Editing the canon

The new site Second Pass has generated quite a bit of commentary in the literary blogosphere with its proposed consignment to the bargain bin of history of ten “canonical” classics, ranging from Dickens to DeLillo. While I certainly agree enthusiastically with several of their choices — that Dickens (Tale of Two Cities) and that DeLillo (White Noise) for starters — I would still argue that the complexity and formal innovation of Absalom, Absalom as well as the lyrical sweep of One Hundred Years of Solitude merit their inclusion in “the canon.” At the very least, the description of magical realism as “Márquez riding round in circles on a smallish tricycle, cigarillo clamped between teeth, occasionally raising his panama for people to throw coins – and is now thoroughly clapped out. Also, people who like it seem to have little or no sense of humor. No one knows why, but it’s true.” is just silly and unnecessarily condescending. You could say something similar about Hemingway’s prose by envisioning him dourly tossing darts and downing rum at a beachside watering hole while ogling the señoritas, but an evocative metaphor does not meaningful criticism make. But then again, in contrast to The Second Pass’s reviewer, maybe I just came to Garcia Marquez at the right age.

Speaking of the proper age, I’m in full agreement with their assessment of On the Road — it’s a book that intoxicates you if you read it before you can legally drink, but like Keystone Light, you’re better off leaving it to the younguns if you come to it after you’re finished with college. That said, however, I’m surprised they opted for On the Road over another “classic” that tends toward vinegar with age — Catcher in the Rye. It’s true that the Beat Generation will forever be associated with druggy youthful exuberance, but at the bare minimum, it represented a seismic cultural shift that would wind up associated with a decade of turbulence and radical social and cultural change. Moreover, the Beats produced some pretty major works whose place in the canon is well deserved — One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Naked Lunch come to mind, as does Ginsburg’s work. Even if the manic transgressions of On the Road seem dated and immature to the contemporary reader, its role in catalyzing and representing the generation that first carved out space for youth identity attest to its lasting importance. Catcher in the Rye, on the other hand, while loosely connected to the same social forces that validated the relevance of Beat literature, led to no lasting cultural change and really is of limited literary value.

Holden Caulfield’s alienation seems quaint today, a sort of sour-grapes contrarianism for its own sake rather than an expression of displacement or disenfranchisement from a society that cannot or will not accept a form of transgressive individualism. (This fascinating article from the New York Times examines contemporary teenagers’ reception of Catcher — though alienation isn’t as passé as several of the Long Island teenagers quoted would have one believe). The vernacular prose that helped make the book a sensation when published sounds dated – and any work that depends on a pop cultural sensibility that neither engages with broader questions related to the conflict between individual and society nor plays an important role in a critical social and cultural moment is doomed eventually to obscurity. On the other hand, Kerouac’s prose, while easily caricatured, possesses a Whitmanesque exuberance that will outlast Salinger’s. If I were to make my own list, Salinger’s getting the boot.

In any case, their list is worth checking out, and will definitely spark debate about what constitutes a canonical work of literature.