July 17, 2015

Cass Sunstein says "Gone With the Wind should not be mistaken for a defense of slavery or even the Confederacy."

"[Margaret] Mitchell is interested in individuals rather than ideologies or apologetics. She parodies the idea of 'the Cause,' and she has no interest in 'States’ Rights.' She is elegiac not about politics, but about innocence, youth, memory, love (of all kinds), death, and loss (which helps make the book transcend the era it depicts). Irrevocably stuck in the past, and a bit of a ghost, Ashley Wilkes reminds Scarlett of 'the sad magic of old half-forgotten songs,' and 'the far-off yelping of possum dogs in the dark swamp under cool autumn moons and the smell of eggnog bowls, wreathed with holly at Christmas time,' and 'Stuart and Brent with their long legs and their red hair and their practical jokes,' and 'a whisper and a fragrance that was Ellen,' Scarlett’s mother, who died during the war. Mitchell draws a sharp distinction between those pathetic souls who keep hearing that sad magic, like Ashley, and those who want to move forward, like Scarlett and Rhett. Her own heart ultimately sides with the latter. But she also cherishes, and tries to capture, the magic, the yelping, the practical jokes, and a mother’s whisper.... [The Confederate flag] should be taken down. But even so, it would be a mistake to disparage the sad magic of half-forgotten songs. Americans have good reason to remember the sweetness, and the deaths, of the countless real-world Tartletons—and never to dishonor those who grieve for them."

From "Finding Humanity in Gone With the Wind/The classic novel shows that individual lives cannot be reduced to competing sets of political convictions."

89 comments:

buwaya said...

He (Sunstein) condescends of course.
And like most American intellectuals, he is awfully parochial.
GWTW works in many contexts, and it does so because the themes are very common.
It works well in the context of Chinese history, with its many catastrophes, from which the nostalgic survivors eventually rebuilt something much like the previous golden age.
The Chinese were extremely tenacious Ashley Wilkes'.
It works very well in the Philippines, with its pre-WWII nostalgia, of a more gracious era that was similarly blown away. One could easily write a Filipino GWTW.
And so on.

tim maguire said...

I suppose I shouldn't criticize him since he's on the right side of this issue. But it's for completely the wrong reasons. The reason Gone With the Wind shouldn't be removed from the canon is that it's wrong to airbrush history. It's not ok to ban setting stories in the old South.

But then, liberals never did embrace Enlightenment values.

Ann Althouse said...

"removed from the canon"

What canon? It's never been a respected novel in the literary sense.

It's very entertaining though. I read it when I was a teenager and felt very strongly that there could never be another book as emotionally powerful.

buwaya said...

"It's never been a respected novel in the literary sense. "

This is a matter of intellectual fashion.

Pete said...

At last, I agree with Althouse about something: It, too, read it as a high school senior and found it incredibly entertaining. Don't sell it short.

Mary Beth said...

It's never been a respected novel in the literary sense.

Never? According to the article, it won a Pulitzer.

buwaya said...

It is not respected in academic circles.
That may say more about academics than the novel.

JAORE said...

Yes, Pulitzer prize winning novel. I thought that was a mark of respect, but our hostess has spoken otherwise.

Are OLD standards of respect to be disrespected or, at least, rejudged every few years?

FWIW I never cared for the book or the movie. But I don't hold myself as the arbiter of what is worthy of respect.

PB said...

Sorry Cass. Your side let the hounds loose. Where do you think that white privileged life of Scarlett's came from? No picking and choosing now. Cass, you defend Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind that presents a moral view of the South and slavery so you should be tarred and feathered!

Anonymous said...

After the higher-education bubble bursts, the professors should hope there's someone around to do for their bygone way of life what Mitchell did for the Old South.

Michael K said...

"It's never been a respected novel in the literary sense. "

Hilarious. How many "literary novels" written since 1900 have you read ?

Just hilarious. Do you know what is being pushed by the academic left as "literary?"

Michael K said...

Just for the hostess. Best novels of 20th century by Wiki.

Here's one or two.

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (Scotland)
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling


Just hilarious.


Ann Althouse said...

"Canon" to my ear implies stuff that would be assigned in a college course, a literature course, not a pop culture course.

That's not GWTW. Sorry, it's not even arguable.

Michael said...

The professor is right. GWTW would not be considered a serious work of fiction in any English department in the country. This is partly because it is a one-off, partly because the writing was entirely too straight-forward to be taken as a work of art w/ a capital A. Now, sadly, the same people who dismiss GWTW, who sniff at it, give high praise to Toni Morrison, a mediocrity on stilts. Or to Angelou, a sub-mediocrity.

Her contemporaries were F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. T.S. Eliot was active during this period. John Steinbeck, D H Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, William Faulkner, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh.

See the problem?

rcocean said...

This country just keeps getting dumber and dumber. BTW, more people have GWTW as the favorite novel then anything else.

In any case, its really Chick Lit. So if the girls want to ban it - OK with me.

rcocean said...

And English Professors and most literary critics today are clowns and cultural Marxists. Reading them is a waste of time. Occasionally someone like Paglia will say something interesting but for the most part they are dull dogs.

Laslo Spatula said...

"Miss Babama, I can't do that."

"Mandinga, I have seen you naked, and I have seen you fight dogs and chickens and other negroes: you are ALL man."

"But Miss Babama, I is a negro. I is not meant to be with a white woman."

"Oh, my gentle Mandinga: you are black, black as night on a night with no moon and only the sound of coons scraping at the porch, but you are a Man, and I am a Woman."

"Yessum Ma'am, you IS a woman, but whether it is day or night I am black as coal."

"My lovely Mandinga, do you not know that white women have a coal shaft?"

"Whatever is you mean, Miss Babama?"

"I mean, Mandinga, when I bend over my blessed white birth canal is in the front, but my coal shaft is in the back, waiting."

"Miss Babama, can I please go back to the shed and eats ham-hocks? I is mighty tireds."

"My Mandinga, are you too tired to give a white woman what she so desperately needs?"

"Your husband, the Massah Babama done whipped my nuts to acorns: I is not much able to do much of nothing, much less plow a coal shaft."

"That bastard: he sleeps with the women negroes and then comes to my bed smelling of, well, negro."

"Ma'am, if I might say: Massah Babama once tried to get me to fill his coal shaft. I didn't do it, so I was a-whipped and whipped."

"That is SO horrible, my Mandinga: it just isn't right."

"I didn't think it was right neither but he whipped my ass."

"My Mandinga: have you seen my husband's Japanese Exchange Student?"

"Why yes Ma'am, she sure do bend over a lot."

"What if you were to take her roughly, negro-style?"

"I think I might just rip her into eensy pieces, Miss Babama. I'se don'ts wanna do thats."

"What if i rubbed sweet lavender soap into your big negro back while you ripped her into eensy pieces?"

"I thinks I can do that, Miss Babama."

"I can see in your pants tat you are ready, Mandinga."

"I is have a thing for the lil' Japanese girls, Miss Babama: they is white as cotton."

"I'll get Massah's Suki, my big handsome negro man."

""Miss Babama: just remember -- I don't eats no fish..."


I am Laslo.

buwaya said...

Long before Spanish philosophers and academics canonized Cervantes (Unamuno et al), Don Quixote was a bit of popular fun, light entertainment written in a straightforward, popular idiom, with a pile of parodies included. Not the formal verse, full of classical references, that was the high style of the time. Cervantes parodied that too.

War and Peace is a soap opera, with a bunch of half baked philosophizing inserted. You can take all that out with no loss. Without it, how is Gone With the Wind much different?

Jason said...

The Canterbury Tales are totally literature. NOT GONE WITH THE WIND, YOU PHILISTINE!!!

Jason said...

What canon? It's never been a respected novel in the literary sense.

It sure as shit is a respected movie.

Jason said...

"It's never been a respected novel in the literary sense. "

When it came out in 1936, it got the National Book Award as best novel of the year.

It won the Pulitzer for Literature the following year.

But fiddle-dee-dee.




Craig Landon said...

What canon? It's never been a respected novel in the literary sense.

What respecters are you referring to?

Left Bank of the Charles said...

It belongs in the same canon as The Great Gatsby, and Carrie.

Michael K said...

" Sorry, it's not even arguable."

You mean like global warming?

Just hilarious. If you don't get the joke, sometimes you are the butt of it.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I think Michael's right, and his profile says he's from the South. The Sweet, Sunny South. Anyway, most people know of it through the movie. Something can tell an important piece of history and not be canonized literature. GWTW has a lot of value in showing the way the South romanticized their way of life, but that doesn't mean the author did anything especially innovative with the original medium. Something similar could be said about Star Wars. Both were incredibly important and innovative films, but nothing special as far as narrative story-telling goes.

Rob said...

I nominate Portnoy's Complaint for the canon. There's a story you can get your hands around.

Lydia said...

Sarah Lawrence College doesn't disparage Gone With the Wind -- a course there on fiction techniques even considers it "a novel of literary or social value written by a woman", alongside Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Another example is Trinity College, which features the book in a course on Southern writers; other writers taught in the course are Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, and Flannery O'Connor.

There must be more such examples out there.

Mt.Roberts attorney said...

Every now and then, our hostess wanders out onto thin ice. But thankfully, her readers always rescue her.

George Grady said...

It's on TIME magazine's best 100 English-language novels since 1923.

And on Newsweek's meta-list of top 100 books of all time.

And Le Monde's 100 books of the 20th century.

But I'm sure that Ann's right that no one takes it seriously as literature.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

The same is no doubt true of the 50 Shades of Gray and Twilight franchises, George.

It's amazing how vulgar these conservatives are, to lack any concept of the difference between popularity and importance.

I suppose the world's best chefs should now be tutored in the art of making Big Macs.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Over a 50 billion served, but no one takes it seriously as a form of innovative cuisine? Oh no!

Michael K said...

"It's amazing how vulgar these conservatives are, to lack any concept of the difference between popularity and importance. "

OMG ! Ritmo woke up. It must be afternoon.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

No matter how few surgeries are taking place in Michael K's theater, his gallery is always filled with peanuts.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Old habits must die hard for the restless and senile. This is how I imagine M.K.'s day goes:

Wake up around 4 AM. Play some shuffleboard.

Scrub in around 5 or 6. Ask the fellow nursing home residents nearby if they'd like to have a free hemorrhoidectomy or bunion removal.

Get slapped by one of the nurses or orderlies.

Repeat until stronger restraints applied.

Stay in a catatonic stupor until it's time to start sundowning.

MisterBuddwing said...

Never read the novel. Saw the movie in theaters twice. Actually, I find the story of the making of Gone with the Wind more interesting than the film itself.

As for the novel's literary merits, there was a very interesting informal review by none other than F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was trying to make a living in Hollywood, and who was one of a slew of writers hired to work on the script. In a letter to his daughter Scottie, Fitzgerald wrote:

"I read it—it is a good novel—not very original, in fact leaning heavily on The Old Wives’ Tale, Vanity Fair, and all that has been written on the Civil War. There are no new characters, new techniques, new observations—none of the elements that make literature— especially no new examination into human emotions. But on the other hand it is interesting, surprisingly honest, consistent and workmanlike throughout, and I felt no contempt for it but only a certain pity for those who consider it the supreme achievement of the human mind."

Maybe I ought to read The Old Wives' Tale and Vanity Fair - and then Gone with the Wind.

William said...

I think the novel was ahead of its time on women's rights. There's a narrative drive to the book that keeps you turning the pages. It's been read with enjoyment and affection by several generations of readers. There's something substantial to it........The novel was a huge best seller in both post war Japan and Germany. The message those readers took from the book was that conquest by the Yankees was not so totally awful and that life goes on after the Gotterdamerung. So just on that basis the novel achieved a positive social end.......Has anyone ever read Vanity Fair. I got the sense that the Scarlet/Melanie dichotomy was modeled after that of Becky Sharp and Melanie (?) in Thackerary's novel.....,Rhett Butler was a cool guy. He was the coolest guy in Atlanta. Rick was the coolest guy n Casablanca. Is Rick part of the canon? Well, yes. Guys like Rhett and Rick get under your skin and you try to be like them. They're not literary figures like the type you meet in a Nabokov novel. They're part of you and a living presence.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

William - good point. The daring follow-up question would be to ask how many of the commenters here identify with Scarlett O'Hara. Ha hahaha.

traditionalguy said...

Cases Sunstein is mostly correct this time.

A few thoughts on Margaret Mitchell. She was a young newspaper reporter of some talent who wrote down as best she could the stories from her Aunts and uncles about the War's effect on the agricultural communities about 20 miles south of the Railroad created mercantile distribution center grown up where the RR from the east coast met the RR from the Midwest at the first flat place after the Appalacan Mountain chain separating them petered out.

From there more RRs branched out to the west into upper and lower Alabama and down to Macon and Savannah ending in northern Florida.

The wealth was in that distribution business and banking it required.for an inland port city created by crossing Railroads, and named Atlanta. The poor farmers just serviced the needs of the city folks. They had few slaves because they could not afford them.

The success of GWTW comes from the rare breed of true stories of these women folks remembered and theirinteresting relationship with the cosmopolitan (for the South) culture of rich folks a day's journey away by wagon or 30 minutes away by train from Jonesboro in Clayton County where the Mitchell family lived. In the war. The final scenes of part I of the movie are historically accurate as well going south from Atlanta through the actual battlefields of the loss at Jonesboro to reach the Fitzgerald and Mitchell farms.

The Lost Cause romance was always a winning story that Margaret Mitchell through in to sell her novel, The courage of a woman named Scarlett was the story. All of the rest was mostly true background gone wild once Hollywood made the Plantation myths of great aristocrats from Charleston and New Orleans areas a part of it,

Lewis Wetzel said...


"Cass Sunstein says "Gone With the Wind should not be mistaken for a defense of slavery or even the Confederacy."
Even when the heroes were defending slavery and defending the Confederacy?

Saint Croix said...

What canon? It's never been a respected novel in the literary sense.

It's actually the most popular movie ever seen in the world. You have to adjust for inflation. (No idea how the book rates, I suspect the Bible is bigger).

It's not a critical darling. For instance I kinda hate the movie; the book is way better. For me the #1 movie will always be Casablanca. (It was never Citizen Kane and damn if it's Vertigo, a good movie, one of Hitchcock's flops, maybe #9 in the Hitchcock canon. Hitch has his own canon!)

But the impulse to attack it and smite it and blot it out is evil and wrong, and Sunstein is right to resist this war. He is fighting back, so cheer the guy. This is a legal impulse to resist the mob. Good for him! This is why we have lawyers and law professors, to protect our damn republic from the mob of impulsive French people who want to decapitate bad guys and wipe out our history.

Speaking of "impulsive French people," have you read Truffaut's book on Hitchcock, the master of suspense? Amazing! Best book on film ever written by anybody.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Even when the heroes were defending slavery and defending the Confederacy?

Those weren't the heroes. The hero was Rhett, at the end - moving on with his life. Whether he would have been called a "scalawag" or not I couldn't remember, but it's immaterial to that point.

Lewis Wetzel said...

I read the book about 40 years ago. It is a romance novel. The only interesting bit is that at the end Scarlett realizes that it was the flaws in her own character that cost her the love of both Ashley and Rhet. Then she forgets it and thinks of something else. It's nice at setting an ante-bellum mood, if you like that sort of thing. Ffter the war the novel is steeped in nostalgia for it.
You can read it online here:
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mitchell/margaret/gone/index.html
Australia has different copyright terms than the US.

Freeman Hunt said...

I've only seen the movie. The difficult part of that is only liking Melanie but having to mostly watch the other people.

Ambrose said...

Ughh. I live in a world where people like Cass Sunstein get to pass on novels they could barely read, let alone write.

Lewis Wetzel said...

R&B, Rhett was a mercenary, but at the end he fought for the South. The Yankees would have hung him if they had caught him. Rhett liked lost causes.
But I read the book so long ago I might be mixing up the novel GWTW and the film GWTH.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Also, I think Scarlett was the hero. At least in the book. Everything was shown through her eyes.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Olivia Dehavilland is still living. She had her 99th birthday this month. According Wikipedia, she was born in Tokyo in 1916. Dad was a lawyer, mother some kind of stage person. Arrived in the US in 1919, father left the family and returned to Tokyo to marry their Japanese housekeeper. Olivia's sister was the actress Joan Fontaine. A cousin founded the dehavilland aircraft company. What an interesting life.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Also, I think Scarlett was the hero. At least in the book. Everything was shown through her eyes.

That's not what makes a hero. The end of The Sopranos used the perspective of what literally went through Tony's eyes, and he was an anti-hero at best.

GWTW was about romanticizing a lifestyle, and the greatest romanticizer of it gets dumped at the end of innumerable ploys to bait and switch whichever beau du jour of the moment suited her purposes best.

I'm of course referring to the movie, because that is how I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the population familiar with it, knows it.

William said...

If you think GWTW presents a distorted picture of our Civil War, try Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls. The Spanish Civil War has inspired far more crap than anything written about the Civil War. And, unlike Margaret Mitchell, no one ever call bullshit on it.

Michael K said...

"Scrub in around 5 or 6. Ask the fellow nursing home residents nearby if they'd like to have a free hemorrhoidectomy or bunion removal. "

So, you didn't wake up ? This is all a wet dream ?

Great comments need great minds, Where's yours ?

chuck said...

War and Peace is a soap opera

So are Dostoevsky's early stories, or maybe pulp fiction would be a better description. I blame Balzac. They have a lot of narrative drive as a result. I think that style is a feature of even Dostoevsky's later work. Much literary work puts me to sleep and is a chore to read, so I appreciate the occasional canon writer who can keep things moving.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Michael K - I mean, Scarlett - everyone already knows your proud, uninformed opinion on the actual topic of the thread.

The question is, how many peanuts are you going to throw to distract everyone from the fact that that's all you know or care about any of this?

Go wipe yourself, excuse your presence, and bid the hostess farewell until you can act less senile and more like someone deserving of adult participation.

narciso said...

War and Peace, also Dr. zhivago, which relates families involved in great social turmoil, from the latter czarist years to the russian civil war, an epic tale.

eddie willers said...

I have long stated (and still stand by) that Gone With The Wind is the greatest movie ever made and that Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made.

And I am also puzzled over "Vertigo" myself. I read where it had recently replaced CK on many "Best" lists so I went back this week and saw it again.

I agree...its not even in the top ten of Hitchcock films and I doubt it would make a best 100 of mine.

narciso said...

Citizen Kane, has a singular focus, a portrait of Hearst by the one person whose ego was greater than him, yes I don't get the vertigo listing at all,

Jason said...

Vertigo was good but I really prefer "High Anxiety."

Saint Croix said...

I agree...its not even in the top ten of Hitchcock films

It's a good movie but it has no suspense. None!

Truffaut was determine to put Hitchcock at the top of the canon. And he convinced all the critics that he was right. But the funny thing about critics, they can't love Hitch for the same reason that ordinary people love him. I mean, Hitch is fun, fun, fun. If you're like me and you love his work, you probably love 20 movies or more. The critics are like, "Do you have anything dreary? We really like dreary." So this commercial flop is said to be the greatest film ever made.

I had disdain for it the first time I saw it. I was amazed at it the second time I saw it. And the third time I saw it, I was bored by that slow ass car chase in the middle of the movie. I had to fast-forward through that thing. He follows that car forever!

Anyway, a suspense thrill-ride it is not. And that's what makes it a critical darling. (Same reason you don't see any Marx brothers in the top movies--comedians are fun! Also, comedians skewer the authorities and man, authorities hate that shit).

Lewis Wetzel said...

One explanation for the modern age's split between art enjoyed by the people and art enjoyed by the critics is that, after World War One, the intellectual class made a deliberate effort to create art that could not be enjoyed by masses.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Sure. But still - not everything that is enjoyed is art.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Lady Chatterly's Lover should be required reading for teens. It will make them think that sex is a boring waste of time:

He turned again to look at her. She was kneeling and holding her two hands slowly forward, blindly, so that the chicken should run in to the mother-hen again. And there was something so mute and forlorn in her, compassion flamed in his bowels for her.

Without knowing, he came quickly towards her and crouched beside her again, taking the chick from her hands, because she was afraid of the hen, and putting it back in the coop. At the back of his loins the fire suddenly darted stronger.

He glanced apprehensively at her. Her face was averted, and she was crying blindly, in all the anguish of her generation's forlornness. His heart melted suddenly, like a drop of fire, and he put out his hand and laid his fingers on her knee.

"You shouldn't cry," he said softly.

But then she put her hands over her face and felt that really her heart was broken and nothing mattered any more.

He laid his hand on her shoulder, and softly, gently, it began to travel down the curve of her back, blindly, with a blind stroking motion, to the curve of her crouching loins. And there his hand softly, softly, stroked the curve of her flank, in the blind instinctive caress.


"Compassion flamed in his bowels for her."
Now that's writing!

Anonymous said...
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Matt Sablan said...

"Also, I think Scarlett was the hero."

-- I think "protagonist" works better for her.

Matt Sablan said...

Also: I don't know WHY a serious student of literature SHOULDN'T read what is popular if they want to really understand what is going on in literature. I haven't read 50 Shades of Gray, but can I really weigh in on the current trends in literature if I'm not aware of one of the biggest current books?

Pretending that things like 50 Shades of Gray, Twilight or Harry Potter are not noteworthy literary moments is elitist garbage that will, likely, cause us to have a distorted view of exactly what was happening in literary history.

Anonymous said...

It may romanticize that era, but the vast majority of the book takes place outside it. After the Wilkes' BBQ, which takes place in the beginning of the book/ movie, the war begins and it's all over for that lifestyle. Poof. In hindsight, it does draw an excellent equivalency between slave and prison labor that is fully relevant today. (Post war, Scarlett can't afford 'free darkies' and so relies on even cheaper prisoner labor - sound familiar?)

I've read that Mitchell was annoyed that Scarlett became the symbolic figure in the public's mind since Melanie was meant to be the true symbol of the Old South. However, it is Scarlett's book. She's the one that goes hungry, is reduced to rags and does anything to save the burned out hull of Tara. In the romantic tragedy dept., I was never all that impressed with Rhett waking up before her considering she was only 28 at the end of the book/movie and he was 40.

Ann Althouse said...

"I've only seen the movie. The difficult part of that is only liking Melanie but having to mostly watch the other people."

You should read the book. Melanie is much more appealing in the book, and there is much, much more about Scarlett's mother. The mother is a big role model, and Scarlett struggles with her own dissimilarity to her mother. Some term like "great lady" is used to represent this model, and Melanie comes much closer to it, which is a struggle for Scarlett, who wants Melanie's husband. There's also much more about the prostitute Belle, who barely appears in the movie. The heroism of Belle moved me quite a bit, because Belle meets the "great lady" standard even though she's seen as not fit to be in the presence of the non-prostitute females. Rhett has a lot to say about the relative greatness of women. There is so much more to this theme about women in the book, and I'm remembering this from reading it 50 years ago. I'd say if you found you like Melanie, you're seeing the tip of the iceberg of what is in the book. A completely different movie could have been made using the material about women and downplaying the scenic war story that made it a spectacle as a movie.

Ann Althouse said...

Compare it to the much more respected book "War and Peace." Most people who read it care about the detailed characters and their interactions and not the war scenes, which are something like half the book. Some people tell you to just skip the war chapters. The good parts are the ones where the female characters are involved.

Ann Althouse said...

"The good parts are the ones where the female characters are involved."

I mean, that's what many people say.

I haven't read W&P since I was in college 40 years ago. I had a seminar on Tolstoy, and you'd better believe I took all the chapters seriously and wasn't skipping anything or deciding it wasn't important. That would be like law students not reading all the opinions in a Supreme Court case.

Fernandinande said...

[The Confederate flag] should be taken down.

The flag of a modern slave-state is OK because nearly all its citizens are slaves and the slavers are commies:
Cuban Flag Goes Up at State Department on Monday

tim maguire said...

Blogger Ann Althouse said...'"removed from the canon"

What canon? It's never been a respected novel in the literary sense.'


This is the comment section of a blog, I'm not going to spend a lot of time selecting just the right word. "Canon" is sufficient to the purpose. Just as, despite being an editor by profession, Im not going to worry about every typo.

I'm sure it's not personal, but it's getting hard not to take it personally that you seem to respond to my comments only when you want to quibble about some minor point or accuse me of missing some point that I didn't miss, I just didn't bring it up because I didn't have anything to say about it. The odd thing is, you never go after the posts that practically ask for a response (lke when I bring up your vote for Obama), it's only the harmless posts that draw criticism.

campy said...

"...you never go after the posts that practically ask for a response (lke when I bring up your vote for Obama)..."

Was there a good alternative?

Gahrie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gahrie said...

The good parts are the ones where the female characters are involved.

Of course.

Sometimes I think you are performance art. Then I remember you teach at Wisconsin.

wildswan said...

After the Civil War the South had to rebuild its economy which was shattered by the loss of the free use of slaves' labor and by the having the war fought over its territory with consequent destruction and by the death in battle of many Southerners and by the loss of all wealth invested in Confederate bonds and by the years of the blockade and by the loss of four years of cotton harvest sales. All whites went from rich to poor except for a few semi-criminals who were blockade runners and whose money was not in Confederate cash.

Margaret Mitchell made a dramatic story of the fall into abject poverty and the climb back out by the Southern whites, including the relationship to industrialization as then practiced by unrestricted capitalism in the North. The defiance of misfortune and of Northern capitalism was symbolized by the Confederate flag

But the Confederate flag also symbolized an attempt to form a a confederacy of slave-holding states. Slaves worked all their lives without owning anything even rights at the end. Most were refused any education. The Civil War freed them to begin to work for themselves, to educate themselves. When the South had partly reestablished a working economy and had regained political rights, after 1876, the Southern whites established segregation over a period of years. This too is symbolized by the Confederate flag.

The establishment of segregation didn't happen in the period covered by Gone With The Wind.

A great novel would have integrated the fortunes of the Southern whites with the fortunes of the Southern blacks in the period before and after the Civil War in the period before slavery was abolished, in the Civil War aftermath and in the period when segregation was established (thus partially re-establishing the injustice of slavery). The canon of "great novels" are novels that establish a wide vision, not a narrow race-based vision.

That how a lit major trained in the canon-of-great-books tradition sees it.

Phil 314 said...

"Canon" to my ear implies stuff that would be assigned in a college course, a literature course, not a pop culture course.

Sorry Professor but this so reminds me of Taranto's catch phrase "Fox Butterfield, Is That You?"

Saint Croix said...

I think "protagonist" works better for her.

That was my impression. Scarlett is an anti-hero. Abusive, arrogant, conceited, shallow. She's interesting because she's so bad!

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Pretending that things like 50 Shades of Gray, Twilight or Harry Potter are not noteworthy literary moments is elitist garbage that will, likely, cause us to have a distorted view of exactly what was happening in literary history.

Hahahahahahaaawbbawwahahahbabhaaaaahaaaaaa… etc.

Sure. Then go with Letters to Penthouse, Dan Savage, Ann Landers, cartoons and all the internet porn as well.

What a joke the right-wing makes of itself.

William said...

@wildswan: Your comment is thoughtful and interesting. I would like to point out that nowhere in War and Peace does Tolstoy address the plight of the Russian serfs. Margaret Mitchell at least gives the slaves speaking parts and, in the case of Mamie, a featured role.

William said...

Interesting to note that among black people Mamie has not fallen into the same disrepute that Uncle Tom has.

Sam L. said...

The HORROR! The horror...of agreeing with Cass Sunstein if that quote is what he said.

Bilwick said...

My impression of Cass Sunstein is that he ties with Thomas Frank for the Linda Lovelace Award for State-fellating. (Don't worry, Robert Cook and grage mahal--I'm sure the award will be yours one day.) So I'm immediately suspicious when he likes GWTW for teaching the lesson of "Coming to terms with history." I suspect that just as the South had to accept the defeat of the Confederacy and the disappearance of antebellum society, Sunstein would like those of us who foolishly persist in believing our lives and property belong to ourselves and not to the State to come to terms with History (that's "history" with a Marxian upper-case "H") and submit quietly to the coming serfdom.

Bilwick said...

Addendum to the above: Sorry I left Rhythm and Balls out of my post. Don't worry, R & B: stay on your knees and you might snatch the award away from garage mahal and Robert Cook.

Anonymous said...

You have to mention Melanie's great flaw, which is that good-hearted as she is, she doesn't see through the stupidity of the Cause and the War. Both Scarlett and Rhett do from the beginning, if only to use them to their own advantage.

Zach said...

People are overreacting to a fairly banal observation by Althouse.

The Canon, to the extent that it exists, is the set of artistically important pieces that are believed to be so by other people who are also artistically important. It's like a Google search, where links from highly rated sites count more. Being in The Canon is not a guarantee of quality, and quality isn't a guaranteed way in.

The quote from Fitzgerald above says it all. He's not dismissive -- he thinks it's a good book. But on an artistic level he sees it as a beach read.

Unknown said...

Scarlett was a a parasite longing for the "good old days' when feeding off of others was easy

The book is unusually ion one way, you don't read all tha many where the protgonists is that worthless a human being.

Rusty said...

Blogger campy said...
"...you never go after the posts that practically ask for a response (lke when I bring up your vote for Obama)..."

Was there a good alternative?


You can still ask that?

Robert Cook said...

"Scarlett was a a parasite longing for the 'good old days' when feeding off of others was easy."

I've never read the book, but I've seen the movie more than once, and I've always disliked Scarlett...because she is dislikable. However, she was not a parasite. She was vain, self-serving, selfish...but also strong-willed, adaptable, determined and courageous. She was the modern world emerging within the old world of the self-deluded southern aristocracy, who could not see their day, their way of life, was coming to its end. (And there are those in the south who are still not reconciled to that to this day.) She was a survivor, while so many around her weren't. As she said, "Tomorrow is another day." A survivor's credo. (Those with the character traits to survive long-term turmoil and calamity may not necessarily be teddy bears, but thorny, ornery people who refuse to submit to the inevitable and who will do whatever it takes to go on.)

(A much more likable fictional character, Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars--a character who preceded Burroughs' Tarzan--had a similar credo. When in the midst of seemingly inescapable peril, when his death seemed imminent, he would say to himself, "I still live.")

Lewis Wetzel said...

Robert, Burroughs inspired Robt. E. Howard, who gave Conan the Barbarian Crom, a god who gave life and little more. Robter Howard wrote some of the most viciously racist stories I have ever read. Black people, the descendants of slaves, living in backwaters in the South, abducting noble white people to sacrifice to their savage Gods. These stories don't get reprinted much.
There was a lot of really nasty racism in the US between 1900 and World War Two. Worse than the racism that existed before the Civil War, because it looked to science. Birth was all that mattered, man was all nature, no nurture. Every white man was better than any Black man, or Jew, or Oriental. The other races could play at nobility, but only with whites was it in the blood. I'm surprised our literary academics don't spend more time studying the period.