Anti-Climacus

I followed the discussion on this post concerning the Great Books and conservative academia with some interest. As, more or less, a Great Books person, but someone who now finds typical conservative arguments for them unconvincing, I thought it might be worthwhile to explain why.

The conservative critique has two parts, evident across Withywindle's comments: an argument that the Great Books are Great because of (undefined) 'excellence,' and an argument that the Great Books are Great because of measured historical judgment, or tradition. To quote:

I would reserve judgment on canonicity for a minimum of fifty years, and a preference for a century lag.

I would submit that this is both (obviously) false, and not able to do the work Withy, or other conservative critics of academia, would like it to do (I am, for the record, a firm believer in genius, aesthetic excellence, and literary transcendence). It is false first because it undoes the notion of 'excellence.' Are we really to believe that someone kicking around the 14th century was to think, "well, Dante is fine and all, but we should really reserve judgment on whether he was that good"? Or Shakespeare, or (to choose my beloved Russian authors) Pushkin?

Perhaps it is the case that the crude 50-100 years system is meant to express, instead of a strictly temporal case, the idea that judgment of a work should be reserved until it is affirmed by some group other than the original historical-social context in which the work first appeared? We might like it now, but we are unaware of those subtle factors which condition our judgment, that may pass away, and with it our affirmation of some author's genius. But it would be strange to argue for transcendence, or genius, in this way: one must reserve judgment on authors because even purportedly excellent works might be context-bound. That is, defenders of excellence, who tend to be textualists and suspicious of historical context, limit and condition the ability of first readers to judge excellence due to the very thing they claim great authors are not bound by.

The 50-100 years system fails on its own terms once we start thinking of contemporary examples. Does anyone believe that judgments on the canonicity of The Great Gatsby (1925, 14 years to go) or The Sun Also Rises (1926, 15 years to go) will change between now and each hitting the critical century mark? Even postwar literature now falls within the range of canonical judgment: The Catcher in the Rye or Rabbit, Run are now within the 50-year gap to begin judgment. And, really, anyone want to defend holding off judgment on Crime and Punishment until 1966?

The purpose of the 50-100 year system is the same as it has been since the early 20th century, at least: a way of walling off 'classic' texts from modernist (and post-modern, and post-post-modern) literature. At least part of the purpose of that walling off is to prevent new critical modes from re-evaluating parts of the tradition. If the kids don't like, say, 17th century poetry, and would rather read realistic novels in a distinctly 21st century idiom (big ups to On Beauty, yo), then the issue is not that aesthetic tastes have shifted and demonstrated that appreciation 17th century poetry is bound to time and context and not, therefore, transcendent (or, heaven forefend, that there is actual viable disagreement on what constitutes a canonical text), but that the people who read it and don't like it have somehow failed to understand it.

And perhaps that's true: those of us who do not care for (switching examples again) the 18th century novel might have missed something essential in it. But that has to cut both ways: the dismissive conservative critic might have missed something as well.