I agree about Walker. I like several of her earlier books, and they introduced several interesting and new topics for me to thnk about in college -- but as far as style, and longvegity, I don't think she really has the same impact or grace.

GM is such a creepy poem. I love to read it in the fall.

I read Neruda to myself, tucked into bed at night. I read it in the Spanish first (which I totally don't understand) just for the rythem, and then in the English, for the images and different rythem.

Besides, the guy wrote an ode to a lemon. How can I not love him?!

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Whereas Walker's subordination of fiction to immediate political concerns is going to read like a very earnest, boring, preachy abolitionist novel from the 1850s.

OK-- I am starting to agree with you. I just tend to have a fondness for things that don't age well-- in what they can tell us about then. The Jungle or Maggie, Girl of the Streets or Daisy Miller come off in the same ay to me but I still think it has a place.

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However, Jilli reminds me I want to dig out SWTWC again. It's a shame the movie wasn't better, because the casting was impeccable, IMO.

The movie could have been better if they had decided not to go for cheap scare tactics by changing the Dust Witch into Queen of the Spiders. Gaaaah!

I bet Jilli has already read "Goblin's Market" and all those decadent, juicy, mordant pre-Raphaelite poets.

Luuuuuurve "Goblin's Market". In fact, I saw a kick-ass stage production based on it. However, I will admit that I haven't read a *lot* of poetry; most of my teachers picked not very interesting-to-me poems and then proceeded to do a horrible hack & slash job of explaining why we should admire it.

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Quick little notes:

• Just started rereading

Moby Dick. So far, up to Father Mapple's sermon ("Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah" -- heee!). Very, very happy so far.

• P-C has inspired me to give Faulkner another go, which is something that up until two days ago I would've sworn on a stack of the collected sacred texts of every culture on the planet I'd never, never do. Hec promises he'll find me something less impenetrable than "The Bear," and possibly a mid-50s edition of something with a nice pulp fiction cover, to make it less frightening.

• Jilli, FWIW, this is one of my favorite poems on the planet, by Elizabeth Bishop, a dark and gorgeous snapshot of Ezra Pound in the madhouse. And here is the poem I got my current tagline from. As I said in Bitches a while back, Elizabeth Bishop is the motherfucking man (I'm fairly sure Jen will back me up on this).

• Canon? Like others here, I'm not so sure about Walker, but quite sure about Toni Morrison; I'm ashamed to admit that

Handmaid's Tale is the only Atwood I've ever read, and now I feel very urgently that I need more; and I think Gloria Naylor has a shot at canon, possibly, depending on what she puts out over the next few years. Mama Day is the one of hers that I'd lovingly and urgently pimp to anyone, anytime, ever. So lovely and intelligent and deeply felt, and such a rich and marvelous job of worldbuilding.

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I tend to put Surfacing in because of the way it deals with gender and identity. In some respects, I feel it is the most "Canadian" of her novels

To me that's why Surfacing will not be the canonical Atwood book; because she was consciously trying to write the Great Canadian Novel it's not universal enough. I'd plump for Cat's Eye along with everyone else, although Alias Grace might come close.

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I know I've readSurfacing, but my pick for canonical Atwood would be either Cat's Eye or The Robber Bride does. Cat's Eye is closest to the bone, but the language in The Riobber Bride sticks with me endlessly.

As for Irving, I read it all in high school. I think Owen Meaney and Garp were my favorites. (I still haven't read A Widow forOne Year, though)

Still, I could see this book, and possibly the sequels, being taught in English classes 20 years from now.

I think it's an excellent snapshot of the era, and in a way Maupin is a modern Dickens. I'm not sure it will be taught, but I hope it will be read.

And I went to the library today! Got The Things They Carried, Augusten Burrough's Dry, and The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford because the idea of a completely unreliablenarrator fascinates me.

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Owen Meany and Garp are my favorite Irving books, but I also have an odd love for A Son of the Circus.

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I think "The Color Purple" will be read for a long time. Not so sure about other AW.

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Polter, my lamb, your long quote from Faulkner crystalized a character development point I'd been having with a long fic I'm working on and gave me the key for why the character is going to do what that character is going to do. t hugs and kisses

Part of me is horrified for using a classic author to drive a piece of vampire fanfic, the other part is patting me on the head and going "You're so smart, using all your resources, go, you." Guess which part I'm listening to.

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I think I approach 'literary criticm' in an odd way-- I was an undergraduate Literature major, and about 1/2 way through I really discovered that what I loved about literature was not necessarily the language-- but what the literature of a time told me about it's people and how that compared to today's worldview.

Yeah. We did integrated studies, so lit was tied in with myth was tied in with history and politics. It meant that the one time I had a class where things weren't integrated, I was bored stiff.

Which is probably why I'm the Surfacing weirdo, because Dani's point:

To me that's why Surfacing will not be the canonical Atwood book; because she was consciously trying to write the Great Canadian Novel it's not universal enough.

while probably correct as to why it will be something like Cat's Eye instead, is exactly *why* I would put it in. Though for those of you at home, if you must read one Atwood, make it Lady Oracle, which is her most entertaining novel.

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