The Extra 649
Ers and students may grumble when they have to pay tribute to the canon, but by reading the proclaimed classics, they pay that tribute nonetheless. Occasionally, however, their resistance to one star in the canon- as well as their enthusiasm for a work not yet enshrined- can lead to revaluation. Academic journals, too, can give or refuse their imprimatur in ways that can heighten or diminish almost any literary reputation. Nor should we forget anthologists, who both cater to and shape readers’ tastes. Last, but certainly not least, movie and TV producers can boost an author’s reputation by dramatizing his work, but such treatment can ultimately prove a mixed blessing or a curse. Willa Cather has done well without Hollywood’s help, whereas it is a moot point whether the movie moguls have ever done anything beneficial for Mark Twain.
All these participants in the process bring more or less weight to bear on it, and they exert their influence according to a wide range of standards. A critic such as Rene Wellek judges what he reads largely from a formalist perspective; Max Westbrook also considers such aesthetic factors but may give more importance to the ontological. Melody Graulich, like Nina Baym, champions Feminism as fervently as Yvor Winters pushed the cause of his particular brand of moralism. Many other social, philosophical, and aesthetic view are part of what the CLHUS editors refer to as the “complex processes of cultural transmission.” To all of the must be added the regional element; and the chapters by Fred Erisman and Martin Bucco in LHAW make it clear that scholars such a J. Frank Dobie, George R. Stewart, and J. Golden Taylor have convincingly argued the case for a literary Regionalism of the American West.
What has not been sufficiently stressed, however, is that the regional is always an element in any literary judgment. Why? First, because of the way memory works. Experimental psychologists such as Alan Baddeley tell us that memory functions best when it has a strong sense of place. We generally remember best whatever is associated with the places closest and most important to us. It is also true, however, that the places closest to us are not necessarily those most important to us. James Joyce
“The Psychology of Remembering and Forgetting,” Wilfson College Lectures, Oxford, 26 Jan. 1988