Slate.com on Social Justice and the English Literary Canon

I came across this article on the literature subreddit. Albeit a bit condescending, I think raises excellent points.
Yale students want to remake the English Major requirements, but there's no escaping white male poets in the canon.

[Liam Barden]

"Here’s the thing, though. If you want to become well-versed in English literature, you’re going to have to hold your nose and read a lot of white male poets. Like, a lot. More than eight." - SLATE

LOL

I recently completed a BA in Anthropology & Sociology / Literary & Cultural Studies . . . So, allow me a piece of advice of a type I know well.

Read poems, novels and short stories OF YOUR CHOICE, outside academia.

You can teach yourself everything you need to know about literature simply by READING FOR PLEASURE.

Maybe re-watch Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams knew all about the cancer of academic criticism, and so did Nietzsche:

Scholars who basically spend all their time poring over books ultimately become completely unable to think for themselves. They spend all their energy saying yes and no, criticizing what other people have already thought.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

Quote Originally Posted by Liam Barden

[I]Read poems, novels and short stories OF YOUR CHOICE, outside academia. You can teach yourself everything you need to know about literature simply by READING FOR PLEASURE.

I don't think so, at least not ipso facto. I personally have, indeed, learned more about the field of literature on my own time than in formal instruction, but this is probably due to my preference of reading literary fiction and the occasional literary criticism. A person who reads only popular bestsellers probably not learn "everything you need to know about literature" than someone who prefers to read the former. Otherwise, I agree; Pope's essay still holds weight today, and I wonder if Harold Bloom ever ponders on sleepless nights: "One of my heroes has deeply insulted me a good two centuries before I was born..."

Connecting your sentiments with the initial topic, I generally prefer to read the Canon of the Weird, the Surrealists, and the Obscure more so than that of the Bourgeois, the Realists, and the Popular. But, inevitably, my preferred canons are on some level influenced by the canons of the status quo: no Lovecraft without Poe without Byron without Shakespeare without Chaucer without Dante without Ovid without Homer.

Literature, to me, operates like a phylogenetic tree; as biologists can determine the common ancestry of an organism through fossils and molecular evidence, so a reader, critic, or historian can determine a work's literary ancestry. The transitional forms were likely authored by somebody with odious views from an odious time, but they were a necessary step to produce the present work.

[Liam Barden]

Quote

I don't think so, at least not ipso facto. I personally have, indeed, learned more about the field of literature on my own time than in formal instruction, but this is probably due to my preference of reading literary fiction and the occasional literary criticism. A person who reads only popular bestsellers probably not learn "everything you need to know about literature" than someone who prefers to read the former. Otherwise, I agree

I should have been more specific, but that's basically what I meant, in an extremely individualistic sense.

I'm only interested in learning "everything I need to know about literature" in relation to the writers of my choice – Mishima, Céline, Burroughs, Bloy, Ligotti, Isis, Houellebecq, etc . . . and all the while I'm simultaneously discovering a lot of the writers that influenced their work . . . I've bundled their taxon and traced their phyla without any academic assistance. My lecturers taught me nothing, they just hijack literature for SJW appropriation, LOL, but let's not get into that.

Anyway, take my old man for instance. He reads a lot, but mostly only war novels. He has no interest in the history of literature, just playing saxophone, drinking wine and reading war novels. He's your average cis-white malestrom who reads solely for pleasure and little else.

"Literature is entertainment or it is nothing" – Thomas Ligotti

I think someone who is truly eager to understand the history of literature, someone enrolling as an English Major, is better off self-educating, than paying big $$$ to slough through a list of books they could easily read at home. Secondary material is all available online . . .

[ToALonelyPeace]

Some of the phrases here puzzle me. What is "polyamorous green"? What is "cis" ?
Looking at Yale courses, "Readings in American Literature" seems more inclusive with the presence of Dickinson, O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy. I doubt one year of white-male-only poems is going to make "students feel so alienated they get up and leave the room or the major" (from the petition).
Reading the course descriptions remind me of the prime reason why I did not choose an English major: the common themes. Religion, sex, politics, culture, or environment are all scalpels prepared for dissection. You don't read or value the words because of what they mean to you, but what they mean for these themes (and your grades). Moreover, the reading time for each book gets shorter and your enjoyment decreases until every book becomes an assignment you can't wait to get over.

[childeroland]

Quote Originally Posted by ToALonelyPeace

Some of the phrases here puzzle me. What is "polyamorous green"? What is "cis" ? Looking at Yale courses, "Readings in American Literature" seems more inclusive with the presence of Dickinson, O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy. I doubt one year of white-male-only poems is going to make "students feel so alienated they get up and leave the room or the major" (from the petition). Reading the course descriptions remind me of the prime reason why I did not choose an English major: the common themes. Religion, sex, politics, culture, or environment are all scalpels prepared for dissection. You don't read or value the words because of what they mean to you, but what they mean for these themes (and your grades). Moreover, the reading time for each book gets shorter and your enjoyment decreases until every book becomes an assignment you can't wait to get over.

Cis means your gender identity aligns with the biological sex you were born with -- it's the opposite of transgendered.

No idea what polyamorous green means.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I think the green part means environmentally conscious. Polyamorous is the opposite of monogamy.

[Kevin]

Death to anti-white, anti-male bigotry.

Quote Originally Posted by Kevin

Death to anti-white, anti-male bigotry.

Where did you get the idea that this article, or even the demands of these students, is promoting anti-white or anti-male sentiment? Nothing in the article aroused any suspicions of those sorts on my end.

Or was it a sarcastic comment?

Quote Originally Posted by ToALonelyPeace

Looking at Yale courses, "Readings in American Literature" seems more inclusive with the presence of Dickinson, O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy.

Is McCarthy gay or bisexual? I admit I've barely read any interviews with him.

Quote

I doubt one year of white-male-only poems is going to make "students feel so alienated they get up and leave the room or the major"

Perhaps it would if, hypothetically, they read deeply racist vitriol all course, like HPL's "Creation" poem or Kipling's "The White Man's Burden"... but since that doesn't seem to reflect the reality of most lit courses, if it does drive the students away then perhaps the students don't enjoy reading as much as they thought they did, and in that case changing their major would be the best course of action.

Quote

Reading the course descriptions remind me of the prime reason why I did not choose an English major: the common themes. Religion, sex, politics, culture, or environment are all scalpels prepared for dissection. You don't read or value the words because of what they mean to you, but what they mean for these themes (and your grades). Moreover, the reading time for each book gets shorter and your enjoyment decreases until every book becomes an assignment you can't wait to get over.

I see merit in actively combing through a book for these things, as it gives insight about the author and his/her reaction to stimuli in their environment; but that was largely my experience, too, ToALonelyPeace.