Originally Posted by
JBI
And, by extension, even if it is racist, what effect is that of the work? And if it is an anti-slavery affirmation, what does that mean? You are writing on the reaction of contemporary readers, even if one is going to do what almost every critic and historian does and put the text and the acts within their historical frames as part of the time, there is still the question of what does that mean to a modern reader, who is reading a book, and usually a young reader at that who is not taking in history as a post-modern textbook reading, but rather as a narrative that is part of her - how is she to react?
I do not advocate censorship, but it is easy to see how the issue emerges within a frame that teaches the text before the background, yet emphasizes the background over the text.
The real problem with Finn is that the text, from what I can recall, is so much about racism and the American past, but the American past is now being distanced to "overcome" racism - simply, if one is not part of the historical background, to what extent is the historical background relevant as a text in itself.
The power of Finn is in narratology, I would argue, not on its political themes, but you commit the exact same crime that those who criticize it do - you read it for the politics, and not for the narrative, and you instead make an affirmation to its political goodness within its own context, rather than its racism within a different context, when, arguably, if you wish to talk about greatness, you should affirm that its racist or not racist content are part of a discussion, but are not the essence of the book, the same way antisemitism is not the essence of the Merchant of Venice, despite that Shakespeare's writing of Shylock as such a powerful character has forced the play to be read as such (we all know the merchant is not Shylock, and the bulk of the plot is centered on a series of romances, rather than on Shylock's bond, which merely serves to bring a frame to the tragicomic - the end is not in Shylock's defeat, but rather in the lover's defeat.
Likewise, the power of Eliot is not in his Christian affirmation, or anti-semitism, and rarely do people read him for his antisemitism. The reason for a career decline is the fact that poetics moved differently in the United States than in Britain, as did culture - the great modern poets of the States were Frost and Stevens, not Eliot and Pound, and as such the tradition moved away from the Romantic works of Eliot, and the archaic works of Pound to the more Whitman-heavy works of Frost, and the more contemplative and meditative works of Stevens (with perhaps W. C. Williams coming in as a third voice).
In Europe, the take was perhaps different - Eliot holds a lot more with English poetics, so it is perhaps easier for someone like Geoffrey Hill to hold him in his great esteem - but there there is also a tradition of local born poets to put into the context - as such, Eliot went from being THE English poet, to one of a series of modernist voices - his antisemitism did nothing really, as his poems are relatively free of an antisemitic voice.
In terms of political correctness - the actual extent of it is quite misunderstood - it does not actually mean killing texts in the vast majority of its contexts - simply put, English departments are too big, and English Ph. D.s to numerous, so it became fashionable for trends to emerge - for instance, the Showalter followers who decided to just look for any female who ever penned a verse. What that did really was just to broaden the Canon for a couple of decades, with, other perspectives such as post-colonialism coming in, bringing more topics to discuss. Did that really kill reading greatness though? Well, I had an Edmund Spenser specialist explain that the amount of writing on him was never more numerous than in the past 50 years, but what it did was just to focus people's attention to other aspects of his work - mainly his colonialism, rather than the structuralist readings that dominated before.
Likewise, Shakespeare was never abandoned - nor was Conrad - reading greatness was never killed, though in certain institutions there was a shift more to look at contemporary works - that was the big strike to the canon, namely, American authors becoming a much bigger part of the American curriculum.
In that vein, the number of scholars working on Milton in American institutions are far lower than those working on 20th century American fiction. There was a post a few years ago detailing the simple fact that the more "dated" your specialty in English is, the less people there are competing for faculty positions - and I think that is the main root of the question. Why are we so preoccupied with fiction, and, by extension, 20th century fiction?
For people coming out of that mold, and students entering that mold, it is hard to ignore modern critical opinions, as they are so much of the context of the 20th century world. The older texts really haven't changed much, but the newer ones have gained undeserved exposure because of academic fixation - that is not true of all institutions, but it is particularly true of American ones, though still not all. The focus on American reading makes American modes of reading, and American issues in the forefront, whereas the focus on classical reading moves classical issues to the forefront.
But who is going to sit there and read books on Neoplatonic notions of love in Edmund Spenser's Four Hymns, or read the religious debates, still in archaic spelling, of Tyndale and More, which go on for pages, yet were the big issues of the time. And to what extent does that leak into the popular culture - the culture of the contemporary, from my reading, especially of the States, is one where an individual must contemplate the role of their country, and their society, and the issues of homophobia, racism, and sexism. Canada is different, as we have come above that to an extent, but still Canadian literature would focus on our issues, as that is what is of concern at the moment to the youth, who, seeking something from text, will turn to something that speaks to them.
Spenser is hardly accessible, he is difficult reading. In that sense, you go to the institution to learn about him, rather than read him at home at the age of 15, missing everything. Huck Finn is accessible, so it is criticized, since its context is not defined, and the relationship between it and its readers not one of distance but one of closeness - it speaks of current issues that should not be current issues, and is, as such, hard to contextualize - racism exists in the forms within the book, whereas colonialism in Spenser, or misogyny in The Taming of the Shrew are now so distant as to be read from a distance.
You call it railing at greatness, I call it yelling into the mirror. When one sees ones own flaws in a text it is easy to yell at the text - how can one affirm the greatness of Moby Dick without seeing in it the self-loathed repugnance that is a culture that contains the same tropes.
Beyond that, the rest of the world does not do that, as the rest of the world's literature is not the same, nor the world they live in. The States has issues, and expresses them through their academy - Canadian literature study is more keeping with a sort of post-post-modernism, that gets beyond the issues, which is where the American academy is heading, and many already have headed - the text of The Western Canon, or even of The Closing of the American Mind are so dated already that it is ridiculous.
Simply put, the essay to me seems to ride a bandwagon of 20-odd year old criticism that has gone as out of fashion as what it is criticizing. Even Harold Bloom seems to have shut up about it, and those who are still writing it are either aged, or, if young, archaic.
The canon did not die either, as it cannot die, nor has reading died, nor has the aesthetic died - merely, the shift in culture that was the post Cold-War generation has occurred - and now the post-post-Cold-War generation is finding its relationship to a) history, and b) literature.
The irony is, those critics who focused so much on yelling have shifted away too - nobody is writing the polemics they did before in the same way - it is now too an historical narrative, to an extent, which is emerging in a new aesthetic.
I read a couple of years ago in Canadian Literature of how Al Purdy is now published, along with other Canadian poets, in selected volumes that feature their best, and show a tradition - the point was his racism in his works was removed, and less focused, to bring a new audience to read Purdy as the elegiac poet of a shifting Canadian identity - he has moved, with the Canadian identity, through the transition, and as such the critic argued, so has the tradition, that looks at him as an historical pivot, rather than as themselves, and therefore goes over the racist undertone as historical, rather than personal.
By extension, similar things occur in Eliot, where to me mention of not liking him because of Antisemitism is as laughable as mentioning not liking Dickens because of antisemitism (I know people who went to private Judaic high schools who were taught him in class, without his antisemitism being an issue) - likewise, we have moved beyond even Marlowe's antisemitism, and Said himself stated his great love for the French writers who he criticized in his Orientalism, with an extended point that his book was aimed at addressing how the same tropes he found within them are still apparent, and not at killing the authors, nor at writing a "positive" view of the "orient" (a place he argues does not exist). The trend is to break things down until they become part of an historical narrative, not to bury them in the ground - Said's Flaubert is a great author, Said's Naipaul is a Racist "witness for the prosecution". The distance and history between the two figures is worth pointing out, where one is within a context that has been breaking for a while, whereas one is within a modern context who tries to reaffirm racism.
To sum it up, Huck Finn is read as racist, and therefore bashed as such, because the world it is read in is still so heavily dominated by its tropes - the critics and the political correct police will break away at that, and will be broken, and are being broken, and out of that emerges a literary historical context and identity, and a new cultural identity, rather than a new canon, as that was never the goal.
Hence why I pushed this far more on the American academic establishment, since they have a more repressed cultural identity that does not wish to really move forward, only bury things within the culture and ignore them. (and what better way than yelling at everything that could look offensive, rather than addressing how these things are still ingrained in the culture).
