College Students! discussion

That's right, it is that dreaded theme, the literary canon. English majors, you know what I am talking about. Everyone else, dig into those repressed memories and think back to high school. The canon determines what we read, who we read and (to an extent) what we think about it. From Hawthorne to Hemingway, it's the canon that makes them classroom literature; and a big part of why a lot of people hate reading, and many of us didn't read the books in high school (yes Jamie, I caught that reference). So I want to hear some thoughts on the canon. Thoughts about the lack of diversity in it, the lack of contemporary fiction in it, and the complete ignorance of genre fiction in it. Let's go college students. It's time to bitch!

I'm taking the Jazz Age right now and I find the canon to be really depressing. My friend is taking a very similar class with all the same authors and different books and she agrees. I'm actually writing a research paper for that class on the connections between money, American identity and impotence The Big Money, Tender is the Night, A Lost Lady and The Sun Also Rises

The canon tends to be written by dead white guys... sad. There aren't many multicultural authors in there, and though there are a few women there aren't as many.

While I respect the classics, teachers need to start picking contemporary books. There is more than one kind of book that can teach us what the teachers want us to learn. And I agree that because teachers force such boring books on their students, not many people like to read.

Tahleen, you are so right. But if you look at the canon, some good chunks if it were written before other races or women had the same rights as white men, so as sad as it is, it makes sense in some ways.
Ashley, in my later years of high school more contemporary books were on summer reading lists, like Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli (I've read the former but not the latter). But it does need to happen more often and you're right. My professors assign a lot of contemporary stuff, but that's college and I am an English major.

There are a lot of books in The Canon that I didn't want to read in high school, because obviously I knew more than my teachers and these books were just dumb. But pretty much as soon as I got to college, I realized that I desperately needed to go back and read those books. Over all, I like The Canon. Yeah, sometimes it can be a bit tedious, thinking of all the books I need to read to be a good English major...but they've withstood the test of time.

In fact, my big complaint is the lack of books from the Canon that I've been assigned in college. My final paper for my lit class this semester dealt with this. I feel like I missed out on a lot of books in my career as an English major because the professors assigned books because of who the writer was, not because of any real literary merit in the book. I had to read a lot of mediocre stuff just because it wasn't written by a white guy. Liz is right...a lot of the books from The Canon came before women, blacks, other minorities really got a voice. But I don't think that "it wasn't written by a white guy" is a very good reason to not read something.

*Steps off soapbox*