Indicting The Canon

"They are murdering all the young men, For half a century now, every day, They have hunted them down and killed them...You killed him! You killed him, In your goddamn Brooks Brothers suite, You son of a bitch." -Kenneth Rexroth

It is a common joke among my friends that rocks stars are always the lucky ones, they die at the peak of their career, at twenty or thirty. Writers always get screwed, they get to die after they've had the chance to get old, drunk and bitter, and realize that they'll never be appreciated in their lifetime. For just a few examples I'll throw out Jack Kerouac, Akutagawa, Artaud, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Melville, and more. To add salt to this wound there is also the irony that the publishing company and your relatives almost always end up getting the money that should have been yours after you die, as soon as the public decides it's cool to accept you.

This joke was played out more when my best friend Josh jokingly said, "There's something odd about being a writer. You get stuck going through your mid-life crisis in your twenties." We were talking about this while sitting around in my bedroom drinking beers and typing out excessive amounts of nonsense onto my computer.

In general the literary canon is a goddamn joke. Melville, now considered the quintessential American writer, with Moby Dick as the great American novel, was ignored in his time, and ridiculed. He was not respected at all. Now he is textbook material for every basic college course and people are calling him one of the greatest novelists ever to put pen to the page.

There is nothing that the literary canon won't reject upon appearance, and then lavish after its time. That immutable 'they' who decides what literature is 'good' and what literature is 'bad' are a more degrading force than most governments ever get the chance to be. They allow themselves to pass judgment on personal forms of expression. They get to tell you whether or not you are worth reading. Combine that with the whore of the publishing industry that aims for best sellers and pop hits, and the entire world of literature has become degraded and groveling on it's knees for scraps of genius to reappear again, and be heard.

It is better to reject the whole notion, and write for the hell of it, write for a small handful of people who will want to read, who will want to listen and respond, who will go on to create sincerely. To hell with fame. To hell with the literary canon and Oprah's Book Club, and the NY Times Best Seller list. Write. Ignore the critics. Be a genius by deciding to be a genius. Better that then to let them kill you, and then get rich on the blood spilled on your page after your death.

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