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Patrick Nielsen Hayden says it for me and says it better:
But in lieu of that, you can always attend a candlelight vigil near you. (Link found via the incomparable Mesile.)
***
Bookslut led me to this one. Britain's Poet Laureate Andrew Motion (here complaining about how these kids today don't read the classics) has a list of books for creative writing students to read. Here's his list, along with reactions by a variety of people.
Now I looked at this list:
And I admit, my first thought was, Huh?
I've read five of the nine, the first five to be exact. All of them except Emma I read because they were on the reading list for my Master's Exam. (Emma I read 'cause I'm geeky like that and I wanted to.) Now, my Department and its Program are admirable in many many ways, but "radical" and "cutting edge" are really not words one would choose to describe them. (Jane Austen's on the M.A. reading list, too, but the book IIRC is Pride and Prejudice.) So can we say, Hello canon? Yeah, we can. We can say it real loud and maybe bust somebody's eardrum, too.
The four books I haven't read are the twentieth century literature part, and the chief thing I notice about them (because I'm feeling bitchy and strident--but NEVER shrill--this morning) is that they're all men. So the list is 7 to 2 in favor of the men, and the two women represented are about as safely canonical as someone with two X chromosomes can be. (I love Jane and George, I do--tho' I love George more in the breach than in the observance--but they are not threatening. Not even a little.)
Granted, Motion's list is specifically meant to redress a perceived lack of familiarity with the canon (although he doesn't phrase it as such, and I'm kind of thinking that might not be an accident), but STILL. (I said I was feeling strident, right?) I'm also not quite sure what, besides being "well-rounded," which, frankly, Socrates, I don't think is a sufficient end in itself (there's no use in being "well-rounded" if it doesn't inform how you think and act and live), a creative writing student is supposed to gain from this list.
So I'm making my own list. Nine books, like Motion's, that I think are "classics" and creative writing students should have to read. Feel free to join in.
1. Hamlet by William Shakespeare.
2. Yes, okay, fine, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.
3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
4. Villette by Charlotte Bronte.
5. Bleak House by Charles Dickens [ETA OR Moby-Dick by Herman Melville].
6. [REVISED: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. You may substitute The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark if horror gives you the deep-down heebie jeebies.]
7. Watership Down by Richard Adams. (No, I'm not kidding.)
8. The Dead Zone by Stephen King. (I'm not kidding about this one, either.) [ETA OR Beloved by Toni Morrison.]
9. Wild Life by Molly Gloss. (Okay, not technically a classic yet, but it needs to be shoved in everybody's face until it BECOMES a classic, because it is that damn good.)
My list is more subversive than Motion's, but that's because I think the canon is a tool of oppression in the hands of the Western imperialistic, patriarchal, phallocentric literary regime which reifies text into fetish ... oh god I'm stopping before I hurt someone. What I mean is, I think the canon per se is bullshit (anything that makes me read James Fenimore Cooper in high school is arrant nonsense) and I think if one's going to make lists of this kind, they should not be REINFORCING THE GODDAMNED CANON, FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK.
Anyway, that's my list. You can notice the strong slide toward the sfnal as we move into the latter half of the twentieth century, but that's because I think that's where the action's at. Sure I'm biased, but so is Motion.
At the moment, really, the most rational possible reaction to the Bush administration's national-security policy is to light one's hair on fire and run down the street screaming about Jesus.
But in lieu of that, you can always attend a candlelight vigil near you. (Link found via the incomparable Mesile.)
***
Bookslut led me to this one. Britain's Poet Laureate Andrew Motion (here complaining about how these kids today don't read the classics) has a list of books for creative writing students to read. Here's his list, along with reactions by a variety of people.
Now I looked at this list:
Motion's must-reads
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Ulysses by James Joyce
Emma by Jane Austen
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Waterland by Graham Swift
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
And I admit, my first thought was, Huh?
I've read five of the nine, the first five to be exact. All of them except Emma I read because they were on the reading list for my Master's Exam. (Emma I read 'cause I'm geeky like that and I wanted to.) Now, my Department and its Program are admirable in many many ways, but "radical" and "cutting edge" are really not words one would choose to describe them. (Jane Austen's on the M.A. reading list, too, but the book IIRC is Pride and Prejudice.) So can we say, Hello canon? Yeah, we can. We can say it real loud and maybe bust somebody's eardrum, too.
The four books I haven't read are the twentieth century literature part, and the chief thing I notice about them (because I'm feeling bitchy and strident--but NEVER shrill--this morning) is that they're all men. So the list is 7 to 2 in favor of the men, and the two women represented are about as safely canonical as someone with two X chromosomes can be. (I love Jane and George, I do--tho' I love George more in the breach than in the observance--but they are not threatening. Not even a little.)
Granted, Motion's list is specifically meant to redress a perceived lack of familiarity with the canon (although he doesn't phrase it as such, and I'm kind of thinking that might not be an accident), but STILL. (I said I was feeling strident, right?) I'm also not quite sure what, besides being "well-rounded," which, frankly, Socrates, I don't think is a sufficient end in itself (there's no use in being "well-rounded" if it doesn't inform how you think and act and live), a creative writing student is supposed to gain from this list.
So I'm making my own list. Nine books, like Motion's, that I think are "classics" and creative writing students should have to read. Feel free to join in.
1. Hamlet by William Shakespeare.
2. Yes, okay, fine, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.
3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
4. Villette by Charlotte Bronte.
5. Bleak House by Charles Dickens [ETA OR Moby-Dick by Herman Melville].
6. [REVISED: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. You may substitute The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark if horror gives you the deep-down heebie jeebies.]
7. Watership Down by Richard Adams. (No, I'm not kidding.)
8. The Dead Zone by Stephen King. (I'm not kidding about this one, either.) [ETA OR Beloved by Toni Morrison.]
9. Wild Life by Molly Gloss. (Okay, not technically a classic yet, but it needs to be shoved in everybody's face until it BECOMES a classic, because it is that damn good.)
My list is more subversive than Motion's, but that's because I think the canon is a tool of oppression in the hands of the Western imperialistic, patriarchal, phallocentric literary regime which reifies text into fetish ... oh god I'm stopping before I hurt someone. What I mean is, I think the canon per se is bullshit (anything that makes me read James Fenimore Cooper in high school is arrant nonsense) and I think if one's going to make lists of this kind, they should not be REINFORCING THE GODDAMNED CANON, FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK.
Anyway, that's my list. You can notice the strong slide toward the sfnal as we move into the latter half of the twentieth century, but that's because I think that's where the action's at. Sure I'm biased, but so is Motion.
