Ghost of a flea: Roughing it through this book

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November 15, 2006

Roughing it through this book

Robert Spencer posts an address to the Young America's Foundation by Elizabeth Kantor, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature. Kantor once again makes the case for a canon both as history and as heuristic.

Sir Philip Sidney, writing in the Renaissance, argued that the purpose of literature is to teach and delight. A philosopher can teach you abstract principles. But the poet shows you what’s noble, and what’s base -- so that you actually learn to love what’s good and aspire to it -- and to despise what’s not. Americans didn’t use to consider themselves educated unless they’d been formed by Shakespeare, at least -- among the great classics in our language. Literature used to be such an important part of the typical undergraduate education because it civilizes people. If you want to be a citizen of the West, you need to read our great literature.

Quite right. Without a shared system of metaphor we have precious little to talk about. There is the further risk of a bicultural society where, for example, red states and blue states end up reading past each other and meaning two very different things by the word "America". That said, long-time off-line friends of the Flea may observe it is with some temerity I would seek to endorse Kantor's prescription. After all, I "haven't read anything" as one former acquaintance put it succinctly. Yes, I have read a lot of philosophy and theology but, having skipped a raft of nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels, I might as well be illiterate. She has a point.

I believe I have read enough, however, to wonder what a politically incorrect guide to Canadian literature might look like. What with our few acres of snow and a fever grip on the colossus to the south, grievance and high-handed inaction is the canon. With Margaret Atwood at the apex of our accomplishment can there be any wonder Canadian civilization looks the way it does.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at November 15, 2006 08:41 AM

Comments

I am no fan of Atwood but I will say this in her defense: love her or hate her, her books can at least sustain an interesting plotline for a time. Until the story inevitably hits the brick wall of postmodern cliché in the latter chapters and falls down. I really did enjoy Alias Grace, for instance, until the latter bits. She did a great job of bringing you into the world of 19th century York (and Kingston) but then, sadly, loused up the ending.

Whereas a significant chunk of CanLit authors that we are harangued about by our educators and betters craft stories that are flat-out boring. W.O. Mitchell is the penultimate example, to my mind. No one (who is not forced to do so by diploma requirements) reads crap like Who Has Seen The Wind.

Posted by: Chris Taylor at November 15, 2006 11:12 AM

Who Has Seen The Wind... the horror. The horror.

I think Each Man's Son was a good read but that is about it Can Lit class-wise.

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at November 15, 2006 11:45 AM

The first heresy is that Canadian Literature actual is created outside of a few blocks from the U o' T. What is called CanLit is generally TorontoLit, compounding the tedium of the discussion. They there is the Gzowski heresy - that you can' be a provider of great CanLit if you were not on...no, celebrated...on the the CBC's primary organ of public approval.

Your incorrect guide would have to attack at least those two principles. Any such guide also has to focus on the work of Charles Bruce and Alden Nowlan as primal forces.

Posted by: Alan McLeod at November 15, 2006 12:03 PM

Alan, you will admit it is hard for people to write what with the sea-sickness; slowly spinning so far from the centre of the world.

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at November 15, 2006 01:27 PM

Actually Alan I think CanLit could be improved by an injection of TorontoLit. Most of the CanLit I have been subject to involves, as one commenter on the Bookninja blog says:

"memoir after memoir of small-town childhood in the 60s, moody novels about flinty Maritime women whose dreams have perished and long-winded tales of middle-aged couples too alienated to have sex but too lame to do anything about it."

Where are all the CanLit novels targeted at my demographic, the urban neo-fuddy-duddy who despises long-winded laments about urban hipsterism, rural isolation, disintegrating relationships and the lost dreams of youth?

Posted by: Chris Taylor at November 15, 2006 02:08 PM

I think "neo-fuddy-duddy" sums up most of my demographic.

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at November 15, 2006 02:12 PM

I think you are describing Chump Change by David Eddie. Mid-90s TorLit. There is another more recent one that I can't remember but I will get the details later tonight.

Posted by: Alan McLeod at November 15, 2006 04:35 PM

If I am not mistaken Chump Change is disqualified for surpluses in the dreaded urban hipster and disintegrating relationship departments, but it's been awhile and I am going to give it another go. So uhm, thanks. For all I know it's probably (inevitably) been made into an awful movie starring Don McKellar and Callum Keith Rennie.

Posted by: Chris Taylor at November 15, 2006 05:44 PM

Disappointed to find that Chump Change is not available as an ebook anywhere and may have to actually employ the Library Card That Has Only Been Used To Requisition DVDs in an unconventional role.

Posted by: Chris Taylor at November 16, 2006 04:12 PM

I found the title of the other one: Acting the Giddy Goat. Here is more information - http://www.cormorantbooks.com/titles/actingthegiddygoat.htm

Posted by: Alan McLeod at November 16, 2006 07:12 PM

Ghost of a flea

November 15, 2006

Roughing it through this book

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