Re: THE INVERTED FOREST

J J R (jrovira@juno.com)
Sun, 26 Jul 1998 07:37:58 -0400 (EDT)

Ooh, thanks for the background, Patrick.  Interesting.  It's especially
interesting that an undergrad degree would have a focus, unless you just
happened to pick that by the electives you chose.

I guess my experiences have been similar--there was the required reading,
then the reading that Professors encouraged me to do outside that.  I
tried to cover as broad a spectrum as possible in my undergrad courses,
but I had my preferences too :)

Anyways, I was trying to support the idea that there is Some objective
criteria by which we can judge literature.  It's not Much, believe me,
what I'm arguing for here is to keep the idea of Objective Criteria from
being thrown out altogether--not to go all the way the other way and call
literary criticism an exact science.  For example, no one used language
like Shakespeare did.  No one.  Marlowe came close.  And I haven't seen
too many authors leave you so Undecided as to Which Side of the Issue the
author stood on.  I agree with Camille that Shakespeare was a
populist--but he'd present a Shylock character that was everything S's
audiences expected him to be, then makes him say,  "if you cut us, do we
not bleed," turning the responsibility for Shylock being who he is at
least partly upon the system in which he operates--and very eloquently,
too.  

There are a lot of objective reasons to put Shakespeare "up there" as far
as being Worthy of Study.  Including  the fact that so much later
literature alludes to his work.  We should all read Ovid, Dante and
Milton for those reasons too.  But Salinger, Bukowski, etc?  They're too
recent still to fully know their importance.  Any good author can be
personally meaningful to us for a lot of reasons, but that doesn't mean
their work is worthy of study if we had to define a curriculum.

I know a lot of people that think John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany
is the best book written this century.  I can't argue with the fact that
they were moved by the book, and after reading it a couple times I can
see for myself How they were moved.  But it doesn't deserve the kind of
credit they're giving it, and if I had to pick five novels for students
to read in a course on Late 20th Century American Lit, it wouldn't make
the list.  There's just too much else out there that's more worthy of
study.

Jim 

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