That’s a dangerous road to go down, mamalion. The number of great authors who held views we now consider to be racist, sexist, etc – and who indeed may well have been racist or sexist even by the standards of their own time – is massive, and includes Shakespeare, Dickens and Faulkner. We can look critically at their ideas and include other voices. But I think we need to be very, very careful about excluding authors’ works because of their views.
And the suggestion that we don’t need Huck Finn because we can replace it with a book by a black author is just silly. Huck Finn doesn’t purport to give a black man’s views on slavery; it is written from the perspective of a white boy whose interactions with an actual slave create a conflict between received social morality and an individual ethical sense. That’s not even getting into other reasons that two books addressing similar topics aren’t necessarily interchangeable from a literary perspective.
I have no problem with the fact that the expansion of the canon means that some authors – usually, white male authors – are going to drop out of prominence. If you assign Toni Morrison or Junot Diaz-- or, for that matter, Cormac McCarthy, or David Foster Wallace – you’re not assigning some other, probably more established author. Similarly, if an American history class adds a unit on the post 9/11 era, that means giving slightly shorter shrift to some earlier period of history. There’s a huge difference, however, between selecting one text over another and removing an author from the curriculum for cause.
The problem with that statement is that, until about 15 minutes ago (figuratively), I would have said that no American novel more than a 100 years old had stood the test of time like Huckleberry Finn. Its only real competitors would be Moby Dick, The Age Of Innocence, and [pick your favorite Henry James], and none of those is going to win prizes for contemporary relevance. Except for Edith Wharton, it’s all dead white males, and she’s about as close as you can get without actually being one.
We don’t read Twain for a realistic portrayal of African-American experience in antebellum Missouri any more than we read Melville to learn about the experience of whales. When it was written, it was written about a generation that had largely already been consigned to history, not unlike someone writing a novel today about the Vietnam War. It doesn’t replace authentic records of African-American experience, and if it was being used that way it deserved to be dropped. But it’s pretty incomparable (a) as a record of a now-dead white male in the latter part of the 19th Century trying to confront America’s race problem and to imagine a way out, and (b) as an Americanization of the picaresque novel tradition, the first of many “on the road” American narratives – again, yeah, of dead white males – attempting to grasp the breadth and diversity of our nation, geographically, socially, and even to some extent sexually. As such, it’s deeply ingrained in lots of the literature that followed, especially that of the Lost and the Greatest Generations. Leslie Fiedler once imagined an “innocent” reader picking up Huckleberry Finn and being amazed at the gall of its author ripping off Hemingway so thoroughly.
The Scarlet Letter has held up just fine, along with Billy Budd, Life of a Slave Girl, Little Women, Sister Carrie, The Call of the Wild, The Jungle, O Pioneers, and My Antonia. I’ve taught many of them in the last few years.
Yes, Huck Finn records the views on slavery of a white man through the fiction of a “bad boy” (HF is in the 19th century genre of the bad boy), but I can’t see that as some epitome of cultural knowledge. It’s accessible because we are all trained in the ways that whites see blacks. Do we want to teach high school students that most whites are basically good but confused? Aren’t there other messages and values to teach teens? Wouldn’t it be better to teach something more uncomfortable and difficult to grasp?
I don’t see any reason to consider racist, sexist writers (or more accurately their works) as great. There are lots of books in the library, more than any of us will read. I still haven’t read Dante’s Inferno, Plato’s Symposium, and Drea, of Red Mansions, and they have been on my bucket list for years
As a US Historian, I absolutely want students to read these works and other ones that make them uncomfortable. They don’t have to be read as “greats” (personally, I hated Huck Finn but not nearly as much as I still despise Scarlet Letter) but they should be read and understood because they’re revealing about their time as well as ours.
I work with some of the darkest parts of US history and I am passionately committed to making sure those areas are studied and not washed from history because they’re considered too uncomfortable. And yes, that means reading a lot of things from racist, sexist individuals because they’re still here and they’re still causing issues.
That also doesn’t mean we don’t expand and include Morrison or Anzaldua or any number of other non-white males. Quite the opposite in fact. Imagine reading something like Beloved side by side with Huck Finn.
But Huck Finn should be studied because it HAS stood the test of time. No offense, but I’ve never even heard of most of the other works listed by mamalion. What is it about HF that’s made it so enduring? These are important questions even for the present. And if it’s just because we continue to canonize white, male authors then so be it- a discussion around that is worth having.
We all know Huck Finn because it has been taught in schools. Many of us will be unfamiliar with mamlion’s list, because they aren’t regularly taught. That’s why it matters what is taught.
Which books didn’t you know, Romani?
I got all outraged for a short bit but then thought, okay that's kind of true, and then wondered when those not part of an elite privileged class began to be published? WPA?
Hmm, dear US historian, I suggest you Google the list of books I suggested; they are all key US novels by canonical authors: Melville, Cather, London, Sinclair Lewis, etc. You would find these authors in any anthology of U.S. literature. . .
I would rather students read Our Nig or Life of a Slave Girl for a perspective that isn’t so old fashionally crafted from white, male privilege. The “test of time” is a test that was penned by a very small percentage of the population. Your lack of knowledge of the 19th century literary canon is evidence of that, “no offense.”
I’m sorry, but there’s something terribly sad when we need to be so very sensitive to political correctness about our reading choices. (Of course, it’s good to be exposed to breadth.)
For years in the west (decades, hundreds, thousands if I go back to Homer?) white privileged males (and a very few women like Wharton) wrote books about their experiences and other white privileged males made reading lists for yet other white privileged males to read as part of their education.
Now some would like different reading lists, reflective of a different life experience. I don’t have a problem with that.
When we downsized, the only author I kept in my personal library out of mamalion’s American author list is Cather. We had all of them. I never really cared for Twain. He’s gone. Also Alcott. Wharton stayed, but I much prefer “Custom of the Country” to “Age of Innocence” or any of the other novels.
Oh, sorry if I miss understood romani on not knowing my books. The bucket list is canonical, but eclectic (typo on Dream of Red Mansions, 18th Century Chinese). I sometimes wonder if things on the bucket list don’t get read because they just aren’t easy enough, need too much background or slow reading. Instead I keep reading contempory fiction … . when I should read “test of time” books.
We maybe fond of Huck Finn because it is relatively easy (funny, quest genre, fairly predictable character types (not quite stereotypes)). I am fond enough of it, but I wouldn’t teach it along because, with all the earlier complaints, it’s easy enough to be read without a classroom structure.
I read some of Dream of Red Mansions (also known as Dream of the Red Chamber, and my translation was The Story of the Stone), when I took a Chinese history course, but I never finished it. I read Huck Finn on my own. I’ve only read half of mamalion’s alternative American canon and didn’t much care for it either. The Jungle is important, but IMO more for historical reasons (muckraking/cleaning up the meatpacking industry) than literary ones. Little Women was fine in fifth grade when I read it. I always liked Rose in Bloom better - and again more for historical reasons than literary ones. (Settlement House) And I despised My Antonia.
I hated Billy Budd. I agree The Jungle is more a piece of history than deathless prose.
If I were constructing a curriculum for American history, I might include Life on the Mississippi, rather than Huck Finn, especially if I wanted to consider the importance of modes of transportation.
If I remember correctly, in Dante’s Paradiso, a particular nun can only make it to the lowest level of heaven because she broke her vow of chastity by being raped. When Dante (the character) questions the justice of this, he’s told that she would have fought harder if she had really been perfectly virtuous. Anyone who isn’t Christian, of course - including virtuous pagans that lived before Christianity – winds up in limbo. And the seventh circle of hell includes “sodomites” - Dante is distressed to see his beloved tutor, whose homosexuality was evidently an open secret in thirteenth century Florence, suffering among them.
Want to remove Dante from your canon? If not, what would you say to a gay student, or a rape survivor, or a non-Christian who suggested that there were equally worthy works by Tony Kushner or Alice Walker that we could read instead?
I read and finished Dream of Red Mansions/Story of the Stone in translation when I took a Chinese lit class.
IMO, it was like reading a Shakespearean play in novel format except one had to keep track of many more characters as even relatively minor ones were important in understanding what was going on in the story.
Incidentally, some academics in my extended family are a bit amused at how an entire large subfield of literature has arisen from this very novel within Chinese, East Asian, and to some extent World Literature. That’s not to say they disliked it.
Rather that back when the novel was first released to the public in the 18th century, it was regarded among the educated elite as a “guilty pleasure”* one would not want to be caught in public with as it was regarded as exceedingly lowbrow literature. Part of this perception was the fact the novel was written in vernacular Chinese in an era when mid and highbrow literature** and official documents were written in literary Chinese.
This attitude was similar to ones held among some educated elites in Medieval and Renaissance Europe regarding religious materials and literature written in Latin versus the vernacular languages of each of the respective societies.
Probably almost on the level of say...catching someone who is renowned for having a highbrow intellectual reputation and demeanor being caught reading the National Enquirer tabloid.
** The Romance of Three Kingdoms is considered more “high brow” not only because the subject matter is on military and political maneuverings and strategy during a notable historical period in Chinese history, but also because it was originally written in literary Chinese.
Some random thoughts here:
The brilliance of My Antonia is that Jim Burden (note name) is an unreliable narrator. It’s a completely different book once you understand that. Many pieces of literature depend on good teaching, which is why they are appropriate to a classroom.
I think of HF as a period piece, no different than The Jungle. The boy narrator is probably why HF gets taught so much in high school, not invalid, but insufficient by itself.
I have never read The Inferno, and so I don’t know if Dante’s criticism of the church is sufficient to make it useful historically, politically, or spiritually. Even without reading it, the frame of criticizing imperial power might make it worth a discussion with college students. I am fairly confident it is better aesthetically than HF.
I’ll admit that I pulled a fast one to exclude Cather from my list by referencing “more than 100 years ago,” and My Antonia was published in 1918. I think that’s the most canonical of her works, and I’m with @mamalion (and against my doppelganger, @mathmom) as to its quality. Also, @alh, Cather was way less dead-white-mannish than Wharton.
My mother’s high school American Lit curriculum included many of the books @mamalion cites. She adored Billy Budd. She had her students read London’s more-obscure Martin Eden, in part because most of them had read Call of the Wild in middle school. I’m sorry, though. Maybe it’s just the particular indoctrination I had, but I see Alcott and Lewis as of historical, not literary importance (although possibly important to the history of the business of literature), and Huckleberry Finn as important to the history and development of literature, although it’s not necessarily my favorite Twain.
Some of @mamalion 's post reminds me of a great scene in David Lodge’s first novel, Changing Places. The Berkeley English department plays a party game, where each person admits to not having read a particular book, and scores points based on how many of the other people have read that book. A particularly competitive young professor claims – falsely – never to have read Hamlet. (Not positive I am remembering correctly, and maybe it’s Romeo and Juliet.) He wins the game decisively, but is denied tenure the next day notwithstanding strong publications because everyone feels uncomfortable granting tenure to someone who has never read Hamlet. Really, @mamalion? No Dante and no Symposium? I’m not going to say you have to read Paradiso, but Inferno is really good. As is Symposium. Everyone reads them in large part because everyone likes them; they’re super enjoyable, and not that long, either.
Here’s part of a line from Chap 13 of HF. Huck is speaking: “… [J] ust in the edge of the evening she started over with her ****** woman in the horse-ferry, to stay all night at her friend’s house …”
The casual use of the N word throughout the novel would be offensive to many readers. I’m fine with taking it off a required list. Anyone is free to read it on their own time.
