A quick rehash: societies like our own accumulate experience at things, which allows them to get better at things - basically common sense. In applying this thinking to wisdom in general, we see that the wisdom of people alive today is, in general, vastly more useful than that of people alive long ago. We can apply this same thinking to the discipline of literature - indeed, creative work in general. I have seen no compelling evidence that a society's collective skill at creative disciplines doesn't increase with its skill at everything else - Charles Dickens could never have written Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a piece of fan fiction that is, and I say this with no hyperbole, one of the best pieces of literature I have ever read.)
And yet despite all this, high schools and colleges remain enamored of the "classics" - Shakespeare, Dickens, Dante, et cetera. What worries me most is not simply that the classics are held in high regard, but they are actually valued above modern works. But standards rise as time goes on, in literature as in anything else, and I'd be highly suspicious of claims that modern tragedies (Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, anyone?) don't even stand up to Shakespeare's.
This effect has a noticeable inverse: as classics such as the works of Shakespeare are held in universally high regard, newer works, and works in new media, are presupposed to be worse. This is due in large part to the fact that so much available new media is awful, while the only available classics are the ones that were considered to be really good. This logic is called the "availability heuristic," essentially that people judge the likelihood of an event by how easily they can bring an example to mind; and it's much easier to think of an example of awful fan fiction than awful Victorian literature.
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. This applies equally to fan fiction and Victorian literature, but no one remembers the bad Victorian literature - and bad enough fan fiction often becomes more famous than good fan fiction (again, I cite My Immortal). Thus, most people assign higher probability to a given, unknown piece of internet literature being bad to an equally unknown piece of Victorian literature being bad, and this is only accurate to the extent that more internet literature than Victorian literature exists. Modern, new-media works aren't guaranteed to be worse than classic literature, and can, in principle, be just as good - frankly, the only reason I don't think Methods of Rationality should be required reading is that forcing people to do something generally makes them enjoy it less.
So, what to do with this advice? Well, in my high school, as well as that of most of my (several) readers, there are seminars held to discuss whatever classic we're reading at the time - perhaps bring up the subject then? Compare whatever work you're studying to modern works with similar themes, and discuss, for example, what of the theme is lost or gained by switching from the classic to the modern work? And as always, don't take my advice on faith. Think about the reasoning, see if it makes sense to you, and if it doesn't, raise some objections. (Preferably on the blog and not in person, however, as I tend to be much more coherent about my opinions in text than in speech.)
Next week's posts will include: a discussion of Egypt, for anyone who isn't informed and wants to be; a post on authority-worship; and, as a bonus post this weekend, a formal review of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
Exactly right. I've been thinking about this off and on for a little while now- because there seems to be a little movement starting of people who are self-(re)publishing out of print books. And with this we're getting a look at some of those books that never became classics and now we have the resources to know why.
ReplyDeleteI think you make some strong points here, but as a writer, you might consider the continuum that most artists follow over the course of their development: Imitation -> Stylization -> Innovation. It's been my experience that nothing is really "new". Most of our favorite works of art, whether Picasso, Coltrane, or Philip K. Dick have their roots in what came before. I realized when I really got serious about music, that while I was very influenced by players who were contemporary (at that time Branford Marsalis was my main man) that if I wanted to play LIKE Branford that I should check out and study who Branford studied. Ironically, it was Branford himself who told me this. It was reinforced when I studied with Liebman. There is a cannon of work in any field that is the "proto-material" for any art form. In my field it is the jazz of 1950-1970. This is what makes up the bulk of my listening and provides me with the "lingua franca" that I use to create music in this time period. I use the analogy of language - most of us have the same ~ 700 word lexicon, but there is no dispute that we all speak original thoughts with that language.
ReplyDeleteI'm a HUGE advocate of studying the past - not to recreate, but to have my current work informed by history. Consider the analogy of a tree for an art form:
Roots: pre-sources
Trunk: Those who codified the "root" material
Limbs: Mayor stylists who conceived entire ways of approaching and executing the art.
Branches: Unique paths that spawned from the "Limbs".
Twigs: Very specialized artists with a specific interest or focus.
Leaves: The "latest thing" who will often change with the season.
It might be a good exercise to see if you can trace back the "Tree" of some of your favorite authors. I think you might find that most will have at one time or another drawn a major part of their art from the "trunk and limbs" of writers...the classics you speak of.
Another thing to remember about art is that there is no accounting for taste. If a particular artist speaks to you, at the end of the day that is all that is important. But, again, I think you'd do well to examine some authors in the way I've described. Not only to help your writing, but to give you a deeper understanding of where your current favorites came from.
I think most of the objections that you're making come from misconstruing the intent of my post; I wasn't writing for myself so much as everyone who hopes to learn how to learn from literature in English class. Frankly, I agree that there can't be truly new work, and I can see the appeal of considering the archetypes for what we use today (continuing with your metaphor, the roots and trunk); from my personal perspective as a writer, you do make some excellent points. The central point that I was making was that from the perspective of a reader, it seems likely that any lessons Shakespeare may have to teach us can be taught at least as well (and, I don't hesitate to add, with less cumbersome language) with modern works, which is something the educational system tends to disregard. And, going back to your metaphor, focusing too much on the roots and trunk can lead to missing the limbs and branches, as well as some twigs that could end up being very valuable (as an example, I return to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality).
ReplyDeleteAnd you're right, of course, that there's no accounting for taste, but I think that in general, there's more than a grain of truth to the stereotype that high schoolers hate Shakespeare. There being a choice between teaching one of two works which convey a given message roughly equally, if one would be more appealing to the majority of students, then I'd say common sense dictates choosing that one. As I said above, though, the school system still seems to favor the older choice in these situations, rather than the one that would be likely to be more enjoyable. Yes, these criteria aren't mutually exclusive, but I would venture that they very rarely match up, and it seems to me irrational to judge by the first and hope that the second also gets fulfilled.