Questions? Comments? Rants? Read Our FAQ & Contact Us
Over the last few years I have heard people voice an increasing amount of displeasure with the existing literary canon, pointing out that most items within the canon are included because the general population has poor taste and/or no appreciation or understanding of truly great writing.
Fine. Agreed. I’m a lot more misanthropic than they come, and I have raised an eyebrow over many a “classic.” I question whether Emily Dickinson was a poetic genius or actually had no grasp of the proper function of an emdash. (She was a shut-in…) I’ve read every page of Salinger in an attempt to find a single redeeming sentence, and failed. (Holden Caulfield needed a good spanking.) Every time I see “A Farewell to Arms” on my bookshelf I’m overcome with an urge to teach Hemingway how to write a complex sentence via ouija board.
The existing canon gives us a common language with which we can communicate about literature to others. When I read “Prague” by Arthur Phillips, I immediately fell in love with its Fitzgeraldesque prose. I knew to recommend it to others who loved Fitzgerald and knew not to recommend it to the Hemingway fans. (I also gifted it to a new friend only to discover he was in the Hemingway camp — oops!)
Without this “alphabet,” so to speak, it would be substantially more difficult to find new books that I want to read, or to suggest new books to others. Each novel I picked up would be a complete gamble, and given that I had a lot of trouble putting down a half-read book — even if it’s Salinger! — that would translate into a lot of time wasted on lousy books that could be spent reading good books.
Perhaps an even more compelling reason to sample the canon: you’ll know not to name a children’s bedroom set “Lolita” like our friends at Woolworths:
The Lolita Midsleeper Combi, a whitewashed wooden bed with pull-out desk and cupboard intended for girls aged about 6, was on sale on the Woolworths website for £395.
Whereas many mothers were familiar with Vladimir Nabokov and his famous novel, it seems that the Woolworths staff were not. At first they were baffled by the fuss. A spokesman for the company told The Times: “What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now.”
At first the store refused to withdraw the product. It said that although it wanted to appeal to the family market, “we also have to respond to customer demands and follow current trends.”
As one of the few people who apparently read the book (which remains one of my all-time favorites to this day), I would like to remind everyone that Lolita didn’t even lose her virginity to her step-father. I’m not saying it’s right for a man to court and kill a woman to have sex with her 12-year-old, but little Lolita already knew the ropes.
Speaking of the canon, am I the only person who saw the commercial for LOST where a fat guy fell off a hill and shouted, “Piggy!” (?)
At least one commenter also read the book:
I can’t wait to see Woolworth’s new line of Humbert-Humbert men’s reclining chairs.
Maybe I have a little faith in humanity left…
No comments yet.
Click here to subscribe to comments to this post | TrackBack URL