Literary Snobbery- Do you Read to Enjoy, or Read to Impress?

One thing I have always found annoying about literature, is the so called 'canon'.

Those sacred texts which get to sit on special shelves at Waterstones, the 'superior' works which are marked out from the common works which fill the rest of the store.

Annoying, not because there aren't works which rise above the norm.
But because of the bizarre way this elite set seems to have been decided.
And how this group is treated.

I have always held the view that there are really three canons.

The first canon, I call the pseudo-canon.

These are works which have had the merit of being read a lot over time. The thinking is, lots of people have read these books, therefore they are well written, cleverly put together, with something earth-shattering to say.

In fact, it isn't so.
Jane Austen, for example. Her books have sold a lot, I agree.
So have those of Jackie Collins and Barbara Cartland.
I wouldn't read either of those out of choice either, and as far as I see, the only difference between the works of the latter two ladies and Ms Austen, is about two hundred years.

Jane Austen is lightweight Mills and Boons drivel, but the presence of her novels in the canon, as with those of the Brontes, allows people to believe that they are educated intellectuals, because they have read a few 'classics'.

Well, if these are the only 'classics' you have read, I'm afraid it is a delusion.

Wordsworth too, is over rated. He is the best known poet of the nineteenth century, because he is the easiest- and the dullest.

Even Dickens, I have to say gets a slightly better press than he perhaps merits. I'm not saying he can't be witty sometimes, but excepting the loathsome Charles Kingsley (a rare example of an author I have given up on in disgust), few authors have such an intrusive authorial voice or such cardboard cut out characters.

And whilst his plots are well constructed, they have a habit of stretching coincidence and implausibility to levels which make the reader cringe.

I'll give him a Christmas Carol and one or two others, and I'll concede he is a GOOD author.
But not a GREAT one.

The second canon, is what I call the true canon.
These are the works which are accepted as greats, and in my opinion, deserve it.

Shakespeare stands out here. Not all of his comedies, many are tedious.
But King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry V, Merchant of Venice, Richard III to name but a few, these MUST count as masterpieces.

I often feel we waste Shakespeare by forcing him too young on underappreciative schoolkids.

He IS the greatest playwright ever, and people need to come to that discovery through free will.

Also hiding away in the true canon, are those works which many have heard of, but never read.
Spenser's Faerie Queene, almost certainly the greatest epic poem ever written in the English language, Milton's Paradise Lost, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Blake.



And whilst the Bard reigns supreme amongst the dramatists, we should not forget Marlow.

And skulking at the edges of the true canon, when by rights he deserves a place at its heart, is John Dunne.

Lastly, we have what I see as the hidden canon.
These are works which put the false canon to shame, but are kept out by snobbery. Works which really do have something to say, are well written and unforgettable.

I always judge all literature by what I call the Aeneid test.

To me, Virgil was the man, as far as classical literature goes.
It annoys me when people place the Iliad above the Aeneid. If you've ever read both, there can be no question.
The Aeneid set the standard for all time, as far as I see it.



So what do I put in my hidden canon?
The works which I think show someone who actually IS well read, not just out to impress.
Well, I always did have Lord of the Rings there, but I think since the films, that has finally been accepted as the classic as it truly is.
It IS the best piece of literature ever written.
No doubt about it.

I think 1984 has always been accepted, and HG Wells is begrudgingly half accepted now as canon, though not nearly enough.

But in my hidden canon, I include CS Lewis' underappreciated Out of the Silent Planet and succeeding novels.
Huxley's Brave New World certainly belongs also. Scott Fitzgerald is definitely a classic author, certainly for the Great Gatsby if nothing else, and I'd also add Graham Greene.

And of modern dramatists?
If you are not mesmerised by an Arthur Miller play, you have no soul.

So there it is. I had to read Sense and Sensibility AND Pride and Prejudice for my degree, but I find the Conan the Barbarian stories as enlightening, and a lot more interesting.

The best reads are rarely the ones they televise.