The Literary Canon

[Matthew E]

I want to come up with a list for this thread, but I'm having a hard time reconciling the premise of the thread with the kind of list I think I'm capable of putting together. I could do

My 25 Favourite Books

or

25 Books That Made Me What I Am Today

or

25 Books I Know Of That Have Lasting Greatness

or

My Attempt To Think Along With All of Civilization for 25 Books

or

One of Every Kind of Great Book As Long As There Are No More Than 25 Kinds of Great Book

but I don't think any of those are really satisfying to me.

I guess I'm just going to have to go with

25 Books I Most Want To List In This Thread

(those who've read my other book-related posts in these fora will be able to predict some of the ones to appear here. I don't pretend that this is anything other than a personal list (but not a list of favourites, exactly; that would overlap this list, but only partially), and I'm sure I'm leaving out all kinds of worthwhile stuff I just don't know enough about while overrepresenting other areas. Maybe I'm lowbrow; I don't care. But I'm not listing anything that isn't worth anybody's time.)

Not in order, much:

1. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (pere)
2. The Once and Future King - T.H. White
3. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
4. Passage - Connie Willis
5. Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
6. Tigana - Guy Gavriel Kay
7. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand*
8. Dancing Aztecs - Donald E. Westlake
9. Dogland - Will Shetterly
10. Captain Blood: His Odyssey - Rafael Sabatini
11. Right Ho, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse
12. Watership Down - Richard Adams
13. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams
14. Small Gods - Terry Pratchett
15. The Club Dumas - Arturo Perez-Reverte
16. Kim - Rudyard Kipling
17. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
18. Ball Four - Jim Bouton
19. The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
20. Dracula - Bram Stoker
21. Neuromancer - William Gibson
22. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld - Patricia McKillip
23. The Princess Bride - William Goldman
24. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
25. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

*before anyone says anything about this choice, let me first assure them that I've already heard it

[Jonathan Bogart]

What 25 works do you teaching in order to introduce students to "great works of literature"?

1. William Shakespeare, As You Like It.
2. George Herriman, Krazy Kat.
3. T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets.
4. Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited.
5. Aligheri Dante, The Vita Nuova.
6. P. G. Wodehouse, Leave It to Psmith.
7. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot.
8. Bob Newhart, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart.
9. Jack Kirby, the "Fourth World" comics.
10. Charles Dickens, Bleak House.
11. Henry James, Portrait of a Lady.
12. Buster Keaton, The General.
13. Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts.
14. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.
15. Thomas Malory, Le Mort d'Arthur.
16. The Clash, London Calling.
17. Frank King, Gasoline Alley.
18. J.-K. Huysmans, A Rebours.
19. Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal.
20. Howard Hawks, Bringing Up Baby.
21. The Kinks, Arthur or the Rise and Fall of the British Empire.
22. Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon.
23. Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.
24. Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weill, The Threpenny Opera.
25. Matt Groening & Co., The Simpsons.

Students would warn each other, "Don't take Professor Bogart's class; he's crazy."

[Matthew E]

Well, after having seen Jonathan's list, I think I could have done mine without quite so many apologies. I'd take his class.

[Merey]

Well, after having seen Jonathan's list, I think I could have done mine without quite so many apologies. I'd take his class.

Yeah, can I take your class too, please. I've been meaning to look into some post-college, continuing education literature classes here in the city, but I'm just afraid that they'll be too damn expensive.

[JeffreyWKramer]

Which, I suppose, is the problem with the construction of a canon. Or with teaching literature.

Actually, that brings up an interesting idea. If the word "canon" is giving people pause, let's throw it away and change the question: Imagine that you've been asked to create a reading list for a class for college freshmen called "Introduction to Literature." You're going to teach 25 works (for purposes of our discussion, let's imagine the course runs for two semesters. Or more). What 25 works do you teaching in order to introduce students to "great works of literature"?

That's a very different question than the first one. Some of the great works are things I wouldn't assign as freshman-level material. For an "intro to great works" class, I wouldn't lean toward ULYSSES or MOBY-DICK, for example - either can easily be a class by itself. I'd also be more inclined toward representative short stories for the sort of class you describe, rather than necessarily going with a writer's very best work if the best work is a longer novel or somesuch.

I'll have to give that some thought, too. I think I'll try to produce both lists; they're likely to be two very different things.

[Bradley]

That's a very different question than the first one. Some of the great works are things I wouldn't assign as freshman-level material. For an "intro to great works" class, I wouldn't lean toward ULYSSES or MOBY-DICK, for example - either can easily be a class by itself. I'd also be more inclined toward representative short stories for the sort of class you describe, rather than necessarily going with a writer's very best work if the best work is a longer novel or somesuch.

I'll have to give that some thought, too. I think I'll try to produce both lists; they're likely to be two very different things.

Fair enough...

[Jonathan Bogart]

I agree that knowledge of science and fact and research data gives us much more precise understanding of our society, our culture, the workings of our minds, and all that. However, I think literature does a better job of providing the context with which to understand what a lot of those facts really mean, and probably a better "big picture" understanding of human nature, society, etc.

I know the thread's moved past this, but I just wanted to say that I think studying history is better than reading literature for this. Even the greatest writers are limited in their judgment.

[Matthew E]

Well, if you go back far enough history and literature kind of blend together to a certain extent. In any case, literature and other kinds of art tend to preserve facts and ideas and outlooks that might otherwise slip through the nets of history.

The example I'm thinking of is baseball. I heard a guy talk once about a book he had done about the roots of baseball--where it came from, when it first appeared, things like that. It's really hard information to track down, but he managed to push back the boundaries of ignorance by quite a bit. Know where one of the earliest-ever mentions of baseball turns out to be?

Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.

[Jonathan Bogart]

The example I'm thinking of is baseball. I heard a guy talk once about a book he had done about the roots of baseball--where it came from, when it first appeared, things like that. It's really hard information to track down, but he managed to push back the boundaries of ignorance by quite a bit. Know where one of the earliest-ever mentions of baseball turns out to be?

Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.

I did know that. Most of the historical accounts I've read of baseball didn't, though.

Yeah, literature is a necessary part of historical research, and that's another reason a canonical approach doesn't work for a liberal-arts education, because the non-canon texts are just as valuable historically.

[Bradley]

I know the thread's moved past this, but I just wanted to say that I think studying history is better than reading literature for this. Even the greatest writers are limited in their judgment.

Actually, though, the greatest historians are similarly limited. Any account of history-- whether in literature or more "scholarly" texts-- is going to reflect assumptions, biases, interpretations, etc. I guess what it boils down to is that I don't subscribe to the idea that texts that claim some type of objectivity are somehow superior to works that admit their subjectivity.

[Bradley]

Yeah, literature is a necessary part of historical research, and that's another reason a canonical approach doesn't work for a liberal-arts education, because the non-canon texts are just as valuable historically.

As I've mentioned before, I agree with those who have criticized the canon as it exists, but at the same time it seems to me that the suggestion "a canonical approach doesn't work for a liberal arts education" kind of throws the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. As biased and marginalizing as the canon is and has been, it's not without its uses.

While I agree that students and scholars need to be made aware of, say, Frances Burney (to point out one author whose work has been largely left out of the canon), I think it would be a mistake to say that they therefore should not read Alexander Pope simply because he's a contemporary of Burney's who has been included in the canon-- and I would also argue that because Pope was included in the canon, his work does have more of a historical value (due to its influence on the generations that followed) than someone who was-- for whatever reason-- excluded.

I guess, in the end, I believe in revising and reforming the canon, and acknowledging its weaknesses even as we continue to teach and learn from it. Because the truth is, I can believe that "a canonical approach doesn't work for a" history "education," but I do believe that the canon-- in some way, shape or form-- will and should continue to play a role in a liberal arts education (particularly in the English classrooms).

[JeffreyWKramer]

I know the thread's moved past this, but I just wanted to say that I think studying history is better than reading literature for this. Even the greatest writers are limited in their judgment.

I think study of history is essential, too, but I don't think history gives you as much a sense for human motivation or emotions as does literature.

[Jonathan Bogart]

I think study of history is essential, too, but I don't think history gives you as much a sense for human motivation or emotions as does literature.

... or, say, being human and spending all your time with humans.

[Bradley]

... or, say, being human and spending all your time with humans.

But, of course, literature allows us to "get to know" people we wouldn't have known otherwise-- and know them at a much more profound level, in a lot of cases.

[Aaron Kashtan]

... or, say, being human and spending all your time with humans.

I'd much rather spend my time with Borges and Shakespeare than with some living people...