Why Do Some Books Make It Into the Literary Canon?

saintfan · June 12, 2012, 10:25am

I am not an English major but I’m related to one so I’ll give this a try Those books “in the cannon” are the ones that seem to be a stand alone little kernel of truth and perfection. “The Great Gatsby” is one like that. I happen to love “Tender is the Night” but it’s messy and lacks the distillation of Gatsby. “Pride and Prejudice” is the same. If you are an Austen afficianado you read them all, but that is the one where everything ties up neatly. Ditto “To Kill a Mockingbird” “Their Eyes Were Watching God” “Catcher in the Rye” and others. They are little jewel boxes of literary perfection that say something profound about the human condition that works like “Franny and Zooey” or “Northanger Abbey” just don’t approach.

For me, no list would be complete without “Madame Bovary” - I would also add “Howards End” but E.M. Forster seems to have been shifted to the more fluffy category (too readable, maybe )

mythmom · June 12, 2012, 10:36am

Perhaps so, but I think there is a lot of luck and capriciousness too. Like anything else, things just “catch on.” I don’t think To Kill a Mockingbird is part of the canon. I have never seen it on a course listing after high school.

Case in point: Most people think A Farewell to Arms is Hemingway’s great novel, but in grad schools literary types often prefer The Sun Also Rises. I know I do. Which is true? Depends on who you ask, but The Sun Also Rises is taught more.

I think there are many course listings that would teach Tender is the Night over Gatsby. Gatsby is a great book to teach to high schoolers, because, as you say, the imagery is very teachable – neat to use your metaphor.

As for Jane Austen, yes I made my plea for Mansfield Park. In terms of the canon, however, the most taught novel is Emma which many critics consider her finest.

So… it really depends on the criterion: popular, academic or idiosyncratic.

I know Emma is more featured in the canon, I just personally think it should be Mansfield Park.

More people read and study Jane Eyre but to most literary critics Wuthering Heights is a far more important book.

I am not being normative here or saying that this should affect what Virginia Woolf called the common reader, just stating that it’s not a simple equation.

If people are reading and learning about themselves and the world the canon isn’t really very important unless one has to take a PhD qualifying exam. Haha.

saintfan · June 12, 2012, 11:05am

You make me chuckle, mythmom I’m thinking back to lit classes where I read the book and wrote the papers but never did really get why that book was “in the canon” . . . things like The Damnation of Theron Ware.

JHS · June 12, 2012, 11:42am

Wow. I can’t believe I missed this thread until now.

I have been following the ups and downs of the literary canon my whole life. Love it. The canon is completely dynamic – things move in and out all the time. Even Shakespeare and Milton, which are as close as anything comes to undeniable pillars of the canon, have gone through periods of unpopularity. (Just not recently.) And you don’t hear a lot about Goethe or Hugo, who once upon a time were considered just as central to the Western tradition.

I don’t have the time right now for systematic thought, but a few randoms:

I note that mythmom skipped Browning and Tennyson in her poetry list. Hmmmmm . . . .

I agree (and always have) that The Crying of Lot 49 flat out sucks. The problem is that it’s the only book Pynchon wrote (until the last one) that’s of teachable length. And that you could allow kids to take home with them. (Although it would be an interesting kind of test to give them Gravity’s Rainbow to read, and wait to see how many actually read and reacted to the coprophilia scene. . . . And that sentence explains why I am not an English teacher!)

Books that seem to have firmly entered the canon over the past generation:

Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude (which should be swapped out for Love In The Time Of Cholera)
Morrison, Song Of Solomon and Beloved
O’Brien, The Things They Carried
McCarthy, Blood Meridian (but I like All The Pretty Horses much, much better)
Roth, The Human Stain
Hegi, Stones In The River
Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

My personal list of books from my lifetime I would canonize:

Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (also Mason & Dixon)
Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (also Haroun & The Sea Of Stories, which is just brilliant)
Mishima, The Sea Of Fertility tetrology
Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow
McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses
Morrison, Song of Solomon and Beloved

and I have a strong interest in Spanish and Latin American literature:

Garcia Marquez, 100 Years Of Solitude and Love In The Time Of Cholera
Vargas Llosa, The War Of The End Of The World and Conversation In “The Cathedral”
Bryce Echenique, A World For Julius and The Exaggerated Life of Martin Romana
Borges, El Aleph and other stories
Fuentes, Terra Nostra
Bolano, The Savage Detectives and 2666
Marias, Your Face Tomorrow trilogy
Perez-Reverte, All of the Capitan Alatriste novels
Puig, The Kiss Of The Spider Woman
Mendoza, The City Of Marvels

sylvan8798 · June 12, 2012, 11:57am

In S’s honors freshman english course last year they read a bunch of things which were not “canon” but seemed to be almost randomly chosen. In fact, each of the 5 (?) honors sections read a different list of books. I plan to read some of them but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Point is, the professor may choose material for reasons only he/she knows, but still build a meaningful course around it. It seems to me that only teaching accepted canon material would be way too restricting.

mythmom · June 12, 2012, 12:18pm

I love JHS’s list.

There have been many great works of world literature skipped over. I just concentrated on Brit lit. The SA list is great. I am not an expert on comparative literature, but I have taught courses on South Asian literature.

My favorites, Rushie and God of Small Things were already mentioned by other posters.

We haven’t mentioned Russians: Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment (or perhaps The Idiot), Fathers and Sons (Turgenev.)

French: Yes, Madame Bovary mentioned, but A Sentimental Education is wonderful, too. The Red and the Black and Balzac – Cousin Bette or better, Pere Goriot. Germinal (Zola).

Someone did mention The Magic Mountain.

The Periodic Table (Levi) is wonderful – Italian. All his books are.

Labrynths by Borges along with JHS selection and Labrynth of Solitude from Mexico, by Octavio Paz. Miguel de Unomuno from Spain and Platero and I, especially with the translation by Antonio de Nicholas.

We haven’t touched plays, but yes, Chekov, always.

Beckett. I think someone mentioned a Beckett novel – The Unnamable perhaps? And Endgame was mentioned, but also always En Attendant Godot. Sorry about the French, but I had to go see in French in HS so that is what it will always remain for me.

And Pinter – The Anniversary Party and others of course, and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, my all out favorite play, but only when performed. I saw it last year and will never be the same.

JHS: Tennyson and Browning are not much read anymore in lit crit circles, particularly Tennyson. I will always adore “The Lady of Shallot”, especially Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables) reciting it and drifting upriver in a boat and convincing everyone she was dead.

These are just random thoughts. Not normative in anyway.

JHS – your sentence about Gravity’s Rainbow too funny. When still only 30 (ah yes, I remember it well) I was spied on the LIRR reading Gravity’s Rainbow while wearing a beret, and I heard about it from many sources. Didn’t know so may folks took the RR. I don’t think I’m that striking, but photographers always put me in the newspaper and folks always notice me and create urban myths about my doings. Just a kind of character, I guess. I Dantesque horror fate was to marry a photographer. I hate to be snapped.

saintfan · June 12, 2012, 12:54pm

“I will always adore “The Lady of Shallot”, especially Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables) reciting it and drifting upriver in a boat and convincing everyone she was dead.”

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 love

I will have to try A Sentimental Education

mathmom · June 12, 2012, 12:55pm

JHS, I’m surprised you missed it too!

I now have an enormous list of books I am feeling guilty about not having read.

I have a fondness for British Poetry. You don’t have to read all of Tennyson, but surely there’s room for “Ulysses”. And for Wordsworth there’s “Tinturn Abbey” and “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802.” And you don’t have to read the whole “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” - you could just read “Kubla Kahn”. You need to read “Ode to a Grecian Urn” though I have a sentimental fondness for “On first looking into Chapman’s Homer” (thanks to the Arthur Ransom Swallow and Amazon books). My version of the canon is definitely going to include at least a selection of the Romantics.

sylvan8798 · June 12, 2012, 12:58pm

^Me too, mythmom :(.

A good place to start for a discussion of what modern works written in English might make the canon eventually (if they haven’t already) would be Time Magazine’s 100 best novels, which is works written in English between 1923 and when they made the list in 2005.

ETA: it would be interesting to know how many of the 100 we on this thread have read between us!

mathmom · June 12, 2012, 1:17pm

^Sadly in my case not so many - about 25, and mostly ones that I don’t think belong in the canon! Sometimes I’ve read different books by the same author at least. It’s a weird list in my opinion - especially the inclusion of just a couple of children’s books.

buenavista · June 12, 2012, 1:30pm

I guess I should actually say I now have a “more enormous” list! But I love having all the suggestions, from different points of view. I have not read very many on the Time list, either, mathmom.

JHS: Thanks for mentioning William Maxwell’s “So Long, See You Tomorrow.” (it also has the advantage of being short!)

And I second NJTheatreMOM’s recommendation of Ralph Fiennes’ “Coriolanus”–it’s my favorite Shakespeare play, and a wonderful movie.

As a librarian, discussions like these are why I sometimes struggle with the frequent request to find someone a “good” book! Some people really don’t understand why I need more information than that.

mythmom · June 12, 2012, 1:59pm

Obviously personal taste, but I think “ode to a Nightengale” is much more moving than “0de on a Grecian Urn”: 'To Cease upon the midnight with no pain" from the very young, dying Keats. I’m tearing already. Have to admit.

We should compile a list of our favorite poems. Far easier to get through.

I read 77 of the books, but I should read the remaining 23 for sure. I admit to not finishing all. Couldn’t stand THE CORRECTIONS for example.

mythmom · June 12, 2012, 2:08pm

I forgot to say that perusing the list, the cover art is magnificent and a treat in and of itself.

mathmom · June 12, 2012, 2:37pm

I’ll give you “Ode to a Nightengale” as long as I can have “Chapman’s Homer”. :)

It was fun looking at the covers. That red cover for “Catcher in the Rye” still makes me cringe and bring back my hated 8th grade English teacher. Loathed the book, loathed the teacher. My kids hated it just as much as I did.

mythmom · June 12, 2012, 2:53pm

mathmom: I find that rather refreshing. I really do.

saintfan · June 12, 2012, 3:10pm

My D loved it - funny - we just saw American Idiot the other day and it’s really almost the same story, new time and location . . . the rebel without a cause.

sylvan8798 · June 12, 2012, 4:19pm

Ok, now you’ve got me curious. We can easily narrow the list to those that none of us have read if the next poster copies my “remaining” list below and deletes any he/she has read. Only rules: if you didn’t finish it, it doesn’t count. If you can’t recall for sure because it was 30 years ago (in utero ;)) then it doesn’t count.

A - B

<pre><code>The Adventures of Augie March
All the King’s Men
An American Tragedy
At Swim-Two-Birds
Atonement
The Berlin Stories
The Big Sleep
The Blind Assassin
Blood Meridian
Brideshead Revisited
</code></pre>

C - D

<pre><code>Call It Sleep
The Catcher in the Rye
A Clockwork Orange
The Confessions of Nat Turner
The Corrections
A Dance to the Music of Time
The Day of the Locust
Death Comes for the Archbishop
The Death of the Heart
Deliverance
Dog Soldiers
</code></pre>

F - G

<pre><code>Falconer
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Gravity’s Rainbow
</code></pre>

H - I

<pre><code>A Handful of Dust
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter
The Heart of the Matter
Herzog
Housekeeping
A House for Mr. Biswas
I, Claudius
Infinite Jest
Invisible Man
</code></pre>

L - N

<pre><code>Light in August
Lolita
Loving
Lucky Jim
The Man Who Loved Children
Midnight’s Children
Money
Mrs. Dalloway
Naked Lunch
Never Let Me Go
</code></pre>

O - R

<pre><code>On the Road
The Painted Bird
Pale Fire
A Passage to India
Play It As It Lays
Portnoy’s Complaint
Possession
The Power and the Glory
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Rabbit, Run
Ragtime
The Recognitions
Red Harvest
</code></pre>

S - T

<pre><code>The Sheltering Sky
Snow Crash
The Sportswriter
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
The Sun Also Rises
To the Lighthouse
Tropic of Cancer
</code></pre>

U - W

<pre><code>Under the Net
Under the Volcano
Watchmen
White Teeth
</code></pre>

Hopefully, mythmom will go next and make it easier for the rest. I think I’ve read 30 or so.

saintfan · June 12, 2012, 4:59pm

Ok, now you’ve got me curious. We can easily narrow the list to those that none of us have read if the next poster copies my “remaining” list below and deletes any he/she has read. Only rules: if you didn’t finish it, it doesn’t count. If you can’t recall for sure because it was 30 years ago (in utero ) then it doesn’t count.

A - B

The Adventures of Augie March
All the King’s Men
An American Tragedy
At Swim-Two-Birds
Atonement
The Berlin Stories
The Big Sleep
The Blind Assassin
Blood Meridian
Brideshead Revisited

C - D

Call It Sleep
The Confessions of Nat Turner
The Corrections
A Dance to the Music of Time
The Day of the Locust
Death Comes for the Archbishop
The Death of the Heart
Deliverance
Dog Soldiers

F - G

Falconer
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Gravity’s Rainbow

H - I

A Handful of Dust
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter
The Heart of the Matter
Herzog
Housekeeping
A House for Mr. Biswas
Infinite Jest

L - N

Light in August
Lolita
Loving
Lucky Jim
The Man Who Loved Children
Midnight’s Children
Money
Mrs. Dalloway
Naked Lunch
Never Let Me Go

O - R

The Painted Bird
Pale Fire
A Passage to India
Play It As It Lays
Portnoy’s Complaint
Possession
The Power and the Glory
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Rabbit, Run
Ragtime
The Recognitions
Red Harvest

S - T

Snow Crash
The Sportswriter
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
The Sun Also Rises
To the Lighthouse
Tropic of Cancer

U - W

Under the Net
Under the Volcano
Watchmen
White Teeth

Hopefully, mythmom will go next and make it easier for the rest. I think I’ve read 30 or so.

mythmom · June 12, 2012, 5:00pm

A - B
At Swim-Two-Birds
The Berlin Stories
The Big Sleep
The Blind Assassin
Blood Meridian

C - D
The Corrections
The Death of the Heart
Deliverance
Dog Soldiers

F - G

H - I
Housekeeping
A House for Mr. Biswas
Infinite Jest

L - N
Loving
Money

O - R
The Power and the Glory
The Recognitions
Red Harvest

S - T
Snow Crash
The Sportswriter

U - W
Under the Net
Watchmen
White Teeth

gouf78 · June 12, 2012, 5:07pm

I read Deliverance. I wouldn’t put it in a literary canon however.

Why Do Some Books Make It Into the Literary Canon?

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