Comment from Walter Cummins

The canon is on its last legs. From the list of favored works, it might not seem that way. With few exceptions, the top choices look very much like the reading list I taught in a core literature course forty years ago—the Bible, Homer, Plato, Shakespeare. But that’s misleading. Dr. Adams’ report notes that this is a minority list, with even the Bible receiving no more than twenty percent of the votes. We enter the 21^st century fragmented in our assumptions about what educated people should read and know.

I assume that the fraction of presidents united enough to cling to the old canon received their education around the same time as I did mine, and it sunk in. They embrace the Great Books. One wonders what sort of list would emerge if the same survey were given a decade or two from now when those leaders have moved on to an administrative Valhalla. Would their successors scatter even further, with no single book accumulating more than, say, five percent of the total votes?

The current results aren’t surprising. Those making the selections come from an international association. A list from a solely American group probably would have been more unified. But that’s beside the point. We live in an increasingly boundary-less world in the realm of information and ideas. While American films, brand names, and food chains may be ubiquitous; while American popular writers, even in translation, dominate many best seller lists, American decisions about essential readings do not. That’s fortunate. We don’t want a homogeneous world, and we all would benefit by discovering what else is out there, important to someone somewhere. Perhaps the next list should compile the top fifty or even five hundred. Think of how much we would all learn.

Walter Cummins is Emeritus Professor of English as well as Editor Emeritus of The Literary Review.