The politics of literature

       Two black school board members in a San Francisco district, Steve

    Phillips and Keith Jackson, would require that non-white authors

    dominate the literature requirements in high school English classes.

    That 7 of the 10  books be authored by non-white.

         If we reflect that what distinguished great from mediocre literature

    is its enduring power to interest, move, and inspire human beings simply

    as human beings, no harm is done by such  ethnic concentration.

       If the assigned books arouse the student's interest in the whole

    world of literature, then the English teacher has achieved one of his

    or her main goals. Great literature - no matter by whom it is written-

    is never crudely propagandistic even when it is a highly subjective

    interpretation of the author's life experiences.

       If a book is both entertaining and rings true , the reader will soon

    discover independently. It just takes a little patience and openness to

    another's soul.

        It is a commonplace but profound truth that the human heart has been

    the same everywhere and for many centuries now. The long dead of ancient

    Egypt, Athens, and  Rome can - if we listen to them through the voice

    of our common humanity- still instruct us with their hard won wisdom.

       I myself  have been very influenced by the Stoic philosophy of the

    Roman writer Seneca. In English literature, I cannot imagine dispensing

    with writers who are white European or American males and females - and

    also dead for centuries.

         The Autobiography of Malcolm X has touched me just as deeply. Even

    though there is no lack of " rubbish " here, it will survive as great

    literature.

         Who reads James T. Farrell  nowadays or Theodore Dreiser on their

    own, not as a wearisome course assignment? I do ! The world they describe

    to my imagination fits in very well with the world I inhabit.

       What the high student -who has not been turned on to reading and great

    literature- does not realize is that ten books a year is a paltry reading

    assignment.For the non-reader every book is an intellectual ordeal and so

    he is more likely to be cranky about what is handed to him.

        As Isaac Asimov pointed out in one of his brilliant essays, READERS

    in general are a minority in this society - 1% of the population is in

    the HABIT of reading. From this perspective,perhaps, it makes sense to

    quibble about what novels should be read in a high school English

    class: those few novels will be the only ones the majority ever reads

    in a whole lifetime. Television will certainly claim their souls !

        Black, White, Yellow - what difference does it make ? the MAJORITY

    of us are us are confirmed non-readers, loyal fans of the BOOB TUBE !

       But there is a price to pay -a nation of impoverished souls.