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de night time is de right time … de night time is de right time …
By briantologist | July 24, 2003
NOTE: This post is a continuation of a spirited discussion that got started in the comments of the last post. As it represents the most thinking I’ve done about any subject since I first saw the Texas Rollergirls’ homepage, I figured I’d continue it here, as who knows when my brain might get fired up again. Please see said comments for more background, or skip this entirely if you’d rather read about the Chupacabra.
Ross, my dear, people certainly can and do get way too into “serious” literature, particularly in older parts of academia. But the idea of, say, the crusty old English professor who scoffs at anything other than Joyce and Faulkner is, from my experience in an English lit class or nine, an empty stereotype. Even the crustiest of my own personal lit professors, who’d written like six books on Faulkner, taught much more modern books as well, and had a grasp of capital-G “Great” literature that adapted to changing literary climates while allowing for important books that weren’t written during the eighties.
Yes, there are going to be people who make a big deal about reading Joyce (whom I admire because I’m pretty sure he’s pulled off the greatest scam of the 20th Century with “Finnnegan’s Wake”), and the other widely regarded Canon-ites, and who insist that those who don’t embrace that canon are hopeless troglodytes. These people are called morons. They invariably have something to prove, and are covering up some intellectual insecurity on their own part, like that they can’t stop watching “Hee Haw.” They’re irritating, but thankfully, they’re not taken seriously.
The “Great” literature that exists now, as part of that thorny thang “THE CANON,” survived and is constantly studied for a variety of reasons, generally a combination of its addressing themes relevant to its time period, the mastery of its prose, and some X factor or another, usually chalked up to genius of some sort. But a great many of them, whether or not you personally care for them, were themselves extremely popular in their day, and that does play a part in a book’s longevity in our cultural memory.
(As Dr. Voltron aptly pointed out, this does not mean they were written to please other people; I think issuing blanket statements for why creative people create is like creating a unified theory of cat behavior: ultimately, it’s counterproductive.)
As far as teachers using Shel Silverstein instead of William Blake to teach kids about poetry, I think only the most closed-minded people (sadly, this probably includes most people who write public policy) would object to that. I’d be fucking relieved if any teacher in the public school system had enough time to take from prepping kids from these horseshit standardized tests that he or she could actually teach poetry.
Finally, a couple of things: Please don’t be so quick to declare that something is crap just because you don’t like it. There are things which are obviously and unarguably crap, and there are things like, say, The Sun Also Rises, which you personally don’t care for, but which are not only pleasurable to a whole lot of people, they’re also genuinely inspired, technically proficient, and generally worthy of high regard. They’re also perfectly one hundred percent okay for you not to read or like. Nobody who matters would judge you entirely on that distinction.
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