From: heath@athena.cs.uga.edu (Terrance Heath)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 14 Aug 92 13:24:18 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <BsxowD.Lo2@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca> msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris) writes:
>
>
[I wrote :]

>  	 I'm beginning to wish I'd never brought up Thomas Hardy, let
>  alone having ever heard of him. (Shakespeare, on the other hand, is a
>  favorite of mine, believe it or not.)

[And Mike responded :]

>Umm, I keep using him as an example of somebody who is canonized but
>clearly isn't everybody's cup of tea (I like sugar, sometimes lemon,
>sometimes milk, sometimes neither, thanks). Since I have not had
>the lit education you have had, Terrance, I've never read *any*
Hardy.  So, I figure you know more about Hardy than I do, and it's
probably better for me to stick with mentioning Hardy than somebody
with which I'd be on more familiar ground.
>
>I do apologize if this is only bringing back bad memories for you
>of The Class from Hell. :-)

	That is quite alright. I'm enjoying this dicsussion,
especially the analogies.


[Mike went on :]

>In other words, it necessarily is going to take *time* to canonize
>Zora Neale Hurston by standard operating procedure. If she's really
>as good as you and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese say she is, then I'd say that'd
>be borne out in about 100 years. It does not constitute a flagrant injustice
>that she is not yet included in the canon in the way Hardy is included,
>*even though she may be better than Hardy all the way down the line*.
	
	Well, it has been 50 years or more since Hurston's best works
were published (I believed she herself died, impoverished, about 20
years ago), and many people are now seriously re-examining and
evaluating her work, so perhaps she is well on her way. However, she
is already included in another canon, that being one of
African-American Literature.  As I said before, in the time it will
take to opening up "the canon", many people have simply chosen to
erect their own.

[I continued :]

>  	I look at the various and sundry intitutes of
>  "other-than-canonical" studies as a means of creating one's own
>  discourse, rather than waiting for another 100 years to get in on the
>  action of the current discourse. It is about the only thing we can do
>  in the meantime, as study of all that is worshipped in the canon
>  leaves us little time for anything else. Admittedly, one could spend
>  one's entire life studying the "classic" and never completely
>  understand them or even finish the task.  Some of us only have time to
>  take what we can from what is there and get on to doing more important
>  work with involves reclaiming the validity of our lives and history,
>  and some of us choose to to some of this work through literature; that
>  is, the study of that literature which is our own.  
>  	People are striking out to find their own literary traditions
>  and literary homes from which they make speak with greater certainty
>  and comfort.

[And Mike answered :]

>Terrance, I suspect you're going to find things'll change alot for you
>when you get to grad school. I don't think people are so much asking you
>to study The Canon as to go through some standard undergraduate course
>called ``Literature'' so that you have a common language with other
>people who have ``Literature'' degrees, so that when you say Hurston
>is much better than Hardy, as good as Shakespeare, people are going to
>know the yardstick you're using.

	Again, I certainly hope so.

>I said that Black Studies institutes were a fast track to getting
>some scholarship going. Terrance replied:
>  	Therein is the rub. Fields such as Afro-American Studies,
>  Women's Studies, Gay & Lesbian Studies, etc. are relatively new and
>  unploughed fields just lying in wait for an army of young geniuses to
>  come along and begin cultivating.  There is a LOT that has yet to be
>  done is those feilds, thus the likelyhood of finding a job in these
>  areas is pretty good, I admit, for interested scholars. Anyone who
>  could would be a fool not to dive in with both feet. So perhaps the a
>  better way of saying the above would have been this : Having grown
>  tired of waiting for out invitation to the banquet in progress, we
>  have taken it upon ourselves to host our own.

[And then Mike said :]

>I think it is wonderful thing that this scholarship will get done, and
>I applaud your motivation to do it, to write biography perhaps.

	Thank you. *deep bow*

[I wrote :]

>  	I think what I resent is that I was kept so busy with my nose
>  in the "classics" that it was years before I even new that certain
>  books by black authors even existed.  I did not know that any one of
>  us had ever put pen to paper. And when I discovered what had been
>  indavertenly kept from me while I was running arount chasing Plato's
>  coattail, I became angry. I stayed that way, because something of my
>  identity had been kept from me - it was deemed not important enough
>  for me know, yet.
>
>OK, again I think your positive interest in writers who write the
>black experience is good. I quarrel only with your hostility at writers
>who do not write the black experience.

	My hostility is not directed at the writers themselves (Many
of who, believe it or not, are actually favorites of mine), but at the
insitution of the canon itself. My anger stems from having been made
to focus on the canon almost exclusively, at the expense of reading
other things which are now of great importance to me, and that I wish
I'd read earlier. Indeed, things I simply wish I'd been told about
earlier. Perhaps someone somewhere knew, before I even picked up a
book, that knowledge of certain works and authors would distract me
from the study which had been, just as mysteriously, chosen for me :
the canon.

>   
>About Alice Walker, Terrance writes:
>  	And the teaching of her writings and those of other authors
>  are decried and fought at nearly every university where they are
>  taught.  Call me a vigilante, then.

[And then Mike said :]

>Umm, my point was that, in the battle between Alice Walker's novels
>and Plato's dialogues, namely which should be taught at university,
>Alice Walker's novels seem to be winning out. Now, *I* happen to think
>that Plato might be more important to be taught, he being more important
>to an understanding of our political institutions, how they work, how
>and why they thinkably could be otherwise, and Alice Walker's
>works, being modern novels and politically relevant and therefore easy
>and accessible, might well be read on one's own outside the
>classroom. But, of course, I seem to be on the losing side of the
>argument. Then I seem to get called evil and racist and elitist or
>whatever by the Mss. Dreifus and Walker for even wanting to argue
>the point. I object to this.

	OK. I can respect that. Meanwhile I'll wait for the day (in
another 50 years perhaps?) when I can teach Alice Walker in the hopes
of propelling her into the canon as well.
	On the subject of Plato, once when I admitted to never having
really read Plato a friend of mine told me I didn't really need to,
because Western culture is so drenched in his ideas that I probably
have a good understanding of them without even realizing it.

>                                                        ``[M]uch of this
>  talk about white and black perspectives is pure nonsense.  In fact,
>  it degrades us to speak as though rationality and logic were entirely
>  masculine white concepts. And black and female authors deserve better---
>  Zora Neale Hurston, for example, didn't want to be a `black female'.
>  She wanted to be Shakespeare.''
>  
>Terrance countered:
>  	And, in her time, the things that kept her from being such
>  were being black and female, or rather the social perception of
>  blackness and femaleness at the time. 
>
>I looked up this quote because Alice Walker was claiming to herself
>the badge of ``black female''. If Hurston's work is as good as you say, it
>isn't clear to me that she was kept from being Shakespeare at all.

	Just a note here. Actually, Langston Hughes is considred the
"black shakespeare".


[I said :]

>  	I've read Mr. D'Souza's book, and found some of his arguments
>  convincing (the discussion of appropriation comes to mind, but that
>  would have to take up another thread), but also found that he failed
>  to consider the reasons such institutes and studies are being called
>  for, and how to address the needs that arise from the lack in the
>  curriculum.

[And Mike said:]

>I found much that I didn't like in D'Souza---a curious mixture of
>statistics and anecdotal evidence that doesn't necessarily support
>his claim that things are as bad as all that. On the other hand, I
>think that affirmative action is essentially unjust and there's no way
>we're going to erase from people's minds the knowledge that it is
>unjust, so I think D'Souza may be right about the racial incidents
>on northern campuses being reaction to a perceived unfairness. I thought
>his suggestion to tie preferred admissions to economic disadvantage,
>and not to race, a good one. Anyway, I turned to him only because
>I remembered mention of Zora Neale Hurston in the book, and when I
>found the quote, I thought it an effective counterweight to Alice Walker.

	Ah. OK.

[And I finally said :]

>  	Perhaps my attitude has become of of academic and literary
>  separatism, at least temporarily.  As I said above, I will happily
>  come to the party, when invited. Until then I will forget about it,
>  and have one of my own.
>

[And Mike countered :]

>But, isn't requiring you to read Thomas Hardy exactly an invitation for
>you to come dance at the party?

	Yes, but I'm being asked to foxtrot, when I much prefer to
watusi.



-- 
"Black men loving black men is THE revolutionary act!"
			-Joseph Beam_
Terrance Heath 
heath@athena.cs.uga.edu