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I'll give one example, Haus, from The Norton Anthology of American Literature:
<<...The horse labored too, its gait growing heavy as loose sand fouled its footing; but at each attempt to break stride into a trot, there was the prick of spur point, a jerk at the reins. It was a habit with the rider.
"Keep going! Earn your feed, you hammerhead!"
Brinder was always saying that his horses didn't earn their feed. Yet he was the hardest rider in the country.>>
Yes, the entire country. The above is not from the first chapter of a Zane Grey novel, but from the first section of D'Arcy McNickle's "Hard Riding" -- a short story circa the 1950s, written by a Native American author (published posthumously), the point of which is to show that a white man who attempts to impose democracy upon a reservation is doomed to fail, due to the greater wisdom of the zenlike Native Americans whom the Man has placed in his charge. Well-intentioned, to be sure, but hardly an example of great writing, or even convincing dialogue or of characterization that extends much beyond the one-dimensional -- read it and you'll see what I mean. Reading it isn't an unpleasant experience...it isn't bad fiction, per se...but is it so exceptional that this story deserves to be included along with maybe a dozen other examples of American fiction from the 20th Century? What got squeezed out to make room? I'll give you an idea -- there's no Joyce Carol Oates in the Norton anthology, no Harlan Ellison, no Bradbury (!), no John Edgar Wideman or Walter Mosley (because we have Langston Hughes -- who needs another black writer?), no...well, no a LOT of people. There's no question in my mind its inclusion is due to politics; as the Jesus People might say, we should not read The Bible for its prose, and indeed the purpose of including this work seems to be its "point," and not the story itself.
In any event, I'd suggest going to the library and hunting down a copy of the Norton book for your own examples -- it's pretty widely taught, and a good way of learning what today's students of literature are being told are the standards to which they should aspire as writers.
Backing up for a minute, though, I want to stress that my point was that the neocons were perhaps not so off-base when they suggested that some work was taught on the basis of its "agenda" (and not because it was necessarily good). But I don't think I made my objection to them clear enough, probably because it seemed so...well...common sense; I mean, if you want to remove, oh, I dunno, Shakespeare's Sonnets, if for no better reason than they suggest Will may have had a boner for some guy (and a "dark lady" -- *gasp!* you don't think she might have been...you know...a NEGRO, do you?), then clearly homophobia has blinded one to quality work; and, unable to recognize quality, such a person should nobly remove him/herself from making such judgments. |
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