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The Canon Debate: What Makes You Think That Book Is So Great?

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The Canon Debate: What Makes You Think That Book Is So Great? Colby Magazine Volume 88 Issue 1 Winter 1999 Article 7 January 1999 The Canon Debate: What Makes You Think That Book is So Great? Charles Bassett Colby College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/colbymagazine Recommended Citation Bassett, Charles (1999) "The Canon Debate: What Makes You Think That Book is So Great?," Colby Magazine: Vol. 88 : Iss. 1 , Article 7. Available at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/colbymagazine/vol88/iss1/7 This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by the Colby College Archives at Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Magazine by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Colby. F irst of al I, in a burst of uncharacteristic humi I ity, let me confess that I did not aspire to share these words with the learned body of Colby alumni. The genesis of this article was a speech to some of the best and brightest students at Colby, the Dana and Bixler Scholars-an audience willing to show up on a Friday night in October to hear me do something besides read ghost stories. My title for that speech was "The Literary Canon and How It Works"; it should have been" Literary Canons and How They Work." In 1999, I think that most of us will agree that we have no unique literary canon that all readers in the world understand as absolute, transcendent and beyond debate. Thus, I should more accurately speak of canons, except that when I mentioned this plural title to one of my more literal students, he asked how I got interested in artillery. The canons under scrutiny here have only one n and require no ammunition, though they are tended by a very expert yet jealou ·ly exclu�ive cadre of "operator ." These operators range from countle ·choolteacher ("You have to read that or flunk!");to the 19th-century Eng Ii h Iiterary crittc latthew Arnold ("the he t that wa thought and �aid"); to the Book-of-the- lonch luh; to the Encyclopedia Brnanrnca (Grear Books of che \Xlestem World , 1rca 1952); to ollege� named r. John\ 111 nnapolisand anra Fe, the umcula of wh1ch arc a canon oi"great hook,"; to the Yale literary guru Harold Bloom (The \\'.'escem anon, 1994 ); to T\'' Oprah\ &iok luh. ver and above ,111 oi che�e. the rre�1denr of t)lh l)llcge annu,1lh tell m1.:mber ot h1, baccalaureate audience 111 Lorimer hare! tL) keep a gl xi hook \\1th chem on all jt)umev� and tL) jt)ll1 the rubhc lihr..11), where g,xx.I lxx)k, arc re.kith ,1\".1il.ibk. I TE R Like any group of literate American mous unread novel of all time, James And, ofcourse, the press services loved in 1999, reader of this article would Joyce' Ulysses. As K. J. H. Dettmar char­ comparing the Modern Library List to applaud Bill Cotter's advice but disagree acteri:ed The List: "It's too white (no another Top 100 compiled at about the violently about what book would be Toni Morrison ?), too male (no Toni same time by the (predominately fe male con idered "good." Even people who re­ Morrison I), too dead (no Thoma and young) students at the Radcliffe Pub­ ,·ile canon and canon-maker know that Pynchon? no Don Delillo? no Toni lishing Cour e. These canoneers didn't Harlequin romance and the authori:ed Morrison?); too Anglo-American (no forget Toni Morrison (or Alice Walker, biography of Dennis Rodman aren't good adine Gordimer?); too middlebrow or some others), but they brought scorn book , let alone great books. (Brave ew World in the top 10?); too self­ on their Ii t by including The Wizard of evertheless, reading anything at inrerested (over half the books are pub­ Oz and Charlotte's Web and The Wind in all-short of the Boise telephone direc­ lished by the Modern Library itself)." The the Willows, all of them lovely reads but rory-i increa ingly rare in American Modem Library Advisory Board almost almo t never considered "great." culture. Let me be perfectly clear: I'd immediately backed off in print, lamely o, you see, even as we seek va I idation prefer that my tudent read almost an)' confe sing that they'd been hoodwinked ofour reading choices by "experts," we will novel or noYeli t-John Gri ham, Diuine by The List's catalyst, Christopher Cerf. spit fire if omehow our favorite novel is Secrets of che Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Danielle tyron eventually characteri:ed The Li t left out. I hare my friend Conarroe's in­ reel-rather than be drugge<l by typical as "stodgy," and Schie inger complained dignation especially that Updike and airlme-faremo\• ies. La t ummer, between in The Wall Srreet]oumal that "the execu­ O'Connor didn't make The List. But I also 2 and 4 a.m. on my way to Ala ka to visit tion was not well thought out." Even Cerf love a novel that Morris, the historian, my daughter, l almost overdo ed on a admitted that The List wa a scam, but a fa iled to get included: James Gould lmle number called Paulie, the saga of a "good scam." After all, it did get the sub­ Co:zens'sGuard ofHonor (Conarroe thinks lovesick parrot. I ended up lu ting for the ject of book back on the op-ed page. Co:zens "pedestrian"). Angry as we get, Bo1 e telephone book. till, l know ure A graceful little essay by historian we continue to attach labels to books- a">.,hoot m' that omeone out there loved Morris on The List' glories and omissions "good," "great," "clas- Paulie, the epitome of G fi lm -another in The ew York Times Book Review in late canon, you will note, Hollywood tyle. August did little to soothe the dis­ omehow, reader , like diners and gruntled. Morris had never heard of football fans an<l hopper , seem to need Peter Carey, a contemporary British validation for their chotees. We want the novelist of ome reputation in the En­ Tor 20 111 every regard, the imprimarurof glish literary establi hment, engender­ rhe "expert," the wheat sifte<l our of all ing a snappish letter to the Times from rhar chaff. After all, no one ha time to my one famous friend (everyone ha to '' a re Ju t read mg a book. We cou IJ be have one famou friend), Joel Conarroe, warchmg Paulie or tappmg away on our presidenr of the Guggenheim Foundation, l,1rrnr' or runnmg marathons or curing who opine<l, 'That !orris is one of a half­ rhe 1..ommon cold. do:en historians on a panel of 10 may '.: har make, th1 whole 1,.,ue so hot account for the 'fiction lite' quality of the m:hr mm 1 rhe conrrover y ">Urroundmg Top 100 list-and for the astonishing rhe :-.hxlem L1hrary\ 11',r of rhe 100he.,r absence of such writer\ writers as John Eng]1,h-l.111guage novel, ofrhe 20th cen­ Updike, Eudora Welty, Flannery tury, .1 n i...rer rh,u ,ippeared 111 almo'r e\·el)· O' onnor and Fiann O'Brien. con1..e1\·,1hle medium ]a,r 'ummer ,md 1 Were the centul)·\ 100 he.,t his­ noll" c.illed '11npl) "The L1,t." A d1,r111- tlll)' hoob to he .,elected and J.!lll'lll'd ,1d1 1,or, h..i,1rd mdudmg \X/il- ranked h) <l group dommared 11 1111 IH< ll1 (\oph1c ' Chrnlc), ()ore \'1d,il b,· literal) figure'>, the re. ulrs (c,1h, ,1f no,·e], like /31m and /. 76), the would douhtle.,., he no le.,., Rnu'h n11n�1i,r A. R\ .lll (the 11nh mepr than th1., hland pud­ ll'<llll.111) p]u, '1'- cmmcnt hi...ron,m' like d 111!! cookeLI up h) ,1 h No­ rrhur d1k,mcer .md &lmund :-.l1 1r­ n.m-1.iden panel." Conar­ n' 11 ughL" I 111 11 nh rhc1r dl'cllon,,.mLI, rnL' 1 norm,111) ,1 l"l'l) 1..,ilm I re liL1.1l h, fur lll'11 .111 rhc 11 ,1v l<l 801 l'. .mLI e,1,, -co111c nun, I u1 \Imo 1 no <me like I 1hl· . 1ndl'm L1· L.mnn 'cem ro h111i.:out the I ril) It r, 11 h1 h 11 ,1 k 111 rill' 1110 r f,1- . 11kl' T1 "''n 111 ,111 ut u,. sic"-prohably because we think that read­ not the possession of any single group or ing "masterpieces" will demonstrate cul­ genre or period, who conceive of culture BASSETT'S tural tatus. Hey, if you waded through as neither fi nite or fixed hut dynamic and Ulysses (or, God forbid, Finnegan's Wake ), expan ive, and who remain unconvm ed TOP THIRTEEN you're a certified intellectual who walks that the moment an expre>>tve form be­ among the favored fe w. Look how much of comes accessible to large number-, of My "canon" is limited to the Modern Library's fiction you've read, people it loses the intellectual criteria you superior creature, you. We should nece ary to clas ify itas ulture." 20th-century American fiction, strike you a medal or something, in gold, Levine's rad ical inclu ivene>'> i> based arranged alphabetically by Shake peare rampant. on his belief that the ambitiou and snob­ For all that, the identity of elitist bish plutocrats who dominate Amencan author (satisfaction guaranteed ). literature varies panoramically. The hi - econ mic life eek to extend their power torian Lawrence Levine, in his delightful into culture.
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