Throwing the Canon Overboard

I am not a literature person.

Theoretically, I should be. I love books, I love to read, I love to write, and I love to appreciate good writing. But damn, I'm an English major, if that tells you anything.

But I just don't enjoy literature.

One of my professors loves to emphasize the pleasure of the literary canon. He describes the thrill of reading a story with the knowledge that thousands, tens of thousands of others have read it before you, the low hum of satisfaction in finding meaning in it, a meaning fractionally shared with that multiplicity of other people.

I've never felt that with the literary canon myself.

I pick up a book from the literary canon and I get through it, annoyed all the way, and wanting to brutally murder the narrator with a tea kettle by the end. For what I can gather, the main feature of canonical literature is a whiny-ass main character. Hamlet, Winston, Bernard, Frankenstein, Heathcliff.... Allow me to use my mastery of the English language to paraphrase these characters: "Bitch bitch bitch."

I'll grant that I enjoyed A Clockwork Orange and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and while I can't say I took pleasure in A Confederacy of Dunces, I did appreciate the masterful use of satire and footnotes (I really loved the wonderful break from Ignatius that the footnotes offered). And after spending a month researching paganism in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, I finally developed a sort of begrudging respect for the work.

But, on the whole, I don't really enjoy those texts that are typically defined as literature.

Listening to my professor describe the buzz one derives from literature, I realize that I have felt it before - while watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And again, while streaming Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. And yet again, when I was tearing through the series Firefly, and later the film Serenity. I've felt it while watching Amélie for the six-billionth time, and when I was first introduced to Dr. Who, and How I Met Your Mother. I experienced it when I first discovered Anne McCaffrey's sci-fi/fantasy vision of Pern way back in elementary school, and when I took the time to peruse my first Draco/Hermione fanfic. The thrill of reading raced through my system when my best friend loaned me a few short novels by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, and again when I plucked Kim Harrison's Dead Witch Walking off a bookstore shelf. I spent hours poring over Christopher Moore's re-interpretation of King Lear, although I believe the power of the play to be greatly lost with Fool's very altered ending. Sarah Dessen's Just Listen continues to fascinate me, six years after I first laid hands on it.

Make no mistake. I've felt the "inherent pleasure" of literature. I've found the critical processes of English to be deeply beneficial, even natural, to me - when applying those methods to just about anything other than the standard canon. Literary criticism and analysis focused on Buffy are the main component of my "for fun" reading (I can't decide if Rhonda Wilcox or Joss Whedon is my biggest hero), and I frequently find myself drafting a mini-analysis for just about any text that crosses my interest. I love being an English major.

But I am not a literature person.


Well, not unless you'll let me throw the canon overboard.