Why Do Some Books Make It Into the Literary Canon?

mathmom · June 11, 2012, 4:23pm

I like Ann/PA’s list - interesting set of books by international writers especially, but much as I like Stephen Gould, I don’t get why Mismeasure of Man is on that list - not even his best book. I read some of the Aeniad as part of an Epic Poetry class, which I signed up for because I loved the teacher and thought it would be good for me, and not so much because I planned to love the reading. I loved the* Illiad*, liked the* Odyssey* and thought *the Aeniad *was a slog. So it’s not on my canon. I’d do a bunch of modern poets, not just Bishop, if I were making a list.

As to Mythmom’s list - I’d add one of the fun comedies to Shakespeare either Twelfth Night <a href=“my%20favorite,%20I’ve%20seen%20it%20at%20least%20a%20dozen%20times”>/I</a> or Much Ado. I’d pick Persuasion from Jane Austen, or stick with the classic Pride and Prejudice. My favorite Hardy is Far From the Madding Crowd*. Not quite as depressing, but all the usual elements. I’m surprised* Lucky Jim* is on Mythmom’s list, though I did love it. I’m thinking the list should have something that reflects English empire - I’d pick Kipling’s* Kim* or Forster’s A Passage to India. But I think we’re reflecting important moments in literary history, not history in general. I often tend to look at literature through a historian’s eyes, since that was my favorite subject in high school.

One of these days, I’ll post the canon list of fantasy and sci fi. :)

gouf78 · June 11, 2012, 5:52pm

I need the canon of sci-fi and fantasy. Why does it get dissed in the literary world? Is it because the science-minded people who love it don’t write reviews? Is it too modern?(Hard to imagine Jules Verne is that modern). Ray Bradbury, Asimov, Pournelle, Tolkien…

gouf78 · June 11, 2012, 6:03pm

I read the original vampire story “Dracula” by Bram Stoker in college (not assigned) and was blown away. What a thriller! I realized much later that the translation has so much to do with the enjoyment of a classic. Translations are a real art.

MADad · June 11, 2012, 6:06pm

I am so left brained I think my right brain is dead (AP Chem teacher)

Hated, hated, hated, hated, poetry. All that over-analyzing and symbollism, much of it so obscure–I remember some poems had footnotes that were longer than the poem itself.

Excuse me, but I thought Moby Dick was a cool whaling adventure story–I picture authors laughing at us from above (if they are deceased) over what we “insist” they meant.

mythmom · June 11, 2012, 7:12pm

Melville certainly knew his book was more than that as did Hawthorn and his Concord friends. It was not at all popular when it was published, whereas his simple sea adventure stories, like Omoo, were.

That list of world classics sounds great.

No one needs to read the list I provided. Someone asked for a list of the canon, and I certainly forgot some, and of course there is disagreement and discussion possible about which book of this or that.

I guess it’s hard for people in the discipline to understand that the canon is more about how things are written than what they’re about. Therefore, the most important book within the discipline isn’t always the crowd pleaser.

I see no problem with people reading exactly what they like.

I am not dictating this list as must – just as a kind of basic list we English folk operate out of.

It’s certainly not necessary for anyone else to replace a great modern text like The English Patient (or Cat’s Table – I see my friends from that thread) with Spenser. I wanted and needed to do that, but that’s an academic’s approach.

I seem to also want to understand the most important paintings in art history, the most seminar works in music history, etc. etc. I enjoy understanding a discipline’s understanding of itself.

But this isn’t at all normative. Everyone should read what s/he chooses with relish.

I treasure pushing myself through things I don’t initially see the value of and then finding the gem in the mud, so to speak. But that’s just my nature and why I did read all of The Faerie Queen. It was one of the reasons I went to grad school because I wanted someone to force me to read it. I also read Hegel and Kant.

So, I think what everyone has said is valid.

I particularly appreciate the addition of Twelfth Night, among many others, and I’m mortified to have forgotten Yeats. I guess my mind just wasn’t there at the moment.

Things fall apart … That title was taken from a Yeats’ poem, but surely many of you know that.

I agree with mathmom about the Mismeasure of Man, but I didn’t want to be rude or lean too heavily on one a possible misstep with one title. In was in answer to the awful The Bell Curve.

I also very much like mathmom’s addition of Passage to India. We might want to add Scott’s The Raj Quartet which led to the PBS series The Jewel in the Crown and The Alexandria Quartet by Laurence Durrell. And Robert Graves’ magnificent memoir Goodbye to All That.

mathmom, sorry you didn’t like The Aeneid. I do love it, but so much more since DS read it in Latin four times and has coached me in it.

Anna, I think the Iliad would be more important precursor to the Aeneid than the Iliad.

Book Two of the Aeneid, The Fall of Troy, is perhaps the most influential piece of Western literature. The Iliad and the Odyssey have just returned to favor; for about 9 centuries the Aeneid was THE THING, probably because fewer people could read Greek than Latin, and everyone read (and probably memorized) long sections of the Aeneid in those fancy British schools and in school rooms all over Europe before that.

The Dido and Aeneas episode has led to more operas and more music than any single other subject. (I know this because DS demonstrated this in an elaborate oral presentation he gave at Williams when he still thought he might study music, not art.)

I am happy for any and all emendations and changes. I would like to make my case for Mansfield Park as THE Jane Austen. First, Fanny Price was Austen’s favorite heroine. But more than that, it’s bigger in its scope. It discuses colonization and the slave trade and their affect on Britain, and class is more thoroughly treated by giving different sisters such different fates. It’s not as fun or romantic as P & P or as feminist as Persuasion, but it stands besides Middlemarch as a very thoughtful exploration of some of the vices of British society as well as exploring the moral questions raised by sex and romance.

Just my opinion. I have read all six of her novels many times.

As for Shakespeare. Ah. Sticky wicket. I can understand the difficulty of the language. The thing is, it’s difficult for everyone. As I point out to my students, I couldn’t go into the hood and understand the lingo either. One gets used to it.

It can’t exist apart from its language because language stood in for scenery, lighting and props, so it’s all the plays are.

I know it’s hard. Hard for me too, but people struggle to read Shakespeare all over the world. I think in a global world an understanding of English is the only asset a lot of my students have, and in some contexts, that includes being able to decipher Shakespeare and be familiar with it.

I know it is a great achievement to them when they can, and it does make them happy and feel a full-fledged member of culture with access to all. It’s great to impart that. It’s work.

Renaissance Man with Danny DeVito is an 80’s film that shows army recruits considered too dim to make it through basic training mastering Shakespeare is a favorite of my students and me too.

One of them recites the famous Band of Brothers Speech in Henry V. Many have watched PBS Band of Brothers and they are excited to find out where the phrase comes from, and so many other instances of this recognition.

Al Pacino made a wonderful documentary, Looking for Richard, about his staging of Richard III. He gets experts to explain how to read Shakespeare. A young Alec Baldwin and an even young Winona Ryder are both in it.

And then, there’s Shakespeare in Love with just lays Romeo and Juliet bare.

I wish I could show all of them, but that would be taking up too much class time with movies so I have to choose.

mathmom · June 11, 2012, 7:17pm

No one could spend a whole chapter on “The Whiteness of the Whale” and not have a little more in mind than just writing an adventure story. :)

I like poetry and was lucky to have good teachers. My first good teacher, really encouraged us to enjoy it before trying to understand it. She was also into lyrics of rock songs as poetry. My recollection is that we started with Joni Mitchell and worked our way backward. I know we did good sized chunks of the Bible as poetry as well that year.

I tried reading Mansfield Parka while back, but was seriously distracted and never really got into it. I should probably try it again. I’ve reread nearly all the other ones.

Shakespeare is interesting. I’m not much good at reading plays - not enough imagination, but I love to see them. I always spend the first ten minutes thinking I can’t understand a word and then get into it. And I just love seeing different productions. Macbeth with Patrick Stewart was just amazing. They did the Banquo’s ghost scene with an actor playing the ghost before intermission, and without afterwards. It was brilliant.

katliamom · June 11, 2012, 8:09pm

GREAT EXPECTATIONS SHOULD BE DROPPED FROM THE CANON ???

I just fell off the chair.

(But I do agree about the Fairie Queen)

The canon changes - just as the notion of what makes a well educated person. Once, you weren’t considered well read if you hadn’t memorized sections of the Fairie Queen. Once, you weren’t considered well educated if you didn’t know Latin, and before that, ancient Greek - today neither will get you many brownie points with prospective employers.

In my view, the canon should challenge. It should be reflective of its time and influential but it should also be challenging. Which is why ‘Uncle Tom’ isn’t in the canon - it’s just not a very good work of literature - although its influence cannot be underestimated by anyone interested in American history. And which is why ‘Moby Dick’ should remain in the canon even though in Melville’s time no one read it except maybe Hawthorne.

A more interesting question, to me, is which 20th century authors (let’s keep it to Americans) will be in the canon in another 100 years… Will anyone read Willa Cather? Ford Maddox Ford? Which Hemingway, if any, will endure? Will anyone read anything of Fitzgerald besides Great Gatsby (if that?) Cormac McCarthy? Toni Morrison?

mythmom · June 11, 2012, 8:19pm

Ford Maddox Ford was British, and I hope people will still read The Good Soldier for what it says about point of view and who tells the story.

I hope all the others are read. I read Death Comes for the archbishop (Cather) when I was twelve in a summer’s day.

It changes, yes, but always good to know where we come from.

garland · June 11, 2012, 8:47pm

I gotta agree–anyone who can get through MD just looking for an adventure story is a pretty patient person. So much goes in every direction *except *adventure.

mathmom · June 11, 2012, 8:52pm

I adored This Side of Paradise which I read at the perfect age, but I don’t suppose it’s really Fitzgerald’s best book. Is there a better Jazz Age book than The Great Gatsby? Should some detective fiction be in the canon? (My son is currently reading Dashiell Hammett) I don’t read enough contemporary Literature with a capital L to know what would be lasting. Of contemporary American novels I’ve read and would stick there: Anne Tyler’s* Celestial Navigation*, maybe Jon Hassler’s Staggerford, maybe Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose, if I can have Canadian’s Robertson Davie’s Fifth Business. I’ve only read one of Toni Morrison’s books, didn’t love it, but I’m sure she belongs. Of the Beats surely we’ll all still be talking about “Howl” and* On the Road*. I have a funny story about the latter. We were listening to in on CD in the car and unbeknownst to us it had inadvertently gotten put on shuffle. We didn’t notice for a long, long time! And of course there are some great American sci fi writers. I’d love to see recognition for Asimov’s* I Robot*, LeGuin’s* Left Hand of Darkness*, Bujold’s Vorkosigan books. And for fantasy two authors whose books are beautifully written I’d have to include Patricia McKillip (The Riddlemaster of Hed) and Robin McKinley (Beauty.)

mythmom · June 11, 2012, 9:13pm

I nominate Pynchon, Powers, Morrison and Auster as my picks as favorite contemporary writers. I don’t know what the future will bring for them.

gouf78 · June 11, 2012, 9:28pm

I got some reading to do…!

NJTheatreMOM · June 11, 2012, 10:38pm

Lots of food for thought there, Mythmom. When it comes to Shakespeare-related films, I heartily second “Looking for Richard.” We also just saw Ralph Fiennes’ “Coriolanus” and it is fantastic.

ThereseR · June 11, 2012, 10:46pm

Can you tell me more about “The Faere Queene” and why some people dislike it?

Also, is it harder to read than say Shakespeare?

mathmom · June 11, 2012, 11:11pm

^You can read it online and see for yourself! Part of the difficulty is that Spenser’s language was deliberately archaic - so at least in my opinion it’s harder to read than Shakespeare.
[The</a> Faerie Queene](<a href=“http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/fqintro.html]The”>http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/fqintro.html)

psych_2 · June 12, 2012, 2:45am

Although I thought JK Rowling’s world-building was great and her r=writing was generally very good, I hated the ending of Harry Potter–they fought a war as teenagers… and happily married their high school sweethearts. And had a ton of children. What war, again? Oh, and Slytherin was pretty much the root of all evil, from page one until the end.

I honestly prefer the much less renowned ending to the Animorphs–most of the main characters survive the war but are so emotionally screwed up by everything they have experienced and done that they have incredibly difficulty functioning in the post-war world (ranging from suicidal depression to shallow, restless boredom to denial and isolation) to the degree that whether or not they “won” becomes a solid question. Also, the series was excellent for showing gray and gray morality. The “bad guys” weren’t all bad, the “good guys” weren’t all good (to the point of mass murdering other, innocent species!), and the main characters did some very questionable things throughout, which they repeatedly struggled with psychologically and morally. The series was written for younger audiences and is probably “worse” than HP in terms of writing quality (although it does have some truly beautiful lines), but it is one of the darkest and most emotionally honest “fictional war” war stories I’ve read (you really don’t get much darker than telling your mother you love her as you shove her off of a cliff, in my opinion).

Moving on to actual classics–I loved “Grapes of Wrath” and East of Eden and thought they were beautifully written. I never read any of the shorter Steinbeck works. I also really enjoyed the Count of Monte Cristo, and I liked The Old Man and the Sea for its well-done (IMO) simplicity. Oh, and I loved To Kill a Mockingbird. I thought A Tale of Two Cities desperately needed editing–you could tell Dickens probably got paid by the word. I don’t think Flannery O’Connor would be much missed. Some of her short stories work (I liked Greenleaf and thought it was quite clever), but I read Wiseblood for my junior year English project and can only hope her other novels were less… bizarre.

I loved the Shakespear tragedies I read (Hamlet, Julius Caesar), but his comedies largely fell flat for me, largely because they seemed to be hinged on understanding a bunch of no-longer-used dirty puns (Much Ado About Nothing). I generally think tragedy holds up to the test of time better than comedy does. What’s funny often changes; what’s sad seldom does.

I could see My Sister’s Keeper making its way into HS literary canon, especially as it’s already being taught in some HS English courses. Although some of Picoult’s most recent offerings have been weaker, I thought My Sister’s Keeper was all-around superb in terms of writing quality, characterization, and provocation for discussion and reflection. YMMV on that, of course. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan seems like another possibility. I think Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible will make it in there, even though I’m not too thrilled with her handling of disability in that book (Oh! Look! “Magical” cure!)

lololu · June 12, 2012, 6:13am

Interesting. It often turns out that the things that resonate in later generations are things that we hardly notice or pass by in our own time. One modern book that fits this criteria that I think will eventually pass into the canon is Gilead by Marianne Robinson. While it won the Pulitizer and was critically acclaimed, it was not a “big name” book. But it is beautifully written and deals with the meaning of faith, of family and fatherhood among other things. All themes that are universal and timeless.

eireann · June 12, 2012, 7:05am

I have to say that I was surprised when I took a contemporary American Literature class in college by what we read. Some of it was expected; there were a lot of classic short stories, but the novels included “The Road,” “The Lovely Bones,” and a thriller that my professor had written that was pretty much a standard thriller and not a best seller. It’s entirely likely that I am forgetting a book.

“The Lovely Bones” just surprised because I had read it before and it’s okay, but I’ve never through of it as a literary book. There are quite a few contemporary books that I would have picked first – not for personal preference, but for the writing and the likelihood to actually become part of literary canon. And I still don’t have a lot of words about the professor assigning his own book that was definitely not literary canon, that we didn’t really discuss critically (the class discussion turned into people asking him what it’s like to be a published writer), and him asking us to leave him good amazon reviews.

I should make it clear that I’ve had other professors use their books as texts and not had a problem with it, but those were cases where the books were relevant. This was a thriller like James Patterson/Dennis Lehane/etc, except that it was never anywhere near a best seller and isn’t available in most stores.

romanigypsyeyes · June 12, 2012, 8:26am

Psych, Snape and Narcissa were both Slytherines and two of the biggest heroes. The war was essentially won because of Narcissa’s lie. Also, all of those who fought were of age-17. Not that different from the 18 year olds we send off to war all the time.

Don’t want to get off track, just wanted to point it out :).

NJTheatreMOM · June 12, 2012, 8:35am

Psych_, my sons loved Animorphs. I used to read them to my younger son when he wasn’t quite a good enough reader to handle them on his own…in about second grade, in the same time period when I was reading him the Redwall books. We didn’t allow TV during that era, and he appreciated books like Animorphs and the Redwall series much more than kids’ books.

A year or two later, I started reading Watership Down to him one day when he was sick in bed, and he liked it so much that about two thirds of the way through he took over reading it on his own!

He is now 21 and just the other day mentioned how good the Animorphs books were. I myself remember one book in the series when one of the characters was able to occupy the mind of a “bad guy” and thereby come to understand what existence was like for him. That really impressed me.

I think there are two separate discussions going on here, though…“the literary canon” and “worthwhile books of value.” :)

Why Do Some Books Make It Into the Literary Canon?

CONNECT WITH US