The Canon survives the revisionist crosshairs

Read the Canon or shoot it? This debate erupts in my common room from time to time. It is inspired less by post-modernity than it is by post-sobriety, but we aren't alone in arguing about it. It wasn't long ago an assemblage of Stanfordians chanted "Hey hey! Ho ho! Western culture's got to go!" or some such thing, demanding release from the bondage of dead male honkydom, in what appeared to be California's version of a roundtable discussion.

SHAWN CHENG/YH

My friends run the pollster's gamut on the issue. From the Bloom disciples ("When the Zulus have a Tolstoy, we will read him.") on one end; to our beloved ethnic militants ("The Zulus have a Tolstoy, but the Man won't let you read him.") on the other. As a philosophy major, ignorant in the areas of literature, history, and actual facts, I seek the middle ground and (try to) keep quiet. But being a former DSer compels me to run a little defense for the Canon. This little defense actually occurred to me awhile back but, since I'm not in town to articulate it, I hope they'll see it here. Here is my argument, as I see it: books help, there are a lot of them, and you can't read them all, so it's good to start with a recommended list.

I think most of this is self-evident. If you have problems with the first few assertions, put down your problem set, go to the Sterling stacks (that's the tall building across the street from Toad's), and get back to me. As for the conclusion, let me explain. Understanding new subjects requires reading, and there are good books and bad books out there on everything. Though the best way to know a book is good is to read it, the next best way is through recommendation. You talk to people who know, look at reviews and bibliographies, and, above all, read. You begin with lists: some dictated, some written down, and some that emerge as you read. When you're done, you're a little smarter than when you started, and you have a list that is all your own. It will have some new books on it and, perhaps, even a couple written by you. But it will also include those indispensable few that you would have never found without the original list.

The Western Canon, I think, is one such list. It is larger than most; it spans disciplines, centuries, and continents, but at the core it is simply a list of recommended books, assembled by the history of Western scholarship. Its primary concerns are broad. You won't find poultry science in there. But if you are interested in the question of what it means to be a human being, you can find answers if you look carefully. Or, if not the answers themselves, then better ways of considering the questions.

The Canon doesn't speak to everyone, everywhere, or always. There are other parts of the world and other lists. But if you have been influenced by the West, the Western list is very useful. What better way to understand the West than to read the collected thoughts, commandments, songs, stories, poems, laments, horrors, and dreams that folks in this half of the world have created and kept in the last few thousand years? It may not definitively embody Western truth, but I think there are many truths about Westerners in there.

This is not to say the list is complete or fixed. I haven't found any final drafts of the "list" written down anywhere. Or, when I have, it's been disappointing. I just couldn't accept too many "final" choices. List makers can be influenced by bad taste, bad judgment, racism, elitism, myopia, and all kinds of other sicknesses.

But through all this, great books do make it in. And their being on a list, in a canon, is one of the central reasons why ignorant folks like me ever read them in the first place. The beauty of a soldier's death outside Troy, the courage of the philosopher on trial, the resonance of the sermon on the mount, the heroism of a windmill-battling lunatic, the horror of a man transformed into an insect; all of this came to me at others' suggestion. Because someone said they were part of a canon. I am richer for this and grateful that people have been keeping track of the good stuff for so long. For me, reading them helps open my mind, and illuminate our culture and the history of ideas that created it. This, I think, is helpful whether you want to understand our culture, defend it, speak to it, or even fight it. For thinking people, the Canon is not the last or only word. But it's a hell of a place to start.

Erik German is a junior in Branford.

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