Hey Kids, It's the Canon!

This is what the Cornell Ph.D.'s call the intro freshman writing seminar here that focuses on canonical texts. Discussions on the MFA Handbook Blog have gotten me thinking about the role that the Western canon should play in the education of a contemporary writer. It's a difficult question, not only because the goals of a writer and critic are distinct, but also because the role of the canon itself is a matter of debate among literature academics.

A lot of contemporary writers, especially those in MFA programs, feel constrianed by texts that are thought of as traditionally canonical. For fiction writers, this often means works such as Moby Dick, Bleak House, Tristram Shandy, Ulysses, or any number of these big important books our professors have been going on about making us read. Why is it important anyway to have such a historical view, when what's important is what's happening now. As a fellow student in my MFA program recently said, "I don't think 19th-century fiction has a lot to teach us about how things are written now."

A lot of students within MFA programs focus on literature of the past 30 years, and only occasionally dip into works from other periods, genres, and contexts. I too tend to spend a lot of time on the latest book because frankly, it's often more fun and it takes a lot of work to sift through hundreds of pages of Henry James when I can simply enjoy the Alan Hollinghurst's delicious depictions of buggering in contemporary London.

But I have to constantly remind myself that not only is writing work, but reading is also work, especially for a writer. Reading Hollinghurst, an author who ironically is still writing social novels that feature characters of different classes, races, and persuasions, all because his main characters are Oxford-educated men with hunky West Indian fetishes, it's clear to me that he is indebted to a number of "canonical" writers: of whom James, Forster, and Flaubert are his clearest influences. So even if I am not a fan of Forster for his own sake ("A Room With a View" is fantastic but "Maurice" only so-so), I feel an enormous impetus as a writer to figure out how the influences of a contemporary writer I admire has shaped his work. It's kinda like if you're going to do a cover of Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah," aren't you the least bit curious about what the original Leonard Cohen version sounds like?

This isn't my only argument for current writers paying attention to canonical texts, if by canonical we mean works that have become widely recognized as examples of great literature. I think of the canon as a really important refractory point in terms of our writing: it's close enough to what we do that it's relevant, but far enough that it inspires us in ways that we may not expect. This is akin to the concept Samuel Delany (who is part of my personal canon) puts forward in "Times Square Red, Times Square Blue," a work that otherwise talks about the author's experience in the old Times Square sex theaters, but has a fascinating digression about the difference between "contact" and "networking." He argues that while we as writers are constantly seeking networking (going to writers' conferences, MFA programs, etc.), the experiences that help us more are actually ones involving contact, those happenstance interactions with people that end up having lasting effects. But of course, there's a better chance of being in contact with people who may influence us if we are in environments that are frequented by people of like mind (i.e. bookstores, writer bars, etc.).

I think the same can be said for our interactions with texts. If you're writing domestic short stories and are reading Carver, you're networking. But if you're reading Allison Bechtel's Fun Home and are realizing how the graphic novel form has a lot of similarities with linked stories, then you're making contact. Reading the canon is a different form of contact. It's like meeting a boy or girl you really like who's just too cool for you and you had no idea how s/he got to be that cool, then talking to his or her grandfather to find out. It can also be like talking to a bunch of old people in general. It gives you an amazing amount of perspective.

This leads me to the major criticism of the Western canon: it's oudated, it privileges dead white men, etc. All this is true, and has been talked about for a long time. My favorite image in this regard is the one Virginia Woolf talks about in A Room of One's Own, about how the dome of the British Library Reading Room (before it moved), bordered with the names of famous thinkers, all of whom male, resembles the pate of a bald patriarch. Another problem is that the English-language canon doesn't account for important literary works from other countries.

And in this regard, I agree. You can't just talk to Dickens all the time. And Eliot may really be a woman but she sure doesn't talk like one, except in The Mill on the Floss. So building a personal canon is definitely important, and not just one that includes old fogeys that have been adopted by Anglo-Americans like Dostoyevsky and Thomas Mann. Have you read the Ramayana lately? It's pretty fucking awesome.

English Departments across the country are totally questioning the canon. Feminists are unearthing all this early work by women (I'm a huge champion of Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam, the first original play written by a woman published in England in 1613). Postcolonialist are expanding our view of English-language literature. So it's not like the big bad wolf of the English academic world is embracing the notion of a traditional canon whole hog either.

So I feel like the question becomes not the fact that different people are prioritizing different texts and calling them canonical, but that people are unhappy about those choices. Why women? Why minorities? Why queers? The world of English academia often has a different priorities than the contemporary fiction writer, and this can be annoying if you're in an MFA program and are required to take lit classes.

The question then becomes: why not? We have to read something, and why not read things that are not totally your cup of tea. I feel like that's what classes are for, to explore works you wouldn't necessarily delve into on your own, and maybe come out with a different perception on the other side. I feel like a lot of current writers' resistance to the canon can be rephrased as: "Why can't I read just what I want to read?"

I think this is fine if you're the kind of person who reads across time, nationality, and identity. I don't think a lot of people do that. I know too many writers who only read fiction from the past fifty years, almost exclusively by Americans. These are the kids who are total networkers, and they may achieve success in the short run by writing permutations of the kind of thing that gets noticed these days. But I would argue that a sustained writers' vision needs to have a broader scope because once you write that collection about your childhood or that novel about the one thing you know well, then what?

Of course, I have no authority to talk at this point, as I'm plodding along on my first novel (not autobiographical, tyvm). But I'm well-aware that my writing is better because I've read all this canon stuff, both the established Western canon and my own personal one that involves works from different countries and in different time periods. I can't wait to be forced to read stuff that I don't feel like reading, because hey, I never know where I'll get my next idea from.