Sunday, January 22, 2012

Why there is no point in my going to literary festivals

Michael Hayworth, a publisher, complains in a column in The Age today that Australian "classic"novels are forgotten all too quickly by both academia and the public, and many are out of print.  But he starts with this observation:
We live in the world of the home-grown literary bestseller, the world of The Slap and The Secret River. We love our new stars, and celebrate the success of Favel Parrett or Toni Jordan or Craig Silvey. Our writers have careers both at home and abroad. We no longer expect our life-changing books to be written in isolation and despair, against the odds, fulfilling what Henry Lawson came to believe was the destiny of the Australian writer.
OK, well, I've heard of The Slap because it became a TV series last year that didn't sound all that interesting, and I therefore didn't watch.  I have heard the title "The Secret River".  I think.  

But, sorry, call me completely out of touch with Australia literature if you want, I have not heard of Favel, Toni or Craig.  And I even watch First Tuesday Book Club about half the time its on.  [Now that I think of it, I can't remember the name of any Australian author who I saw on it last year, except for potboiler thriller writer Matthew O'Reilly (who I also haven't read.)  Maybe I only watch the show because I like it when they strongly disagree on the merits of something I'm never going to read anyway.]

Back to Hayworth:
Our universities have failed for more than a century to create any kind of enduring tradition for the teaching of Australian literature. We are so familiar with this failure we hardly notice. And our publishing has always been dominated by British houses, which have not always felt the need, simply because a book is part of our national heritage, to keep it available.

In 2011, in not a single course in the whole country were students asked to read Henry Handel Richardson's The Fortunes of Richard Mahony. This is the equivalent of not one Russian university teaching Anna Karenina, of Madame Bovary going untaught in France.
There you go:  another Australian author and book, this one a "classic" apparently, which I haven't heard of.

But hang on a minute:  "failed for more than a century to create any ...enduring tradition..." is a bit rich isn't it?   By 1900, the country had only been around in any substantial form for a few decades.  (Have a look at this chart, which indicates the white population in 1843 was barely 250,000.)  Sure, Sydney University was founded in 1850 (presumably with very small class sizes,) but people coming here were hardly motivated by the weather making it a nice place in which to write books, and it's hard to imagine University courses of the early 20th century being designed around the works of Henry Lawson (or some such.)

In any event, I'm not entirely sure why Universities need to "teach" modern literature at all, but that's just me a being a not-very-arty philistine, I suppose; even though readers of this blog may think I am more "arts" inclined that I really am due to my reports on the latest weird installations at Brisbane's GOMA.   I can see the value in studying (as opposed to merely experiencing) literature from the point of view of what it tells us about societies'  and individual's attitudes in the past, and the arc of their development over time; this applies especially to really old literature.   But the study of modern literature when there is plenty of other material around about the society it was written in; well, after the first 5 years of analysis of a particularly complex book, I am not entirely sure what more there is to be said or taught, and you could probably now find most of that analysis for free on the net instead of going to university.

Anyhow, Hayworth's complaint about good Australian books being out of print would, one expects, be answered by the increasing use of e-readers.   Surely it can't be very expensive to put them out in electronic  format, and even develop a specialised field of advertising for formerly acclaimed books which have been out of print for some years.

If the publishing industry can't work out how to do that, Andrew, I'd say it's pretty much their own fault, and I wouldn't blame it on Universities at all. 


2 comments:

TimT said...

Were you grouchy when you wrote this or something? ;)

I must admit I was never greatly moved by arguments about utility of education, even while I was studying at school/uni. I always liked the subjects best that had the least point - so, pure maths, good; the arts in general, great; applied subjects such as agriculture, careers, etc, boring. I went on to do an arts degree in music and English lit at uni and was never greatly encumbered by any expectations on my part as to what they would achieve. Perhaps that's why I went on to be out of a job for another five-ish years after leaving uni. Hmmm...

But anyway, it was the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake that interested me, and on those grounds surely one can defend the study and analysis of modern literature.

You have an interesting point in that we can probably not make good judgements about literature until a few decades after it has written, because we are still too closely and intimately involved in the social context in which it was written.* But you are surely wrong in claiming that after five years study of a piece of complex literature you will get all that you are going to get out of that. The history of literature criticism contradicts this assertion quite clearly - the best known example refuting this idea would surely be that of the reception of Shakespeare throughout five centuries. You have Shakespearian conspiracy theories starting up about a century after he lived; you have the Restoration rewrites of Shakespeare by the likes of Dryden; you have commentary by Romantics such as Coleridge on Shakespeare, and the reinterpretations of Shakespeare for children by Charles and Mary Lamb... and that's before we get into the 20th century. (I'm sure if I consulted with the Baron I could give a much more detailed run down.) Generally speaking, too, the various critical views of Shakespeare could only have occurred at the point in history that they did occur at - Dryden's Shakespeare rewrites are purposefully moderating and surely relate back to the desire for moderation, and political conciliation at that time; Lamb's rewrites point to an emerging interest in the needs of children at the beginning of the 19th century (and so on).

Perhaps it would be desirable for unis to show some forbearance with the teaching/study of the most modern literature, say, works within the last decade. Even so, how exactly could we limit the study of knowledge in this way? Right at this moment a brilliant scholar could be writing a convincing refutation of the collected twitter works of Alexander McCall Smith (for instance). Or, you know, analysing the latest poetry tome published by Text. Or whatever.

Anyway, I can see I've gone off on a bit of a tangent so I'll leave you to it...

*Even this may not be true, though - the best critics, people like Dr Johnson or, I dunno, C S Lewis seem to have a capability for judging and analysing contemporary literature incisively. This job is probably only suitable for people of a certain personality - the majority of critics produce work that is much more mundane.

Steve said...

Yes, I don't object to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake - within limits, I suppose. I think that's clear from some of the things this blog shows I am interested in.

But regarding literature, my point is that the information full society that we are living in makes critical analysis of anything written take place much faster than before. And besides, we know a lot more about the milieu in which they were written.

But given a break of, say, 100 years, it may be worthwhile for universities to go back and study both the book and the original post publication analysis, and see how they stand...