A canon is a list. That’s all. We need it because we have to read Shakespeare; we have to study Dante; we have to read Chaucer, Cervantes, the Bible; … we have to read Proust, Tolstoy, Dickens, George Eliot and Jane Austen. It is inescapable that we have to read Joyce and Samuel Beckett. These are absolutely crucial writers. They provide an intellectual — dare I say a spiritual — value which has nothing to do with organized religion or the history of institutional belief. They remind us in every sense of re-minding us. They not only tell us things that we have forgotten but they tell us things we couldn’t possibly know without them. And they reform our minds. They make our minds stronger; they make us more vital. They make us alive! —Harold Bloom [interview with Eleanor Wachtel, host of CBS Radio’s Original Minds]

As a literature student and teacher, I know a bit about the Western canon, those books that scholars have identified as the works most influential in shaping Western culture. I say a bit because I’m humbled and awed enough by the likes of such authors as William Butler Yeats, Fydor Dostoevsky, and Nathaniel Hawthorne to know that I’m still a novice in the literary land of the canon.

But this literary land is peopled by many DWEMs (dead white European males), and many have argued that this is a problem. They contend that their works don’t represent modern perspectives and, as such, are no longer relevant. They insist that the very fact that these works are written by white men is enough to question their literary value and authority. After all, they argue, the white men of the Western world are colonialists who have dominated by might and by pen. For decades, the traditional Western canon has been questioned, criticized, and denounced.

Although I’ve been awed by traditional Western writers, I’ve also been awed by many other writers who represent a variety of cultures and viewpoints: Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Richard Wright’s Native Son, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, Louise Erdrich’s The Master Butchers Singing Club, Amy Tan’s The Valley of Amazement, as well as the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Leslie Marmon Silko, Li Bai–the list goes on and on. I added these writers and their works to the literary canon in my classrooms. And if I were still teaching, I would continually expand and modify my reading list, hoping to expose my students to a variety of the best works.

It goes without saying that there will be continued debate over the value and relevance of the traditional Western canon, but that’s not what really concerns me today. I wholeheartedly agree that the canon should include a variety of authors from a variety of cultures, races, and persectives. What concerns me is that many (most?) of the books in the traditional canon may be removed from high school and university courses, taken from library shelves, and perhaps canceled altogether. I mentally ran down the list of works I’ve taught in American Literature courses and found that many wouldn’t pass muster using the current standards for what is offensive and harmful, what is acceptable and what is not.

For example, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men would probably have to go because of Curly, the stable hand who, as a black man, must live apart from the white ranch hands (there is also mild profanity as well as some use of the “n” word). Kate Chopin’s The Awakening has a host of black maids and nannies who serve wealthy white folk, and the female protagonist who can find no way to fufillment as a woman ultimately takes her own life (her story is a far cry from I am woman, hear me roar). Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” centers on a husband who finds his wife’s birthmark repulsive and kills her while trying to remove it (think about the American With Disabilities Act and all those with physical scars, marks, and defects who might be deeply offended–and terrified–by this story). Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” includes African natives whose job it is to risk their lives by literally beating the bush for the wealthy white hunters as they hunt wild game (not to mention that Hemingway is considered a “man’s man” and has been accused of being sexist). Tennesse William’s play, The Glass Menagerie, has two female protagonists: a melodramatic mother and mentally fragile daughter. Neither represents an empowered female role model. And Mark Twain’s The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn? The controversy around this novel persists. Many schools have removed it from their curricula because one of the primary characters is a black slave and because Twain uses the “n” word throughout the novel.

British psychiatrist, prison physician, and author Theodore Dalyrmple shares my concern:

This posture of skepticism towards the classics displays a profound misjudgment. For the great works of Western culture are remarkable for the distance that they maintained from the norms and orthodoxies that gave birth to them. Only a very shallow reading of Chaucer or Shakespeare would see those writers as endorsing the societies in which they lived, or would overlook the far more important fact that their works hold mankind to the light of moral judgment, and examine, with all the love and all the pity that it calls for, the frailty of human nature. It is precisely the aspiration towards universal truth, towards a God’s-eye perspective on the human condition, that is the hallmark of Western culture.

Dalrymple contends that only a shallow reading of these classic authors would reveal them as endorsing the societies in which they lived. Many of these dead white men actually held their societies up for scrutiny, exposing the flaws and sins of their systems and cultures. For example, Twain’s primary character, Jim, may have been an uneducated black slave, but he is also the best man in the entire book. Twain portrays him as a compassionate, loyal, courageous man who truly cares for others, including Huck, a foolish white boy. He doesn’t endorse slavery but rather criticizes it. His use of the “n” word is is an attribute of literary realism, a writing style that authentically portrays the speech, actions, and thoughts of a particular time period. Twain isn’t cavalier in his use of this word but intentional. The very white folk he criticizes are those–including Huck–who carelessly use this word. Again and again, Twain exposes the frailty of human nature, and in this novel, the white characters are the frailest of them all.

Will shallow readings of these works be the primary means by which they are judged? Will works of literary realism be summarily banned because of their authentic portrayals of the past? Will the traditional canon be canceled as a whole because of its authorship?

In a PBS radio program, host Ben Wattenberg interviewed Stanley Fish, English professor at Duke University, Andrew Delbanco, humanities professor at Columbia University, and Andrew Flaumenhaft, dean of St. Johns College, which places a special emphasis on the Western canon. He asked these academics whether or not we need the Western canon today. Mr. Flaumenhaft defended it:

Because good books make people think. They make — they shake you out of your complacent assumption that what you know or what you believe or what you think is the only thing to know, or believe or think.

It’s true that the traditional Western canon isn’t exclusively responsible for works that make people think and shake them out of their complacent assumptions. As I’ve mentioned earlier, there are many excellent works outside the canon that do this well. But we’re often a throw-the-baby-out-with-the bath-water people. That is, charged with new principles and perspectives, we tend to trash the old and celebrate the new. We do this with great conviction and the best intentions. And sometimes, we realize too late what we’ve given up and regret our losses. This, I fear, may be the fate of the Western literary canon.

At the very least, I think there is much to be studied and discussed. I think there are important questions that should be answered: How should we view works of literary realism? Should we remove works from curricula and libraries on the sole basis of an offensive word(s)? What do we really mean when we identify a work as relevant or irrelevant? What is the end game here and who should be responsible for it?

In his interview concerning the Western canon, Ben Wattenberg asked Stanley Fish about how he viewed his work as an English professor at Duke University. Fish responded:

I’m a literary person, mostly. My job is to present the materials that make up the content of my discipline. And to introduce students to those materials in as forceful a way as possible. What they then do with that material, and my teaching, when they go into the ballot box, or go into the marketplace is, of course, something I cannot predict, and over which I shouldn’t want to have any control.

Fish’s claim that he shouldn’t want to have any control over what his students do with the ideas from the works they’ve read in his courses is particularly important, I think. Removing works from the Western canon–or the entire canon itself–would be an attempt to control by omission. I’d like to think that capable teachers could create the appropriate context in which these works might be taught. I’d like to think that students have the right to be exposed to these classic works and the right to think about them as they choose. I’d like to think that this isn’t–and shouldn’t be–an either/or venture. Above all, I’d like to think that we won’t make these decisions emotionally from shallow readings.

Only time will tell what will happen to the Western canon. I’m hoping that we won’t lose literary works that hold mankind to the light of moral judgment even if they are written by DWEMs.

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.
 --Ellen Key 

Many of us may be closet abstract-lovers. I mean, who wouldn’t choose a grand abstraction over a puny particular? In Charles Schultz’s 1959 comic strip, Peanuts, Linus said: I love mankind. . . It’s people I can’t stand. Both Albert Einstein and Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote something similar when they claimed to love humanity but hate people. Publicly, we may scoff at these admissions, but if we were to invite others into our own closets, they’d see that we’ve generally been a whole lot better at loving mankind than loving people (especially those people we neither like nor understand).

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamozov, a lady admits to Father Zosima, a wise elder, that she fears she may not be able to actively love. She confesses:

The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.

Here, she admits that she has great plans to serve humanity but that she becomes hostile to actual humans as soon as they get close to her. To love humans abstractly means that she can keep them at arm’s length. That is, she can love the idea of them without actually having to break bread with them or–God forbid–befriend them. Her advisor, Father Zosima, tells her he regrets that he can’t say anything more comforting, [but] active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Active, individual love is labor and perseverance, he explains. In short, active love is so much more demanding than abstract love.

Our struggle to love particular individuals with all their warts and gifts isn’t new. This is an age-old struggle. Thirty years ago, I stood in a college classroom teaching Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, “The Lovers of the Poor.” In this poem, Brooks describes the ladies from the Ladies’ Betterment League who magnanimously offer to give money to the poor, the very, very worthy and beautiful poor. And they agree to deliver the money in person, traveling from their wealthy Chicago neighborhoods to the projects. When they arrive, however, they find the sights and smells, the make-do-ness of newspaper rugs entirely too much for them. They decide it would be best to post the money and leave. These ladies have romanticized poverty and can only love the poor they’ve created in their minds, the worthy and beautiful poor. In contrast, these particular poor people don’t look, smell, speak, or act anything like they’ve imagined.

From a distance, we can love abstractly, legislate abstractly, create and reform abstractly. We do it all with good intentions, sometimes the best intentions. And we believe that when we generalize, we’re acting for the common good. Too often, we defend our broad strokes, rarely stopping to consider that we’ve lost sight of our intended subjects. Swedish writer Ellen Key argues that when our world becomes more terrible, our art becomes more abstract. When life becomes especially cruel, too many of us aim to soften its rough edges with abstraction.

The fact that we leap to abstraction–that we’ve always leaped to it–is no surprise. But once we recognize this, what do we do about it? I suggest that we start by asking our elected leaders to leave the sanctuaries of abstraction for the real relationships and experiences of the particular.

If we want to eliminate poverty, then why don’t we ask our leaders to move from their own communities into impoverished neighborhoods? Why shouldn’t they live in and among the very people they intend to help? Before they legislate programs for the poor, why shouldn’t we insist that they ask their new neighbors what these programs could and should be?

If we want to eliminate inequities and problems in public education, then why don’t we expect our leaders to enroll their own children in struggling schools? Why shouldn’t we demand that they see the challenges in these schools firsthand? Before they suggest sweeping reform, why don’t we ask that they start with their children’s schools by learning what it takes to create a better school, one classroom at a time?

If we want to address immigration, then why don’t we ask our leaders to move their families to border communities, so that they can experience the real challenges for both immigrants and natives? Why shouldn’t we refuse to accept the practice of legislating from afar and instead insist that our leaders learn from their neighbors, crafting policy and legislation based on their experiences with real people?

Some will argue that all this sounds good, but it’s not realistic. They will insist that our lobbyists and legislators must live in Washington, D. C. But I would contend that if teachers can teach remotely, why can’t legislators debate and legislate remotely? I would argue that millions have effectively relied upon platforms like Zoom for over a year, so this isn’t impossible. And finally, I would propose that it’s more unrealistic (and potentially more dangerous) to make policies and laws without basing them on real relationships and experiences. It’s more unrealistic to live in the world of abstractions than to join the world of the particular.

I’m proposing a kind of servant leadership that we’re sorely lacking. Our affinity with abstracting, with generalizing and romanticizing may seem naive and benign, but it is presumptuous and condescending at best. I’m not questioning good intentions but rather consequences. And these consequences suggest that we shouldn’t accept the type of leadership we currently have.

During my lifetime, I’ve only had the privilege to work under a handful of genuine servant leaders. For example, I worked under a high school principal who pushed a big rolling garbage can around during every lunch period, stopping to pick up trash and, more importantly, to talk with students, all 1,500 of whom he knew by name. Here was a leader who knew and understood the real world of those young adults in his charge, a leader who ultimately changed the culture of an entire school. He could have stayed in his office and eaten his own lunch in relative peace. He could have stationed himself there each day, making school-wide decisions from a comfortable desk chair. He could have, but he didn’t. Instead, he walked the hallways, visited classrooms, and greeted students coming and going from school. Each day, his actions revealed that he loved humans more than he loved humanity.

In her journals, poet Sylvia Plath wrote that [the] abstract kills, the concrete saves. As harsh as these words sound, I think she’s right. We’re killing the very people, institutions, and ideas we long to save by abstracting them. We’re the ladies from the Ladies’ Betterment League come to call on a whole host of social, economic, political, environmental, and educational problems that affect real people. And all too often, we don’t show up–or we get of whiff of something unpleasant, and we run. We decide it would be better to send our policies, laws, proposals, guidelines, and regulations from the sanctuary of our abstractions.

That’s the bad news. But the good news is that we can learn from those servant leaders who understand that power is a privilege, a privilege that must be grounded in reality. Regardless of how horrifying the world is, they accept the challenge of climbing down the abstraction ladder into the mire. And to effectively lead, they know that they must first understand and love humans before they can ever understand and love humanity.