Why Do Some Books Make It Into the Literary Canon?

Parent Cafe
101

<p>Poems. My, my.</p>

<p>I am a big Keats guy. All of his last Odes, plus The Death of Hyperion and The Eve of St. Agnes. And La Belle Dame. And “This living hand”. </p>

<p>He made a roar, as if of earthly fire
That scared away the meek, ethereal hours
And made their dove-wings tremble. On he flared . . . .</p>

<p>Keats is my #1, no question.</p>

<p>Shelley, Ode To The West Wind</p>

<p>I can take or leave Wordsworth, Blake, and Coleridge, except for the latter’s Kublai Khan. I recognize that Tennyson and Browning are out of fashion, but I have a soft spot in my heart for Ulysses, The Lotos-Eaters, and some of the Arthur poems, and I love his death-poems Merlin And The Gleam and Crossing The Bar.</p>

<p>Stevens’ The Idea Of Order At Key West. I never memorized it, but my daughter did. and Of Mere Being. (I like death poems.)</p>

<p>Eliot, Ash Wednesday and The Wasteland.</p>

<p>Lots and lots of Whitman. And Dickinson. And Yeats. All of Shakespeare. Some of Paradise Lost. Never really read Spenser. I have a sentimental connection to Adrienne Rich’s late-70s poems, especially Diving Into The Wreck and parts of A Dream Of A Common Language.</p>

<p>Most of Paul Celan’s first book, Mohn und Gedachtnis, especially Todesfuge and the title poem, also his later Huttenfenster </p>

<p>Song of Songs and Psalms</p>

<p>Dante and Cavalcanti’s sonnets, and lots of Inferno</p>

<p>Garcilaso de la Vega’s sonnets and Third Eclogue
Lope de Vega’s ballads
Ausias March’s ballads
Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz’s sonnets
Garcia Lorca’s Romancero Gitano, especially Romance de la luna luna and Romance de la Guardia Civil</p>

<p>Rimbaud, La bateau ivre and Les voyelles
Ronsard’s sonnets
Lots and lots of Baudelaire</p>

<p>I am reading this, and realizing that, although I read a fair amount of poetry, there is hardly anything I really cherish that I didn’t cherish when I was 20.</p>

102

<p>Down to 4 books - I’m impressed.</p>

<p>Probably not on most posters lists, but I fell in love with Sara Teasdale in hs.<br>

</p>

<p>S’s name comes from one of her poems :)</p>

103

<p>I’ll read Money since no one else volunteered.</p>

<p>How about just individual poems, not poets. </p>

<p>Usually I’d pick one of Donne’s religious sonnets, but I’m too lazy to look up the number (they are numbered) of the one I want so I’ll go with:</p>

<p>gee, this is hard, too many going through my head.</p>

<p>“The Windhover” Gerard Manley Hopkins.</p>

<p>Other contenders – Donne, Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium”, Eliot’s “Burnt Norton” from Four Quartets and Adrienne Rich’s “Transcendental Etude.” (I am very fond of many of JHS’s selections and became a poet myself only because of two poets: Stephen Crane and Rimbaud.</p>

104

<p>Interesting. Money is by Martin Amis who is the son of Kingsley Amis who wrote Lucky Jim, which is also on the list. Imagine! A father-son pair who each have a novel on this list and both are comic novels. </p>

<p>I want to put a plug in for Gertrude Stein. I would have put The Making of Americans on this list. I love Stein. My DD cannot believe that anyone could, but I learn so much about writing from every sentence she wrote.</p>

<p>Actually Richard Wright said he became a writer just because he saw how Stein used black diction. She was a medical student in Baltimore at Hopkins before she ran away to Paris.</p>

105

<p>My poetry list (very short on anybody contemporary):</p>

<p>The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens
O Western Wind
Greensleeves
Shakespeare- a few sonnets -Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments, My mistress’ eyes, Like as Waves
Sir John Suckling - Why so Pale and Wan fond Lover
King James Bible - Song of Songs, a few Psalms
Marvall- To his Coy Mistress
Donne - The Good Morrow, The Break of Day
Wordsworth - Tinturn Abbey, Westminster Bridge
Keats - Chapman’s Homer, Ode to a Nightingale
Coleridge - Kublai Khan
Tennyson - Ulysses
Edgar Allen Poe – Alone
Emily Dickinson – I don’t really like her, so I’ll pick a less well known work like The Heart asks Pleasures first
Matthew Arnold - Dover Beach (probably my favorite poem of all time, I don’t know why it gets me so much)
Stephen Crane - War is Kind
Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass
Carl Sandberg - Grass
T.S. Eliot - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (I lived at Prufrock house at Caltech, got to include him)
e.e. cummings - It may not always be so, In Just Spring, Somewhere I have never travelled (I don’t care what anyone says, I think cummings gets the giddiness of first love, and the sadness of losing love better than anyone, and he’s the guy who introduced me to all the rest, my JK Rowling so to speak, so he’s in my canon. :slight_smile: )
Yeats - The Second Coming
Gerard Manley Hopkins – Binsley Poplars
Dylan Thomas - Fern Hill
Peter Viereck - Vale from Carthage
William Carlos Williams - Red Wheelbarrow
Theodore Roethke - The Waking
E.A. Robinson - The house on the Hill
Wilfred Owen – Dulce et Decorum est
Robert Frost - Fire and Ice, Fences
Robert Lowell – For the Union Dead
Wallace Stevens – Peter Quince at the Clavier
Louise McNeill – Garden Moment</p>

<p>My faves seem to be love poems and war poems, probably something to do with being a child of the late 60s at heart</p>

<p>France: Ronsard,Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine (I love La Lune Blance and Il pleut dans mon couer), Apollinaire (the usual suspects)
Japan: Basho for sure
There are some wonderful Chinese poems – Sunflower Splendor is a good collection. “The Battle of Red Cliff” is just gorgeous. Three translations here: <a href=“Not Found”>Not Found;

106

<p>This was a very fun thread to read! Also, thought-provoking. </p>

<p>Apologies for coming very late to the party. </p>

<p>I’ve read both the last Brit novels under L-M: Loving and Money</p>

<p>For “contemporary” British writers, I’d add novels by Anita Brookner, who’s also an art historian.</p>

107

<p>So down to two:</p>

<p>A - B
At Swim-Two-Birds</p>

<p>C - D
F - G
H - I
L - N</p>

<p>O - R
Red Harvest</p>

<p>S - T
U - W</p>

108

<p>mythmom, The Sea, The Sea is the one about Charles Arrowby, who in his old age is writing his memoirs and happens to run into his first love, Hartley. The story is about his obsession with her and the crazy lengths he goes to in order to recapture those feelings of youthful love.</p>

<p>I went through a huge Iris Murdoch phase when I was in my 30s, and have read all her novels and a bit of her philosophy. They were the right books at the right time for me, although now I can look back and see the flaws in many of them. </p>

<p>Another of my favorite British writers is Margaret Drabble. I’m also fond, for lighter fare, of Fay Weldon and, more recently, Jane Gardam. And I second Tuppence’s recommendation of Anita Brookner.</p>

109

<p>Tuppence, welcome. No apologies necessary. And you have released me from running out to the library for Money. Since you have removed 50% of our remaining titles, you appear extremely well read. Hats off.</p>

<p>I add Penelope Lively, Berenice Rubins, and Julian Barnes to the “contemporary” British collection.</p>

<p>Booklady: Thanks so much for the refresher. Still doesn’t stand out in memory. Too much Iris Murdoch at one time was apparently not a good thing.</p>

<p>After pointing out the father-son duo it occurs to me that I should also point out that Margaret Drabble and A.S. Byatt are sisters.</p>

110

<p>Yes, both very good (I mentioned that relationship upthread. :)). </p>

<p>I’ve been a Drabble fan for thirty plus years; not quite as much of one for Byatt, though I think Possession is wonderful.</p>

111

<p>Sorry garland. I love Drabble, too. Though it’s been a while since I read her. I was very taken with her at one point.</p>

<p>I find it quite odd that Atwood should have been unread. We have that book in the house. It is one of D’s books, but I’m not sure whether or not she read it. Interesting that it was chosen over Surfacing or Handmaid’s Tale.</p>

112

<p>Oh, I missed romanigypsyeyes saying she read Blind Assassin. My apologies.</p>

113

<p>I love, love, love Penelope Lively. Interestingly I started reading her because I liked her kids books. I’ve read all her adult books, but our library doesn’t have most of her children’s books. I don’t know why Time left her off their list.</p>

114

<p>Penelope Lively is wonderful. Another Penelope I enjoy is Penelope Fitzgerald, particularly her Offshore.</p>

115

<p>I wouldn’t be able to come up with a list of poems, but the Rubaiyat was always one of my favorites.

</p>

116

<p>Should I suggest the poetry of CP Cavafy as part of the western canon? His style is so distinctive that a translation of his poem is instantly recognizable. For those who are interested in his lieterary influence on English poetry, Edmund Keely at Princeton has written a nice article in Iowa Review about 10 years back and can be found here [JSTOR:</a> An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie](<a href=“Cavafy and His Heirs in America on JSTOR”>Cavafy and His Heirs in America on JSTOR)</p>

<p>To Mathmom, Glad to see someone here reads Su Tong Po. I love the poem you named.</p>

<p>Edit. The link seems to work although there is clearly an error message in the post.</p>

117

<p>Mythmom, thank you for the welcome.</p>

<p>As I look more closely at the entire TIME list, so many of these novels I read in my twenties* before becoming a parent. That could simply reflect when the books were published. Yet, I think it has more to do with not having book lists dictated to us and having time to read. </p>

<p>*Garland, I devoured all of Margaret Drabble’s early novels then.</p>

<p>Some of these were definitely part of being an adolescent, like Catcher in the Rye or Portnoy’s Complaint, which I re-read when my son was about the age I was when I first read them. Much better appreciation as an adult.</p>

<p>I find the value of the list, not as an imprimatur, but as a way to think of all the different ways we appreciate novels. </p>

<p>Lists like these always create associative lists because they stimulate memories of other authors, like Penelope Fitzgerald and Julian Barnes, already mentioned…</p>

<p>For those appreciative of short stories, I add Alice Munro and Don Delillo’s recent collection.</p>

<p>And, for science fiction- Philip K. Dick</p>

<p>I look forward to others’ suggestions for any genre or period.</p>

118

<p>Phillip K. Dick - how could I leave him out? Obviously enormously important though I don’t love him. And Ray Bradbury belongs here too. Probably also Larry Niven, though I don’t think he’s much of a stylist, he did have a big influence on sci-fi.</p>

<p>The only Drabble I read was The Millstone and I remember putting the book down and thinking “Okay, what was the point of that?” Is Muriel Spark considered a serious writer? I loved A Far Cry from Kensington.</p>

119

<p>Tuppence: One of Dick’s novel’s, Ubik, was actually on the list.</p>

<p>I hope in time Goldbug Variations by Richard Powers is recognized and read. He is Pynchon’s successor IMHO.</p>

<p>padad: Thanks for the Cavafy. Will read article.</p>

<p>I am fond of one of my own poems that has been translated into 18 languages. I am not at all widely published, but this poem made it into an anthology. I would love to read it retranslated from Chinese to see how much of the poem remained.</p>

120

<p>Books which should be removed from the canon:
Things Fall Apart: Chinua Achebe
The Scarlet Letter: Hawthorne
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Kesey
The Age of Innocence: Wharton
The Crucible: Miller
Anything by John Updike
The Stranger: Camus
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: Eliot
The Great Gatsby: Fitzgerald
Araby: Joyce</p>

<p>Books which should be replaced/changed
Heart of Darkness: Conrad should be replaced by a selection of short stories by Conrad
Preferably including “An Outpost of Progress” and “Amy Foster” and maybe the “Secret
Sharer”
The Odyssey should be read abridged or in college. Middle or High School is too early for
the entire thing.</p>

<p>Books Which Should Be Added:
This is not meant to be a complete list of the canon. It is, instead, a list of works which should be added or kept within the canon.</p>

<p>Books by Women:
My Antonia: Cather
Silas Marner: Eliot
Stories of Flannery O’Conner - I would recommend O’Conner over Faulkner
Anthem: Rand - I know she is controversial but this book is less political than her others</p>

<p>Drama:
I personally believe that there should be a larger focus on drama in the canon. I think that many students would benefit more by the inclusion of a different play from the constant Shakespeare.<br>
She Stoops to Conquer: Goldsmith
Anything by Ibsen - I personally love "The Lady from the Sea
Doctor Faustus: Marlowe
Anything by Oscar Wilde, preferably a comedy
The Misanthrope: Moliere
Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy
Pygmalion: Shaw
The School for Scandal: Sheridan</p>

<p>Poetry:
I am not as familiar with poetry as I would like. This list is, therefore, lacking although it does include some of my personal recommendations.
Western Star: Benet
The Prophet: Gibran
Jesus, the Son of Man: Gibran
Purgatorio or Paradiso: Dante - I would recommend above the Inferno.
The Charge of the Light Brigade: Tennyson</p>

<p>Short Stories:
The Detective Stories of Poe
Anything by Maupassant
R.K. Narayan - He is often neglected but probably one of the best writers of the century.
Sherlock Holmes Stories: Doyle</p>

<p>Other Recommendations:
Winesurg, Ohio: Anderson
Various Essays from the Tatler or Spectator by Addison and Steele
Robinson Crusoe: Defoe
Les Miserables: Hugo - Unfortunately this work’s length makes it difficult to casually study. I would suggest unabridged but even an abridged version is preferable over no familiarity with it.
The Three Musketeers: Dumas
Novels by Graham Greene - I would recommend The Quiet American or The Comedians
Novels by Sinclair Lewis - I really think he is less dated than Fitzgerald. I would suggest Kingsblood Royal
Fathers and Sons: Turgenev
Down and Out in Paris and London: Orwell
A short novel by James Michener. Avoid Alaska. I would suggest The Novel, The Eagle or the Raven, Journey, or Legacy
The Old Man and the Boy: Robert Ruark
All Quiet on the Western Front: Remarque
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: Solzhenitsyn - The Gulag Archipelago’s length makes it inaccessible
Travels with Charley: Steinbeck
Pudd’nhead Wilson: Twain
Look Homeward, Angel: Thomas Wolfe</p>