perpetuating, regardless of the merit of the books within it.

[rilkefan]

"That's OK, when the proponents state that it's for non-quality reasons.

But I don't think it's OK to object when proponents assert the quality is there; it conflates the two arguments."

I'm confused - I thought the conservative claim was that liberal profs are allowing their biases to influence their assessments of quality. I can't recall reports of anyone revising a curriculum explicitly trading quality for contemporary relevance, but that would also play in to the argument.

[SomeCallMeTim]

crap doesn't last

How can you know that? By analogy, my understanding is that sabremetricians argue that crap means of evaluating players have lasted for going on 100 years. Is it enough to say that those old methods of evaluating players have lasted this long, and so they cannot be wrongheaded? (NB: I don't follow baseball or the arguments about sabremetrics. My recollection is that you (von) do.)

[Hartmut]

Remarkable that noone has yet warmed up the old cliche that there is no contemporary literature of any worth (a claim that has been made since time immemorial) ;-)

One serious point I find missing here is the deplorable fact that even inside the white dead male universe of European descent there is not one canon but a lot of canons that only slightly overlap between different countries (and as this thread shows even between the UK and the US to a degree).
E.g. there is an extreme mutual non-availability of undoubtedly important authors in translation between Germany and France (and Germany and Poland*). Kipling translations into German were until very recently crappy to the extreme and there is still no complete edition (on the other hand there are few important Russian authors without good German editions).

*Stanislaw Lem is an exception. Non-Polish editions are usually based on the German translations (authorized by Lem), not the original.

[Bruce Baugh]

We could also cite political and religious doctrines more than a hundred years old, still in force, that lots of us would agree are crap. Things last for all kinds of reasons...and as others have pointed out, sometimes things vanish and then come back, with Melville and J.S. Bach as prominent examples within the liberal arts.

[baf]

For what it's worth, my high school didn't make us read Pamela or Clarissa, but we did read Joseph Andrews, which is tied to Pamela in enough that it you really need some knowledge of Pamela to appreciate it fully. We got explanations about this context in class.

[magistra]

If you include things in the canon mainly because they influenced other literature over a long time, I suspect you would end up with some awfully strange things in the canon. Like Prudentius' 'Psychomachia', for example.

Psychomachia (for those of you who may not have come across it), is a fourth century Christian Latin poem which is an allegorical conflict between the virtues and the vices. It supplied the basic theme for other works throughout the Middle Ages and beyond (down to at least John Bunyan), even though (as C. S. Lewis pointed out, who knew a thing or two about medieval allegory) it's not actually very good.

If you're going to count influence, then Prudentius' 1200+ years makes him up a star of the canon. Anybody here enthusiastic? (Though Prudentius did also write the Latin original of 'Of The Father's Love Begotten', which is a pleasing carol).

[rilkefan]

"crap doesn't last"

"How can you know that?"

Do you have examples of lasting crap for us to discuss?

"One serious point I find missing here is the deplorable fact that even inside the white dead male universe of European descent there is not one canon but a lot of canons that only slightly overlap between different countries"

Here just from the last century Mann, Rilke, Kafka, Musil, ... are canonical - ok, Gottfried Keller isn't. Calvino, Primo Levi, Lampedusa, Pavese are canonical. There's a long list of French authors. I'd be surprised if it's otherwise in Europe.

[Jesurgislac]

Do you have examples of lasting crap for us to discuss?

Dickens.

[SomeCallMeTim]

Do you have examples of lasting crap for us to discuss?

Old methods of baseball evaluation. Or anything by Henry James.

[rilkefan]

_Great Expectations_ isn't crap - as far as I recall, it's entirely crap-free. Even a relatively minor work like _The Old Curiosity Shop_ is 50% wonderful. And, well, _Bleak House_.

[Slartibartfast]

I tried going through a couple of Sinclair Lewis novels (Main Street and Arrowsmith) and found them to be fairly dull. Not crap is in bad, but lackluster. I haven't much more detailed to offer, having long since cleaned out the part of my personal attic that used to store the particulars.

Is Sinclair Lewis held to be canonical-ok, as rilkefan puts it?

[Hartmut]

rilkefan, Try to get those authors in decent translations in French bookshops or try to get Victor Hugo (except Hunchback) in Germany (the first complete translation of The Toilers of the Sea to German was made in the 21st century (while the abridged older ones were out of print for decades). Calvino and Levi (the German-Italian situation is far better) are available*. I actually know about Clarissa from a Calvino novel. I'd say Keller is canonical in German speaking countries.
The Mann clan is a very special case. There is a conversation reported between Thomas and Heinrich where Thomas claimed that his own books were classics (implying his brother's were not), whereupon Heinrich retorted that Thomas' books were classics because people bought them to adorn their bookshelves while his (Heinrich's) books were bought to be read. As I mentioned above, readability is traditionally considered a flaw by German literary authorities making those books canon-unworthy (and excluded from school curricula) :-(
---
On the topic of "crap doesn't fly":
If an author achieved canonicality, even his/her most crappy works are treated with deference. Quandoque dormitat Homerus (i.e., even the genius has its weak moments)**
---

*in popular editions. AFAIK Calvino is seen as not "serious" enough for academia. Levi has a special status here because he was a holocaust survivor. His books are read as supplement for history courses, less for their literary merit.
**I could name some poems by titans like Schiller that are simply abysmal. It was once a popular student prank to submit such a less-than-wellknown abomination to a professor/teacher for judgement and see their heads explode when they learned who wrote it after they tore it to pieces ;-)

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

I have lots I want to say but I don't have any time at all.

Short:

I loved Clarissa. And it provides excellent insight into the idea of what it meant to be a woman at the time. The horrific-to-the-modern-reader format is actually perfect to show the web that gets spun around her and drags her to her death. (Spoiler, blah, blah, you all weren't going to read it anyway.) ;)

Speaking of canon, anyone who wants to comment on literature should be required to read C.S. Lewis “An Experiment in Criticism”. He advocates a humility in approaching texts that vast numbers of critics would profit by adopting.

[Hartmut]

Dickens is indeed a good example of an author that is adored for some works of less than stellar quality. Oliver Twist is, from a literary point of view, sentimental pulp. He deserves to be known and read for his social commentary in any case but his literary output is a very mixed bag. On the other hand "Dickensian*" is such an influential term/concept that he could not be ignored even if all of his works were crap (they are not imo).

*There is a scene in the Kipling farce "the Village that voted the Earth was flat" where a character says (quoted from memory): "I hate Dickens but everytime I am in a court of law, it fills with Dickensian characters." Try to put that as short in other words!

[Hartmut]

Seb, "literary critic"* has been an insult for centuries for that reason, immortalized by Goethe: Schlagt ihn tot den Hund, er ist ein Rezensent (Beat him to death that dog, he is a [literary] reviewer).

*same with musical critic, allegedly a job for the completely unmusical and/or failed artists.

[cleek]

put me down as anti-Dickens. hell, put me down as blanket-anti-19th C. British, too. i just can't take books that won't get to the point, or which try to make too many of them. i prefer a book to move along deliberately, not to meander around trying to find a place to go.

[rilkefan]

Hartmut, the died-too-young author of _Oliver Twist_ wouldn't be canonical. I doubt he's taught as a totally first-rank pure novelist, but just read the first few pages of Bleak">http://www.google.com/search%3Fq%3Dbleak%2Bhouse%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26aq%3Dt%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26client%3Dfirefox-a&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title#PPA1,M1">Bleak House.

My point about Keller was that admittedly one's culture's depth of familiarity with others' is only so deep - I think _Die Leute von Seldwyla_ is terrific but whatever.

[Phil]

Personally, I like Dickens. Although I'd remove him from Teh Canon and replace him with H.G. Wells in a heartbeat. That and the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique.

Is it time to throw the Stephen King Grenade yet?

[SEK]

The conversation about Dickens illustrates why I said it's better to talk about canonical texts than authors: Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations deservedly canonical; Oliver Twist, Old Curiosity Shop, &c. non-canonical.

Slartibartfast: Main Street gets all the attention, but Babbitt's a far better book. Comparable in critique (not plot) to Fight Club, only about a much quainter period, which is one of the reason it fascinates. The other one I like, and taught alongside my favorite Faulkner (Light in August) is Kingsblood Royal. I only mention the Faulkner because they complement each other so neatly. In the Lewis, a fair-skinned, red-haired white man discovers he is, in fact, black. Hilarity and social commentary ensue.

[Hartmut]

In one of his essays Lem reported the curious finding that H.G.Wells was the only sci-fi writer to be found in a "serious" literary encyclopedia. He was mentioned there with texts that only a handful of specialists probably had ever heard of. Not the slightest mention of War of the Worlds etc. This part of his work (and his political texts) was(were) obviously unmentionable and definitely not canonical. That is about equal to decribing Mussolini as a bad novelist and not mentioning that he was also somewhat active in Italian politics ;-)
Concerning Stephen King, H.P.Lovecraft would be an interesting case. Definitely influential and seen by some nonpartisan critics as a very important author while others (including himself) see him as a pure dilettante of questionable merit.

[grackle]

Shorter Gary Farber, in which he outfarbers himself: I not only knew of Joanna Russ first, I was almost Joanna Russ before she was.

[Jackmormon]

Do you think anyone will consider Clavell part of the canon around 2100?

Not unless you were compiling, say, a 20th-century man-against-the-world pulp-market war novel seminar. That could be an interesting course...

[von]

The circularity problem doesn't disappear by your method of determining what is canonical.

No, not entirely -- although some books are read less and less, and eventually dropped, to replaced by a more fashionable choice. More to the point, however, the canon is so large that no one can teach/read it all, so there is variation in emphasis. But some circularity is a feature, not a bug: We want everyone to have a common frame of reference. It's called a culture.

Do you have examples of lasting crap for us to discuss?

I second Rilkefan. There are canonical works that I dislike, but very little crap in the mix. As to the point that being part of the canon gets your lesser work read: Of course it does, to a certain extent. But that doesn't put your lesser work in the canon -- and no one is arguing that the single H.G. Wells book everyone must read is Tono-Bungay (as opposed to War of the Worlds).*

*I recognize that H.G. Wells is arguably not in the canon, but I had Tono-Bungay on the mind recently. (Don't Ask.)

And, yes, I'm sure I'll be hearing from someone who thinks that Tono-Bungay is the shiz ....

[von]

Shorter Gary Farber, in which he outfarbers himself: I not only knew of Joanna Russ first, I was almost Joanna Russ before she was.

I now have a very disconcerting image, a la the end of Spike Lee's "Malcolm X," in which a million Farbers and Farber-followers all stand up in sequence with clenched fist, and say: "I am Joanna Russ!"

[rilkefan]

"outfarbers"

I think Gary's on record as disliking this formulation, so it's probably not pleasing to the Kitten.

[Bruce Baugh]

Von, were you by chance reading Erik Larsen's Thunderstruck?

[russell]

Obviously, having Morrison and to a lesser extent Woolf in that group is somewhat depressing

Also sprach Douhat.

To which I can only reply, are you kidding me?

I can't speak for Morrison because I've never read her, but I'd say Woolf is pretty much considered to be one of the cats at this point.

Then there's Bellow, Achebe, Lessing, Borges. Paley, Nabokov, Coover, Singer. Kafka, Akhmatova, Auden, Gaddis. Murdoch, Drabble, Frisch, Handke.

Then there's the folks who are still alive and under 60 years old. How much time do you have?

200 years ago, the canon was pretty much written in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Maybe some English and Continental languages, but only if you wanted to push the envelope.

Bach was considered dusty old stuff until Mendelssohn championed him in the early 1800's.

Mendelssohn himself was not thought much of until folks got over the fact that he was a Jew.

100 years ago, Mozart was considered to be kind of a lightweight. Not a serious composer.

The canon is whatever folks think is important to study at the moment. Which is to say, the canon is a moving target. Which is to say, there is no canon in the sense that we're talking about it here.

There's a lot of very good work, and at different times, different slices of that very rich body of very good work seem to be particularly worthy of consideration. But it's really hard to identify a consistent, unchanging body of work that everyone always thinks fits into that bucket.

Shakespeare? He died, what, four hundred years ago?

The Chinese have been reading the Tao Te Ching for over 2500 years. Now *that* is a canon.

The Iroquois still have folks that can recite their entire history, from memory. It takes, apparently, something more than a day to do it, because the Iroquois federation dates from the 12th century. *That* is a canon.

Conservatives get all fired up about "the Canon" because it appeals to their belief in something called "The West", in capitals.

There is "a West", in the sense of a uniquely European culture, and there is a somewhat mutable "canon", in the sense of a literary (and other) legacy of expressions of that culture and experience. But it's also true that that is only one of many cultures and canons.

My guess is that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle would not recognize us as countrymen, or as participants in a common cultural heritage. Ditto Cicero, Tacitus (the real one), or Cato.

But who is Ish Kabibble?

Merwyn Bogue. Trumpet player, member of Kay Kyser's College of Musical Knowledge, then with the Shy Guys until the work dried up.

Then he sold real estate. Hey, it's a living. I bet he got a different haircut for the real estate work, though.

Thanks -

[hilzoy]

Outfarbers is not pleasing to the kitten. Gary does not like people verbing his name, and in this case, the kittten bows to personal preferences, viewing each commenter's name or pseud as his or her own.

I think there's a lot to the 'test of time' thing. I once spent six months or so with my grandparents in Sweden, without money to buy books. Luckily, they have a lot of novels in English, but the thing was: very few of them were really first-rate; most were the second-, third-, and fourth-rate novels of, say, the thirties through sixties. (On some scale with a lot of -rates. Fourth would be, say, CP Snow; third, maybe Stephen Spender.)

It was really interesting to read so many books of a quite different generation. But I could see that some of them really were not wearing well: the things that were fashionable then, the common unexamined assumptions, all that stuff just stood out like so many sore thumbs. (That's what made it so interesting.) Which makes me think that what matters is not the test of the centuries, but the test of getting to a point sufficiently distant that different things are in vogue. (Maybe 30 years.)

About assigning whole books: the very idea of assigning snippets of novels makes my hair stand on end. But it's absolutely true that assigning whole works limits the number you can assign. I used to teach the history of ethics; I assigned 5 books.

Finally, about influence: anyone want to guess what the second book printed (in Europe) was, the first being the Bible? A free lifetime subscription to ObWi to anyone who can answer this question without Google, and a thousand free lifetime subscriptions to anyone who has, in addition, actually read it. (Hint: not a work most people pick up today, but when Gutenberg was alive, it was an obvious choice for next work after the Bible.)

[hilzoy]

And jeez, I missed someone wondering why V. Woolf. Crikey. ;P

[Ara]

I just say stop teaching literature.

First, we've only been teaching vernacular literature since 1870 or so. There isn't the same consistent tradition of a literary curriculum as there is in other humanities.

Second, it absolutely ruins writers. The bane of literary departments isn't multiculturalism, it's critical theory and poststructuralism and all its pseudointellectual posturing to be rigorous. It fills perfectly good minds with hot air and gives the same hazy illusions of profundity as a good bong hit. And its ascendance is a symptom of the fact that departments as a whole cannot figure out how -- whether the problems are intellectual or political -- to teach literature.

[Rod Hoffman]

Re: Michener

I read an interview with him in which he said that he intentionally wrote the first 100 pages of each of his books to be boring so as to weed out the people who only bought them because they were on the best seller list. But, he said, to those who made it through the first 100 pages, "I open up a wonderland."

What a jerk.

However, I did read "The Source" because two different academic types told me it was the best overview of Biblical history to be found. I fought through to page 101 and, indeed, it was quite good. But I've never bothered to read anything else of his.

[Kári Tulinius]

Good lord! That's a lot of bytes spilt. Anyway, I have two points, and excuse me if someone's made them before, but I skimmed because I do have to get to sleep at some point.

1) Harold Bloom is an odious windbag. People should wear t-shirts in public places proclaiming that. His opinions are shit, not because they're Harold Bloom's per se, but because they're unfounded excreta who have little to do with logic or reason. In fact, based on his existance I'm pretty sure I can claim that one of the entrances to Hell is located in the Yale English Department.

2) "The Canon" is forever changing. One historical minute it's all Montaigne and Catullus, next minute it's all Descartes and Horace. Even Homer and Shakespeare aren't safe. My main gripe with "conservatives" isn't that they prefer some authors above others, but that they pick their fights in the wrong places. Nobody really argues that people shouldn't read Shakespeare or Homer (subject to the "lone nut" exception). If they'd pick worthwhile fights I'd be ready to jump into the trenches with them. Hell, I won't rest until everybody with a smidgen of education knows who Catullus is. But no, they're all "everybody should read Shakespeare!" Everybody Goddamn Reads Shakespeare Already!

[rilkefan]

It's still Catullus as far as I'm concerned.

[Keir]

Rikefan, I'm not saying politics is the only contributor to quality. However, you can't watch Riifenstahl without thinking `fascist, fascist, fascist' all the time, and that make the work worse. Same with MacDiarmid's Hymn To Stalin, or whatever he called it. Best Scots poet of the 20th century, but his Stalinism certainly degrades his work, because when he starts going on about the wonders of Georgian because that's what Stalin speaks, it's a wee bit creepy.

Someone like Ken MacLeod, or Ian (M) Banks, or Alasdair Gray would be unrecognisable without the politics. Certainly in Gray's case if you read Lanark, or A History Maker without taking into account the politics you miss the point so profoundly it isn't worth talking about it.

(I'm using these three as my examples because of my plot to advance Scottish Socialist SF -- the Prometheus cannae take it much longer!)

[hilzoy]

Just in case anyone is keeping score: I believe that the second book ever printed was Cicero's De Oficii (sp?), or On Duties as we call it in translation.

Very, very influential. For centuries. Now virtually unknown.

[rilkefan]

"De Officiis" would be "On Duties".

Cicero was important though as a tertiary but available source for ideas which we since obtained direct access to, wasn't he?

[rilkefan]

Can't resist pointing to the canonical Browning having his corrupt dying Bishop adore Tully.

[dr ngo]

volpone cannot be improved upon.

Perhaps not, but have you ever seen Sly Fox?

[dr ngo]

Can't resist pointing to the canonical Browning having his corrupt dying Bishop adore Tully.

Which in turn is referenced by Kipling in
Stalky & Co..

And thus does the canon consume (and reproduce) its own.

[burritoboy]

"Just in case anyone is keeping score: I believe that the second book ever printed was Cicero's De Oficii (sp?), or On Duties as we call it in translation.

Very, very influential. For centuries. Now virtually unknown."

Not only is it not virtually unknown (there was a fairly recent translation put out), I studied it at the school you taught at and the school I attended (Chirp!). Well, technically, there was a seminar on Cicero at the graduate school that attracted a goodly number of students. Many Borders stores regularly stock On Duties.

"Cicero was important though as a tertiary but available source for ideas which we since obtained direct access to, wasn't he?"

Cicero is important in his own regard.

[Ara]

Bleh. I say good riddance to the Cicero.

[Ara]

I know what y'all mean about reading third-rate writing. What is a real hoot is digging up old issues of those modernist magazines like Dial and Blast where Pound and Eliot printed their famous stuff. The thing is: other people were also riding modernist poetry. And most of it is just plain AWFUL. Laughably bad. Laughably bad, but in that pretentious modernist way. It is difficult to always remind oneself that the preponderance of stuff that gets published and even celebrated is just plain awful.

[dutchmarbel]

@Hilzoy: I live in Haarlem, so we still say that Laurens Janszoon Coster is the actual inventor ;)

[Jesurgislac]

Hilzoy: the second book ever printed

...this seems unlikely, as metal movable type printing was invented in Korea during the 13th century. (As I'm sure Hilzoy knows.) Given identifiable lines of communication between Europe and Korea, it seems probable that Johannes Gutenberg (or Johann Fust) didn't so much invent as copy the printing press.

[dutchmarbel]

Is it in the canon because of writing style, because of influence or both? Our Dutch canon of literature has books from 12th century to the 1990's. I had to read quite a number of them at highschool and though some have a nice story and have influenced or mirrored interesting historical periods, they are no easy read 'cause language has changed quite a bit.

Making a 'western' canon is hard I think. I can read Dutch, English and German literature, but I can only read French books in translation so I'd be depending on how well they are translated *if* they are translated. I've read quite a number of books my British husband has read at school, but he has read a lot less of the books our children will be expected to read.

I recently started him on the Dutch youth books 'every child should know'. I understand him not knowing any of the Dutch ones but was amazed to find that he didn't know Hector Malot. I'd never known anybody close not understanding 'being Remi';). Quite a number of the ones he had read I knew, but I've bought youth books because they were recommended here and he didn't know those either.

[Hartmut]

No need to go that far. Most elements that went into the printing press and movable types were already in existence in Europe and the trick was to combine them.
---
Thanks to dr ngo for mentioning Stalky & Co. I came to it by chance a few years ago and it was a true revelation (Luckily it was an annotated edition).

[Phil]

Looking at this thread again this morning, I was somehow reminded of this exchange from The Simpsons, when Bart runs against Martin Prince for class president:

Martin: As your president, I would demand a science-fiction library, featuring an ABC of the overlords of the genre. Asimov,
Bester, Clarke!

Student: What abouy Ray Bradbury?

Martin: [dismissive] I'm aware of his work...

[Jesurgislac]

Hartmut: No need to go that far. Most elements that went into the printing press and movable types were already in existence in Europe and the trick was to combine them.

As Christopher Columbus apocryphally said: "Of course it was easy to do, once I had shown you how to do it."

[Jesurgislac]

Keir: Certainly in Gray's case if you read Lanark, or A History Maker without taking into account the politics you miss the point so profoundly it isn't worth talking about it.

My favourite three short-story writers of all time: Ursula K. LeGuin, Alasdair Gray, and Rudyard Kipling.

Thomas M. Disch, Joanna Russ, Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, and E.M.Forster are all on the list for the quality of their short stories when they're good, but LeGuin, Gray, and Kipling are acutely brilliant at wrapping up the whole story in a few pages - creating a whole universe in a tiny framework, and doing so consistently, again and again and again.

It may be coincidence, but they're also three writers with very definite political views who are (were) not in the least afraid of having their political views show up i9n their work.

It may be heresy, but Saki, O. Henry, Frederick Brown and Damon Runyon give me indigestion when I try to read their stories en masse - they work well as one-offs, but not as a steady diet.

[Jackmormon]

1. Harold Bloom is an odious windbag. People should wear t-shirts in public places proclaiming that.

Print 'em up baby! I'll wear one of those.

2. Blast is just about my favorite half-hour read of the 20th century.

3. Cicero on rhetoric is awesomely cool, but I'm not about to run out to my bookstore for his treatise on duty. Just not gonna.

4. Tono-Bungay is fun, von, but no, I'm not going to argue that its status as "that sorta mediocre HG Wells" is wrong.

5. Keir, do you have any opinion on Hal Duncan? I've just started his Vellum, and I'm having a hard time making heads or tails of it.

[John Thullen]

Thanks for the reading suggestions, everyone.

"Harold Bloom is an odious windbag.....etc."

I recall Gary Farber some time ago having similarly strong opinions about Bloom based on the contention (not that I dispute it) that others write most of his "excreta".

Which, come to think, means that he can't be a windbag because the wind is generated by surrogate bags.

I don't feel strongly enough about Bloom to debate anything, but will only observe that throwing stupendous amounts of "excreta" against the wall with such gusto sometimes results in interesting wallpaper patterns, not to mention the occasional gem emerging from his digestive system.

If Bloom was the subject of a movie, I would cast Charles Laughton, Zero Mostel, Jabba the Hut, Marlon Brando, and all of the actors who have played Falstaff in the role.

No doubt others would cast the very large man who projectile vomits the entire corpus of world literature all over waiter John Cleese in "The Meaning of Life".

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

The idea of duty isn't considered nearly so important now as it was for the past 2,000 years or so. So it isn't shocking that it has slipped from the canon. [kind of joking].

[Jesurgislac]

True enough. Most people would think of Frederic before Cicero.

[JakeB]

Something else that occurs to me, that I don't think has yet been explicitly stated here (if it has, I apologize) although a number of comments allude to it and which also bears on one of publius's original points: like some others, I think that much of the best fiction being published today is what is called genre fiction. Considering that the artillerymen tend to shy away from genre (and here's a delightful treat for anyone who finds the pomposity and high-handedness of certain serious writers as irritating as I do), one might expect either that 1) some of today's best writing will never be canonized or 2) it will require more sensible cultural conservators farther down the road to resort wheat from chaff.

[dutchmarbel]

@Jake: I think Margaret Atwood still refuses to call The Handmaid's Tale SF ;)

[JakeB]

dutchmarbel--
I hear that after she won the Booker Prize she finally deigned to admit that Oryx and Crake was SF. I'd be tickled if she was still refusing to say so about Handmaid's Tale.

I reckon Jeanette Winterson is the new Atwood. Having written a book featuring robots and a futuristic city, she says science fiction is stupid. Ai!

[Gary Farber]

"I liked Clavell's _Shogun_ back in the early '80s - how does that compare to Michener?"

IMO, Clavell is a better writer, as regards prose, and characterization.

Shogun wasn't great literature or brilliant, but it did a good job of telling a Western audience about Japan of the time. Michener delivers similar services, but a bit more mechanically, and rather more flat, although, to be sure, Tales Of The South Pacific has much charm. But he later went on to deliver industrial bricks of cheese, and while Clavell also delivered huge blocks of commercialism, I tend to appreciate his prose and story-telling a bit more.

That's an entirely subjective opinion, of course, and also perhaps biased by my having met the Great Man (Clavell), when I worked at Avon, and we were ushered into The Presence in a conference room, where he did the standard routine of an autograph and twenty seconds of words each -- but I really don't think this affects my opinion of him, up or down, in the least, given how mechanical the experience was.

Michener's career was largely based on putting forward vast infodumps on topics he hoped were commercial. Mostly he was right, and mostly he did a serviceable job, but they do tend to lean towards the flavor of government cheese.

King Rat was very good, pure and simple, as I recall, although it's been a long time. Tai-Pan was a pot-boiler, but still engrossing and educational, albeit in a quite stolid and wholly predictable way.

Writing, directing, and producing, To Sir, With Love, is nifty. Writing the screenplay for The Great Escape: classic.

[Gary Farber]

"Outfarbers is not pleasing to the kitten. Gary does not like people verbing his name, and in this case, the kittten bows to personal preferences, viewing each commenter's name or pseud as his or her own."

Thanks. Yes, it is my preference to not be derogatorily verbed.

(Complimentary verbing is fine.)

[Gary Farber]

Just in case anyone is keeping score: I believe that the second book ever printed was Cicero's De Oficii (sp?), or On Duties as we call it in translation.

Very, very influential. For centuries. Now virtually unknown.

I mentioned a bit ago doing a lot of reading on and of the Greeks and Romans of late; FWIW, I've been running through a lot of (translated into English, alas), Cicero....

[Gary Farber]

[...] Martin: As your president, I would demand a science-fiction library, featuring an ABC of the overlords of the genre. Asimov, Bester, Clarke!

Student: What abouy Ray Bradbury?

Martin: [dismissive] I'm aware of his work...

I'm really inclined to back Martin in preferring Alfred Bester to Ray Bradbury, much though I did enjoy Bradbury's work as a kid.

But I never did love it, moving as it could occasionally be, and schmaltzy as it could otherwise tend to be.

Whereas Bester was absolutely brilliant; totally mind-blowing.

[trilobite]

Fun thread! Nice to see so many avid readers around here. And I second (third?) the recommendation of Myers Myers & Fforde.

I do think some crap made it onto the canon simply because it was seminal or influential -- Richardson, a great deal of Dickens, etc. Books that once mattered a lot because they did something first or spoke strongly to their own time, but are not actually very good reads or terribly profound. I doubt anyone but a literary historian needs to read Richardson.

Then again, I know people who LOVE Dickens. All of it, every single word. And that's a lot of words. Many, many, many words. More words. And I'm just talking about the first chapter of Oliver Twist, here. :)
So, we'll never agree, it doesn't matter very much, and I'm glad we all like to read. Seeya in the funny papers (which I also like to read, but do not consider part of the canon).

[rilkefan]

"Seeya in the funny papers (which I also like to read, but do not consider part of the canon)."

Surely some of Calvin & Hobbes is canonical.

[JakeB]

"Surely some of Calvin & Hobbes is canonical."

Calvin and Hobbes is but the pale Virgilian shade of the Homeric colossus of Little Nemo.
/pompous

[Hartmut]

Jes, concerning the printing process
Both the movable letters existed (though usually in wood) and were used without a (large) press and the press itself existed and was used for woodcut printings etc., so I don't think the invention in a still far part of the world is more likely to have triggered the reinvention in Europe than just somebody having the idea to combine two common technologies. I think the main problem was not the basic idea but to make it work at an economically sound level by increasing the longevity of the letters.
I think there are known precursors to Gutenberg that used wooden letters that simply did not last long enough. James Watt did not invent the steam engine, he just made them economical, I think the same principle applies to Gutenberg.
---
Maybe there is a need for a tiered canon.
It would contain in one section the fundamental works that are necessary to understand most of what came behind (e.g. the Bible, Homer for the Western culture), the rest could be divided into epoch-defining works, epoch-specific works and solitaries(i.e. singular works of a standalone nature). An example for the latter category would be the Kalevala. It is a national epic by a known author that combines traditional material with "modern" with the unique advantage that its genesis is known in detail.
If this categorizing is done intelligently it would allow an easier choice depending on the depth desired.

[Phil]

Another great SF short-story writer to be added to Jes's list above is J.G. Ballard, IMHO.

[Jeff]

It may be heresy, but Saki, O. Henry, Frederick Brown and Damon Runyon give me indigestion when I try to read their stories en masse - they work well as one-offs, but not as a steady diet.

HH (Saki) Munro wrote some Wodehouse-ish stories -- I believe one collection is called "Clovis and the Aunts". I had a fun time with them, although I don't think their quite as good as Wodehouse. Frederick Brown is varied enough that I can usually read one of his collections in one go.

I haven't read enough Runyon, and certainly not any collections, to know about him.

Different tastes, etc applies (I find Jane Eyre to be a trashy romance novel, and I can't bring myself to read Wuthering Heights).

[Slartibartfast]

William Goldman: destined for the canon, or the dustbin?

I think some of his stuff is magic; other bits sufficiently odd that I have to admit that I'm not smart enough to tell whether it's genius or just insane.

[Slartibartfast]

William Goldman: destined for the canon, or the dustbin?

I think some of his stuff is magic; other bits sufficiently odd that I have to admit that I'm not smart enough to tell whether it's genius or just insane.

[Jackmormon]

I suspect Goldman will go the way of JM Barrie: one book--maybe two books--will be beloved and the others will be antiquarian curiosities.

[DaveC]

one book--maybe two books--will be beloved

Lookit, God only wrote one book. Well maybe two, depending on how you see things. That's good enough.

[DaveC]

Jack, come visit me at HOCB. I need your blog love. (and also a copy of the HOCB by-laws.)

[russell]

Lookit, God only wrote one book. Well maybe two, depending on how you see things.

Even within the mainstream of the tradition you're talking about, it might be 5, 39, or 73 books. Depending on how you see things.

It only gets weirder from there.

Jack, come visit me at HOCB. I need your blog love.

Way too much information for prime time.

Thanks -

[Jesurgislac]

"Seeya in the funny papers (which I also like to read, but do not consider part of the canon)."

Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For. It remains to be seen if they'll become part of the canon - if they can speak outside their own time - but they're an absolutely fantastic long-running story, with people who age and marriages that change and kids that grow up and politics.

And Fun Home. Everyone should read Fun Home.

[Jesurgislac]

Jeff: (I find Jane Eyre to be a trashy romance novel, and I can't bring myself to read Wuthering Heights).

Jane Eyre is indeed a romance novel - but not "trashy", in any sense of the word. (As a student once said to Joanna Russ, though: "What a terrible book! It's just female sexual fantasies!") The only thing I regret about reading Wuthering Heights is that I was assigned it for school, so read the introduction first - which outlines the plot. I still enjoyed reading it, but I've always skipped introductions since and read them at the end.

Villette is better than Jane Eyre (I love both, but), and Shirley is somewhat different from either. The Professor is interesting if you're a completist, which I am, as is what's been published of Emily Bronte's Gondal fanfic. Anne Bronte hit her stride with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Agnes Grey is better than The Professor, but I agree with May Sarton that Anne and Charlotte both had their brakes tripped when they read Wuthering Heights and realised what they could do) and while I suspect Emily was a one-book writer, I still wish Anne had lived as long and rich an authorial life as Elizabeth Gaskell...

[Sock Puppet of the Great Satan]

"It's still Catullus as far as I'm concerned."

Found a 1950s-era translation of Catullus once. Some poems had so much left out of the translation that there was hardly 30% left of the text. More omissions than Atty.Gen. Gonzo testifying to congress.

Canon yes, but too raunchy for all of it to be included.

[Jeff]

I still enjoyed reading it, but I've always skipped introductions since and read them at the end.

You ain't just kidding, Skippy! I love to read the introduction after the book, and say to myself, "What was this jerk thinking? Did s/he read the same book I did?"

I'm a fan of Austen (inherited from me mum -- jane's her favorite author) -- are there any of the Bronte books which would appeal to that inclination?

[Jesurgislac]

No. All of the Bronte sisters were terrific writers, as is Jane Austen, they didn't write anything like each other. Had Austen lived, she would certainly have read their novels (and Charlotte Bronte's publisher sent her Austen's novels) and it's fascinating for me to wonder what she would have thought of them.

(Charlotte Bronte is quoted as not thinking much of Austen, but I don't know the context, and it may have been in response to a suggestion that she model her books on Austen's: a truly awful idea.)

[The Constructivist]

Multiple canons, anyone? BTW, way too much Harvard/Yale cross-talk here. Try Columbia: Spivak's Outside in the Teaching Machine.

[bitchphd]

Clarissa, pace the second comment in this thread, is in fact still quite readable--and enjoyable!--when people are introduced to it. Truly. It's not read for pleasure (nor is Pamela, which is not as good a novel) partly because it's so freaking long, and partly because tastes have changed, and partly because, ironically given the criticism of Richardson as a DWM, it's a very long novel about a young woman's struggle for mental and physical autonomy. Which is to say, it's not an "adventure" novel in, say, the way that Moby Dick is (also a great novel, fwiw).

The usual reaction to Richardson's novels is to mock them for taking their women characters seriously, and doing so in ways that seem dated to us now. In fact, though, Clarissa is a great and very affecting feminist novel.