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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

The Politics of "Great Books"

  
  

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Tom Coates
19:00 / 20.01.02
Spin of from this thread. The issue I'm interested in exploring is who chooses what a great book is, how much flexibility there is for books dropping out of the canon or being adopted by it, ethnocentric and power bias etc. etc. etc.

Opinions?
 
 
Tempus
20:53 / 20.01.02
Great books are simply books which endure. Up until, say, the 1950s, no one really "chose" them, because there was not an academic industry which would need to define itself by doing so. Before English departments became the satanic mills of inconsequential studies they are today, the canon was inherently fluid. Authors who we see as permanent fixtures went in and out of style based upon the fickle tastes of the times (for example, Milton was widely unread at the beginning of the 20th century), and lesser contemporary figures (James Elroy Flecker, anyone?) were highly lauded. Now, anyone can put forth their own personal canon, and do so with anarchistic relish--after all, one has to write one's thesis on something.

But, assuming there is a "classical" canon, consisting of works published before 1900, say--the modern era still being an area of shifting contention--I will further enamour myself to no one by stating that there was no bias inherent in its creation. Works which resonated with the human soul persisted in being read and appreciated, and works which failed to capture an audience faded into obscurity. I tend to reject the notion of a canon being somehow inherently biased because it does not contain many works by, to generalize, women and minorities, unless someone can point to great works which were neglected...
 
 
Tits win
20:56 / 20.01.02
Like all opinions a great book is based upon purely subjective criteria. No one should be aloud to say what is a great book. A recomendation is fine, but to state that a book, or anything, is good just because someone agrees with you (even if that someone is one million strong) ain't right fella. The only person who should decide what is the criteria for a good book is you, and you, and me. I don't care what is cool or with it because i will never be cool or with it.
And that's why I'm cool.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
09:43 / 21.01.02
It's possible that no-one should be allowed to say what makes a good book, 08, but that doesn't change the fact that, largely, academia has and still does.

There's an interesting page on the Canon here. Particularly, the section on canon formation is worth reading, as it suggests a number of elements that work together to maintain a canon - eliminating the idea of a single mind deciding what goes in and out of it. Most interesting, perhaps, is this bit: quote:Finally, the very processes that drive the creation of the canon also tend to maintain any piece,s place in it. For example, a piece of work which enters the canon tends to be distributed far and wide and discussed amongst all manner of critics, students and readers. If a piece is found to actually be lacking, critics and readers will debate its merits and flaws in the literary arena thereby maintaining its status in the canon. A canonized work never truly drops into oblivion.As I remember it being discussed at uni, the problem with the Canon is that it's something that keeps growing in different ways - maybe the formation of "mini-canons" for things like transgressive/subversive authors, say? - though it's something that can't be whittled down or streamlined for fear of a reduction of quality, if indeed you can say that you can stick books in a blender and get something called quality out of the end.

The Canon's meant to provide some kind of yardstick to literature: to give people an idea of what's good and bad without subjectivity, perhaps - but it's the sort of thing that perhaps comes increasingly less-relevant to modern literature as it's often become more concerned with fleeting publication/sale (ie: pulp fiction? romances?) than with Making A Big Statement or being seen as a work for the ages, as other types of work that've survived and are seen as canonical texts do.

But then, Shakespeare wrote plays to put bums on seats (or groundlings on shanks) so I could well be talking out of my arse.

There's another article on the Canon here. I'm sure there's other lit-crit posters who are more clued in in this section I am, and can give less Special Boy links than this, though.

In short: the Canon's like a selective borg. If something's good for a long time, it'll get assimilated. Maybe. Not that that's a good thing.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
09:43 / 21.01.02
I think that the idea of 'The Canon' is actually now redundant and that people will realise this in about, oooh, fifty years.

I think the whole idea was more or less a result of F R Leavis and is no longer relevant, especially given the way that people study literature and other cultural phenomena these days. The chief exponent of the canon these days is Harold Bloom, and really who gives a toss what he thinks?

Instead I think (mind you - this is probably only valid at university level in terms of actual teaching practice) that the idea of the canon should be recognised as being a subjective tool, used by literary critics to manage literature. I think it is healthy to explode this, and with the development of interdisciplinary studies we can explode some of the more depressing myths of the canon (eg - Defoe is the Father of the Novel - load of bunkum)

Of course for the purposes of study texts - just like facts - need to be selected, but as long as there is a recognition that this is the case, I think it should be possible to destroy the canon. There are plenty of reasons to read books, but the idea that a book is 'canonical' is not one of them.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
09:43 / 21.01.02
Well, the idea that something's "canonical" shouldn't be why something's read, but isn't that why a lot of things are? I mean, the guilt one feels from neglecting reading of The Classics, for example, could be drawn to a lifetime of growing up with education suggesting that particular books are worthy and deserve to be read, couldn't it? I certainly know that I feel more guilty about not having read the complete works of Tolstoy, say, than I do about not having read all or Iain Banks' stuff. I'd argue that while it's skew-whiff, there's a real tendency to allow the canon - regardless of what it has to say about the formation of literature as a whole - shape one's feelings about the reading process. Or, rather, shape a particular type of person's feeling about the reading process.

Exploding the Canon - does anyone here teach English at a uni level, or otherwise? How would this be received, on an organisational level? On the one hand, having some canonical school-texts (ie: Romeo & Juliet, Jane Eyre or whatever) is limiting inasmuch as it puts all the attention on a select group of works, but it also ensures that there's some kind of similarity throughout educational systems; this is desirable, isn't it?

Or is it? I'm not sure. It's a fine line, I'd guess, educationally, in order to foster exploration of other genres or authors, but to ensure some degree of universality in the student's experience.

I think that as long as things like the Penguin Classics and Penguin Modern Classics ranges exist, too, the idea of the Canon will persevere. These imprints suggest a sense of their works being better than the average - I think that's entailed in the "Classic" part of it, I guess - and set up the closest thing to an actual record of the Canon that we have - Bloom's book notwithstanding.

Is it worth comparing other art types at this point? There's a similar canon-making behaviour existing in some branches of music (classical, say, or even some strains of jazz) and in art - are they subject to the same problems as the literary canon? Or are they not explored as thoroughly, critically?
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
09:43 / 21.01.02
Well, I think that the expansion of the Penguin and Oxford classics ranges is a result and an indication of a move away from the Leavisite interpretation of literary heritage, and as such should be used against the notion of a 'canon'. I doubt that - say - Wilkie Collins' Armadale would be found in many critics' canons, yet it is IMO acceptable for it to be published as a classic (with surrounding apparatus) because it is a 'text which can be studied'.

I think it is possible to think of a book as being classic/critically acclaimed throughout several centuries/a text which can be studied, and therefore a book which one 'should have read', without it necessarily having to be part of a canon. I think I 'should have read' Torture Garden but I don't think it's canonical (though it could reasonably be said to be a classic of decadent literature). Don't think I'm being very clear here, but hopefully you can see what I'm driving at.

I think of literature as being rather like language in that criticism can either be descriptive or prescriptive - like grammars - and that the canon is prescriptive as an idea, and that this is not a helpful way of thinking about a corpus of texts.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
09:43 / 21.01.02
quote:Originally posted by Kit-Cat Club:
I doubt that - say - Wilkie Collins' Armadale would be found in many critics' canons, yet it is IMO acceptable for it to be published as a classic (with surrounding apparatus) because it is a 'text which can be studied'.But surely the fact that it's the product of a so-called "canonical" author means that it hasn't escaped the Canon at all? It seems that to a greater or lesser extent, once an author's considered "classic", all their works - even the bodgy ones - are felt to be worth studying? quote:and therefore a book which one 'should have read', without it necessarily having to be part of a canon.But how does one discern between an "I should've read this" list and a "canonical" list? Aren't they merely different forms of the same process? If it was a work written outside your lifetime, then surely some machination of canon-similar behaviour will be the reason why you feel that you should read something? Unless you've had it handed down through the family for years - which in itself is possibly mimicking canon-producing behaviour. Again, I suggest that it's possible to have a familial canon, or a canon of particular disciplines - admittedly without the gravitas of the Western Canon, enshrined in lit crit departments everywhere.

I agree that the idea of the canon as prescriptive is a bad thing - but is it so entrenched that it'll be hard to get rid of? Or will it still be used as an acceptable place to base one's reading on, with encouragement to skew it? What's the future of this process?

[ 21-01-2002: Message edited by: The Return Of Rothkoid ]
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
09:43 / 21.01.02
Well, see, I don't think WC *is* a canonical author (certainly not in the 'whole corpus of Western Literature' kind of canon, which I assume is what we're discussing here) - he's a good solid novelist, moderately innovative, but has only been admitted into the ranks of 'classic novelists who shall have their entire output republished' quite recently... I think there's a difference between being considered 'classic' and being considered 'canonical'. ATM it seems to me that most works of what is considered to be 'literary interest' can be called 'classics' or 'classics of the genre' and, to me at any rate, that does not mean they are canonical (partly for the reason that if that was the case, the canon would be so broad as to be meaningless).

'I should read these' lists tend to be more personal. Of course it's the case that the status of a book as a 'classic' is more likely to leave one in a state of guilt if one either ignores it or doesn't like it (totally illogical, but I certainly do this).

The more I think about, the more I think that the whole idea of 'canon' is the problem because the presecriptiveness is entirely inherent in it, and that would be just as true for genre canons as for the Western canon blah. Of course it doesn't really need pointing out that the way we (Anglo-Americans-Antipodeans-english speakers) view the Western canon is hopelessly biassed - wot, no Lusiads? - and can never really be anything but biassed. I think the combination of bias (whether conscious or otherwise) and prescriptiveness makes the canon concept something of which we should be very very wary.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
09:43 / 21.01.02
But what's to be done about the study of literature, given that it's based on the Canon, pretty much? Lit departments have enshrined the canonical, largely - isn't it more theorists that look to/are working to dismantle it? - and keep on chuggin' with it? If the Canon vaporised tomorrow, then most university-level lit. studies would fall over in a heap, wouldn't they? No Shakespeare? Argh! What do entrenched academics study now? Would theory fill the void and make everything a text, turning the criticism of English literature into a criticism of everything, widening the field's focus incredibly?

Is it, then, a necessary evil? Is the Canon the foundation of literary study, like Freud is for Psychology? I mean, whether one agrees or rails against it, both the idea of a canonical text and Sigmund Freud still persist/prevail - something to agree with and support or to disagree with and try to demolish. I think it is, to a certain extent.

(I would've thought Collins was canonical; at least in the mystery genre. But I could be wrong.)

Jaheesus, that's a lot of questions.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
09:43 / 21.01.02
Well, if you accept the idea that there can be such a thing as a genre canon, then yes I suppose he would be - though I am again unsure whether genre isn't excluded from the idea of the canon per se (the old chestnut about why the only genre fiction which is acceptable to some critics is that which 'transcends its genre' - why should it have to do this?)

Obviously if the works which comprise the canon were to vapourise, there would be a major hole in the study of English literature - but I don't think that would be the case if the concept of the canon were abolished/vapourised/exploded. I suppose it depends whether you see Eng Lit as study of works of literature or as study of discourses and issues arising from or surrounding texts (which is probably completely the worng way to phrase it - does that make any sort of sense?)

I think the current state of English Literature or literature studies as a discipline is probably more informed by theory than many others (certainly more so than history in some departments), and as far as I can tell the discipline is constantly revising and adding to its materials for study - a friend of mine worked on American Native literature, for example, which is most definitely not canonical.

I can see a situation arising where cross-disciplinary work involving literature or texts is compassed by the broader remit of 'cultural studies' (which can be a dirty word in some academic circles, but should not be) - this should remove some of the baggage which is inherent in the idea of studying great works of literature.

In the classroom I think there is an increasing tendency to teach methods of engaging with a text rather than teaching 'great works which every child should have read'.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
14:25 / 21.01.02
Very good question.

quote:Great books are simply books which endure

grr. The notion that it's simply the 'best' or most universal books that endure, or that eventually something 'good' (and yeah, i'm scare quoting everything) is assimilated into the Canon is utterly naive. Shakespeare's Sister anyone?

Back when i've thought about this properly.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:45 / 21.01.02
Clarification for anyone who hasn't read A Room Of One's Own by Virginia Woolf: in this non-fiction book, Woolf maps out the hypothetical course that the life of a female Shakespearr would have taken, given the time and place... (hint: it's not a happy one, and does not end in a Complete Works). I believe plums is refering to this, rather than to the slightly Goth pop duo responsible for 'Stay'.
 
 
grant
15:29 / 21.01.02
To what degree does the canon exist (if it still does) as a matter of convenience?

I mean, it seems like there's a couple different overlapping definitions of "canon" - as a bunch of books written by dead white men that represent The Best of Literature, and as a common group of texts selected for analysis within the academy because a. they (somehow) lend themselves to analysis and b. you can't read everything nohow.

For instance, I never heard Defoe was the father of the novel, but the novel was invented by the woman who wrote Tale of Genji in feudal Japan. What canon is that?
 
 
Cavatina
01:04 / 22.01.02
Posted by Kit-Cat Club:

quote:I think that the idea of 'The Canon' is actually now redundant and that people will realise this in about, oooh, fifty years.

I think the whole idea was more or less a result of F R Leavis and is no longer relevant, especially given the way that people study literature and other cultural phenomena these days.

Sorry to have come to the discussion so late, but I think that Kit-Cat is right in suggesting the need to look at the question historically first. The idea of the canon (as a body of texts institutionally determined and culturally accepted as constituting 'Literature') came to the fore in the 1930s with the work of F. R. and Q. D. Leavis and the journal Scrutiny. Their project was to define the nature of English studies and the role it should play in England and those countries which had been part of the British Empire. The Leavisite intervention was political. In their view, to counter the supposed debasement of English language and culture since the 18th century by industrialization, one must undertake 'close reading' of those texts which, for them, embodied the 'vitality' of language - i.e. the 'life-blood' of English culture - and which would foster moral sensibility and mature discrimination. Terry Eagleton's excellent chapter, 'The Rise of English', in his Literary Theory: An Introduction(1983) has become the standard reading about this very successful humanist movement and why, by the '80s, it had outlived its usefulness. In his Marxist view, Leavisite English Studies with its pre-occupation with 'words on the page', had filled the gap left by the decline in religion; it hadn't sought to *change* society.

These days many depts of English Lit. have embraced Cultural Studies, and, as Kit-Cat points out, their courses cover a *wide range* of texts, including non-literary texts and those from 'popular' culture. And the study of all texts is politically informed by the great diversity that is Theory. The idea of the canon (along with divisions of culture: 'high' and 'low'; 'elite' and 'popular') is continually deconstructed. So there are lots of readings of texts previously considered canonical, alongside readings of much, much else, readings which make no reference to their *value*, i.e. to judgements of good and bad.

But although canonicity is not used as a critical device per se, because it was around for such a long time it cannot be simply ignored either. It's not possible to understand the dynamics of the postmodern changes that have occurred in categorising and analysing texts without considering it. Such consideration, however, is part of an ongoing broad and intense examination of cultural processes and textual practices, the inter-relationships between texts and culture, texts and contexts. And, I should add, of the role/significance of the reader, and the (problematical) status of the author.

I guess that nowadays *reviewers* in the media are the ones most likely to make judgements of 'good' or 'bad' when a new book, film etc. is released.

[ 22-01-2002: Message edited by: Cavatina ]
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
06:59 / 22.01.02
Ah, thank you v much, lots of interesting stuff there (& I am glad to have the proper background for the canon). It seems to me like an extension of Victorian 'moral education' in a way, and even more so of the Victorian project to centralise culture (taking 'peripheral cultures' like the Celtic cultures, rural English ones, and - probably - cultures in the Empire, and effectively making them client cultures which could only exist in a subordinate relationship to the English culture of upper-middle-class institutions) - very 'Culture and Anarchy', I think. Not sure how this would fit in with Eagleton - what do you think? An alternate locus of social cohesion?
 
 
Cavatina
10:32 / 22.01.02
quote:It seems to me like an extension of Victorian 'moral education' in a way, and even more so of the Victorian project to centralise culture ...

Just so. Eagleton talks about this also - have just found the chapter to have a look.

"As religion progressively ceases to provide the social 'cement', affective values and basic mythologies by which a socially turbulent class society can be welded together, 'English' is constructed as a subject to carry this ideological burden from the Victorian period onwards. The key figure here is Matthew arnold, always preternaturally sensitive to the needs of his social class, and engagingly candid about being so." (And he continues with a discussion of Arnold, whom he sees as 'refreshingly unhypocritical').
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
10:53 / 22.01.02
I must say I'd never thought of Arnold as 'refreshing' in any way. But yes, he certainly doesn't make any bones about 'Philistinism'...
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
10:59 / 22.01.02
Actually, I wonder why certain works were selected for the canon and others left out - what was it about Austen, James, Eliot and Conrad that made them so suitable for Leavis' purposes? Or was it simply a matter of him tailoring his theory to fit his personal preferences?
 
 
grant
16:49 / 22.01.02
I'm positive it was because they made the best grist for the academic mill; whatever kind of critique the canon-builders favored, those texts were the best to exhibit it.

Like big frogs for the dissection table, rather than lampreys or salamanders.
 
 
Cavatina
05:30 / 23.01.02
Posted by Kit-Cat:

quote:Actually, I wonder why certain works were selected for the canon and others left out - what was it about Austen, James, Eliot and Conrad that made them so suitable for Leavis' purposes?

I've not been able to locate my copy of The Great Tradition to check out details and quote, but if I'm remembering correctly, in regard to the novel Leavis was influenced by the essays and prefaces of Henry James. He placed great store by well wrought form, structure, intelligence and 'the spirit of language', as in poetry, and took on other dons in The Guardian and The Times Literary Supplement to argue for the great stature of Woolf and (obsessively) for D.H. Lawrence - as well as Austen, Eliot, James and Conrad. (I can't stand Lawrence, btw; can you?). He omitted Dickens and James Joyce, as well as Melville's Moby Dick from his 'Great Tradition'. But the narrowness and rigidity or limitations of his nationalistic thinking showed up even more in his cliched attack on C.P. Snow and his apparent total neglect of, or indifference to, European literature, even Homer, the Bible, Dante, Goethe, Dostoievsky.
 
 
Cavatina
06:24 / 23.01.02
Given this legacy of Arnold & Leavis, and going back to Tom's original question, though - 'who (these days) chooses what a great book is' - on reflection, I do think that Rothkoid has got a very strong case when he says:

"I think that as long as things like the Penguin Classics and Penguin Modern Classics ranges exist, too, the idea of the Canon will
persevere. These imprints suggest a sense of their works being better than the average - I think that's entailed in the "Classic" part of it, I guess - "

Such texts are presumably selected by classics editors at Penguin, or OUP or wherever, for reasons of their perceived cultural value, their history of reception, or their generic significance, as worthy of reprinting and hence transmitting to the next generation. And as Roth suggests, once the texts carry the publisher's imprimatur, they are accepted as belonging to a select club.

So it does seem that the business of conferring 'great book' status can be said to go on *independently* of the academy. In this regard, there's the function of reviewing in the media also to consider - and the criteria used in the judging of awards and prizes, such as the Booker.

We could think about the role played by film and T.V. too. It's interesting isn't it that, just at the time when the old idea of 'the canon' has been undermined in academia, we should see film after film (or series) of Shakespeare's plays, novels by Austen, Bronte, James, Thackeray, Tolkien etc?

[ 23-01-2002: Message edited by: Cavatina ]
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
08:11 / 23.01.02
Posted by Cavatina:
quote: the narrowness and rigidity or limitations of his nationalistic thinking showed up even more in his cliched attack on C.P. Snow and his apparent total neglect of, or indifference to, European literature, even Homer, the Bible, Dante, Goethe, Dostoievsky.

Oh, I do so agree.

Also about this business of the 'classics' lists promoting the idea of there being a corpus of 'great books' - still not sure that I think that that is quite the same thing as promoting the idea of a or the canon per se, but it does definitely promote the idea that 'this book is a Classic' (and if, like me, you feel inadequate about your reading, also the idea that 'you should read it or you will be unworthy of... something').

You can see this happening in other publishing houses, not just with the big public domain lists at Penguin and (to a lesser extent) OUP - ever since Penguin brought out a series of 'Essentials' (basically, twentieth-century novels dolled up in nice, graphic covers - Michael Cunningham, John Kennedy Toole, Forster, Cold Comfort Farm, that sort of thing: LUST) publishing houses have been copying them like billy-o - Faber, Duckworth, Flamingo, etc etc - trying to confer on their lists some kind of status by making them 'cult classics' (Dedalus) or 'uniform editions' and all that palaver. So there's obviously some benefit for publishers in having their titles regarded as classic/'you must read this', and so on.

Having said which... Penguin is the biggest publisher of classics, and so must determine to a certain extent the parameters of the idea of the classic text. I imagine you know a lot more than me about the processes by which a text is chosen for the Penguin Classics range, but it does seem to me that it can't be *that* divorced from the academy - simply because the biggest market for the less standard classics *must* be students, and so I imagine that the list is affected by what is taught (and of course vice versa).
 
 
Cavatina
10:08 / 23.01.02
Kit-Cat, you're no doubt right that students make up the biggest market for some Penguin or OUP Classics; but all the texts are aimed at, and considered to have, a large general readership.

We've agreed that no one in the academy (apart from Bloom & followers) any longer sets out to define and defend 'a canon' as such. Rothkoid mentioned 'mini-canons' and subversive/transgressive texts. I'm not sure, but I think he's alluding to the way some texts which had previously been marginalised or ignored as unworthy or 'bad' have become important or paradigmatic (and often the sites of contest) for particular types of theory and studies - for example, feminist or gay & lesbian studies. But this importance is based on cultural significance rather than cultural value; so it's not a matter of setting up another 'canon'. There's often overlap here with particular subcultures that disassociate themselves from dominant ideologies and notions of canonicity. It seems to me that judgements of *value*, which tend to align thenselves with defense of the artistic, mostly come from outside the academy, or rather, are not directly dependent upon it in the way of yore. Though I have to concede that reviewers can wear more than one hat and may also be academics. So there is a two-way flow. It's complex.

Perhaps we should try thinking in terms of canonical or 'high' culture, popular culture and subcultures - and ask ourselves what books are important for these cultures and why, and which books move across them?
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
10:28 / 23.01.02
Yes, of course, to the earlier points in that post (will think about the last one more before I say anything about it). I don't think we are disagreeing about canons in the academy at all - certainly I am completely happy with the idea that texts are studied on the base of their significance rather than value, and that most value judgements come from outside the academy (and perhaps reviewers who are also academics are operating in a more 'private area of the public sphere' when they review - Tom Paulin is someone who comes to mind - and can offer a more directly personal opinion in that context).
 
 
The Planet of Sound
11:52 / 23.01.02
Also take into account to what extent the 'canon' is created for political reasons by certain power bases; 'academia' being one, with its own multifarious agenda, and 'nation' being another. Every country needs its own literary heroes and texts to define its erudition and national characteristics.

Remember when the Russians claimed Shakespeare was one of them?
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
13:06 / 23.01.02
Something that came up in discussion last night, and is probably more of an aside than anything else - though maybe in another thread - how much of the "this is canonical"/"this is a classic" overlap has been taken over by the rise of the publishing of scholarly or desirable editions of texts, as exampled by Cavatina and KCC? And how much of this is a bad thing? It's interesting - mildly only, maybe - inasmuch as I previously had thought that the idea of canonicity (as I think of it based on Eng. Lit. years) as being based on literature only: novels and the like. Yet Penguin's range of classics includes historical, philosophic, religious and mythological texts, giving them all the "I should read that" hook. And in a lot of cases, they're books that I wouldn't have ever come into contact with as part of a) my regular life or b) the extent of my studies. Is this commercially-driven process (which I'm guessing Penguin is, largely) broadening horizons, or accumulating titles in an ill-considered jumble?

Just wondering, too: is the canon promoted per se? It seems to me to be a lot like an embarrassing relative - people either ignore it, or argue against it, but rarely go Yay canon!, you know? I think it's used, yes, but I don't know if I'd say if it's promoted. The call to examine cultural permeability is probably a good way to proceed.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
10:16 / 24.01.02
quote:Originally posted by Cavatina:
Perhaps we should try thinking in terms of canonical or 'high' culture, popular culture and subcultures - and ask ourselves what books are important for these cultures and why, and which books move across them?

This is a very tricky question, and I suspect that the answer involves several aspects of the book, some (if not most) of which are external to the texts themselves and relate to the way in which people use books and reading to say things about themselves (ahoy there, consumption of culture...)

I'm not quite sure what constitutes 'high' culture these days, but I suppose it would be reasonable to take 'literary' culture (as seen in the broadsheets, tabloids and so on) as the benchmark (and as we've said, this isn't quite the same thing as the academy - which it might be best to leave out of this one). Which books are important to this group? 'Literary' novels (and oh God don't ask me to define that... the sort of thing which might be published by Picador or get on the Booker shortlist, I suppose), popular history, science and general non-fiction (things like Boswell's Presumptuous Task or No Logo), some poetry (though poetry almost counts as a reading sub-culture these days), and 'classic literature'... Well, that's sort of a start. Some people would call that middlebrow rather than high (and I would agree), but in contrast to popular and genre fiction (Lisa Jewell, Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill, Terry Pratchett, bloody SAS books) I think it's reasonable... feel free to pick apart, though.

Why are they important to the people who read them? Because they fit in with the self-image that these people have. Intelligent, with a broad range, slightly above the common herd, bookish, and belonging to a continuing literary culture which is located in the discourse of the broadsheets, in the 'chattering classes', and in the metropolis - cosmopolitan. I suspect that books have an importance to these people which is actually out of proportion (in some cases) to their levels of engagement with the actual texts.

Obviously that is a hopeless generalisation (and I hope it is just as obvious that I am pretty much describing myself in the last paragraph), and when it comes to high-middle-low culture there are endless possibilities for stratification, because reading takes place both on a group level and an individual level. The main point, though, is that reading is part of the construction of the self and of the group identity. This is also the case when it comes to subcultures - probably even more so, because the need for the individual to identify with the group is likely to be greater when that group is self-consciously 'against the mainstream' (not that all subcultures have to be like that).

Which books move across cultural groupings? Apart from books which appeal on a number of levels - such as, say, Raymond Chandler novels - there's a tendency for books to become assimilated into the mainstream - often, where the books are challenging, with a considerable timelag. This can happen both ways - either a book starts out as avant-garde and then, over time, becomes more acceptable (Ulysses, Naked Lunch); or they start out as genre pieces, go through the 'cult classic' stage, and and up in the mainstream literary culture - actually struggling to think of an eg here - Conan Doyle, M. R. James? (so maybe that's not how it happens...). But they have to be books which make people feel better about themselves (whether they read them or just buy them).

Um... not sure about any of that. What do people think?
 
 
Cavatina
10:43 / 24.01.02
To start looking at permeability and the dynamics of change, I guess we could consider the case of Shakespeare - whose inclusion in the Western canon as 'great Literature' would long seem to have been a sine qua non - and try to elicit the sorts of cultural processes that have been occurring. What do you think?

Some people speak of his plays and sonnets as if they are positioned in the realm of elite, ruling class culture. But are they? Or have they been appropriated for popular culture? Or even a particular subculture? (I'm thinking of recent interest in the practice of cross-dressing in Elizabethan theatre).

[Kit-Cat - Have just returned with this to see your long post - sorry.]

[ 24-01-2002: Message edited by: Cavatina ]
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
11:05 / 24.01.02
S'all right. Probably more useful to look at it in terms of a specific author/text than in terms of (wildly generalised) cultural areas... wish I'd thought of that...
 
 
Cavatina
11:16 / 24.01.02
There a lot of food for thought in your post. I'd been staring at the screen for over half an hour, trying to think of books that had moved across cultural groupings!
 
 
grant
16:38 / 24.01.02
Moby Dick started as a genre piece: boy's adventure fiction. Not sure how it transmuted, exactly, but have a feeling it was an academic here and there writing something completely different about it, which evolved into a wider game of "find the hidden meanings."

In film, much more recently, the movement you describe (genre-cult classic-"literature") has precisely happened to "Night of the Living Dead."
 
 
grant
16:43 / 24.01.02
Oh, and I think there is a segment of the population who DO go "Yay, canon!"

They tend to buy leatherbound volumes, join neighborhood book discussion groups, and watch "Masterpiece Theater" on the PBS.

Literature as mental multi-vitamins, sort of.
 
 
Tempus
23:05 / 26.01.02
This question of books moving across cultures and all that it applies is fascinating, particularly in the contemporary context. There are so many strata out there, it seems impossible to take the long view. Just as an example, this is Black History Month in the US. The area of Cleveland I live in is, I gather, the "black" part of town. What this means is that, unlike other parts of town, the odds are if you go somewhere public here, you will see someone black. (As a side note, having grown up in the South, this feels normal to me. When I go to the West Side and find myself in, say, a restaurant populated entirely by white people, it seems creepy.) I was just in Borders this evening, picking up some non-canonical literature, Robert Jordan if you must know, and I noticed the Black Authors display behind the coffee bar. I found it interesting that intermixed with such great talents as Toni Morrison and Langston Hughes were authors who I imagine few white people read--Eric Jerome Dickey, for example--who are not at all marketed to white people and, I say having peered into select volumes out of curiousity, don't write nearly as well as Morrison or Hughes. But, in any given bookstore, they're on the same little shelf-ghetto, "African American Literature," which is right next to Science Fiction. In point of fact, I was once confounded by trying to find books by James Baldwin in the "Literature" section and seeing none, until I realized that I should be looking in the Af-Am area.

I'm not sure if I can say what, exactly, the point of that story is without simplifying it too much. Authors move in mysterious ways, across cultures and groups seemingly without much impetus. Richard Wright is a great black author, but he's not great enough or black enough for James Baldwin, who one might just as well find in the "Gay/Lesbian" section. Toni Morrison and Terry McMillan don't really belong on the same shelf, but yet they do. There are people working in bookstores hemmed in by stacks of "Left Behind" books who don't recognize the name Nabokov. While there are academics who read books published by university presses which exist for all intents and purposes, only in a unviersity world.

Literature is confusing and very large. The Canon, if there is one, is a kind of map, highly mutable, for beginners, who are tourists out of necessity. Some people, grant's Masterpiece Theiatre crowd, stick to it with more rigour than most of the authors in it would find comfortable. Some people ignore it altogether. It's not evil, it's not good, it's not definitive and it's probably not fair, but it is a source of great power, or can be when used properly--an attribute which, like most of literature,is ignored until someone starts abusing it.

So, basically, the politics of great literature: I don't know.
 
 
alas
21:28 / 27.01.02
African American literature offers a very complex case: the Black Aesthetic can be seen as an argument against any work that priveleges "art"--a cultural category in the US that is inextricable from Eurocentric values--over politics. Any art that separates itself too much from the people and their preferences, and especially art that is valued by white folks and has become a part of the white establishment's literary canon, is almost certain to become suspect.

Toni Morrison is a case in point--her stardom in white literary circles has contributed to a quiet but significant groundswell of distrust of her works and their value among African American literary critics. Also, there's a social expectation for AfAm writers, that if they reach fame, they have a duty to actively work to bring other folks up with themselves. Many educated African Americans feel Oprah's done more for other black folks than Toni Morrison by a long shot.

So I'm sympathetic to their distrust. As I see it, it harkens to the days when Booker T. Washington was "selected" as "a race leader" by white people: he was "safe"; he said things white people wanted to hear.

All of which goes to show the complexities of the notion of "canonicity."
 
  

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