David Gilmour's Transgression

Novelist David Gilmour has apparently made quite a stir with recent comments about the courses he teaches at U of T. Students are holding protest rallies. A fellow U of T professor has posted a rather personal online rebuttal. The chair of the U of T English department has publicly declared himself “appalled and deeply upset.”

Goodness—what exactly did Gilmour say?

The entire transcript is here. He says he only teaches books he himself loves, and, “unfortunately,” none of the authors happen to be Canadian, women, or Chinese. All of them seem to be “serious heterosexual guys.”

I find it hard to see anything objectionable here. I think it has to be either 1. that Gilmour is teaching only books he likes, as opposed to some official canon of great literature, or 2. that Gilmour does not happen to really like any books by women (except, he notes, Virginia Woolf), Chinese authors, Canadian authors, or openly homosexual authors.

But it can't be 2., can it? After all, there's no disputing taste. Gilmour's taste is certainly not the same as mine either, but to object to this would be ridiculous.

So it must be 1, that he is departing from the accepted canon? Yet Gilmour's chosen authors are in any way obscure: Tolstoy, Chekhov, Proust, Elmore Leonard, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Phillip Roth. Surely all are, in fact, in the accepted canon, except perhaps for Roth, who is too recent to have a traditional place. So this can't be it.

And the bigger problem here is that English departments themselves have long ago departed from any accepted canon. Quite possibly they shouldn't have, but it's a bit late to blame Gilmour for this. The only issue should be whether the books and authors studies are clearly stated on the syllabus. Which, in Gilmour's case, they were.

So how, then, are books now supposed to be chosen for a course, if the traditional canon is to be ignored, yet it is not supposed to be the personal preference of the prof?

The answer, sadly, is painfully obvious. They are supposed to be chosen for political reasons, on the basis of affirmative action. Properly, whether the author is male or female, Canadian, homosexual, or Chinese, should not have any bearing on the literary quality of a book. But these days, English departments are all about politics, and have little interest in the literary quality of a book. One must include women, gays, and no doubt other designated groups in any curriculum. One need not, on the other hand, include heterosexual males; one can just bill the course "women authors," or "queer studies," and then it's okay to exclude men.

Indeed, quite apart from personal taste, it may well be, in the real world, that women have just not written as many good books as have men. This is quite likely, given that women have written many fewer books overall. It may well be, in the real world, that homosexuals have not written as many good books as heterosexuals. This is quite likely, given that homosexuals have written many fewer books overall. The same might be said of Canadians, or Chinese authors, at least Chinese authors accessible in English. Why should David Gilmour be held responsible for this? And why should students nevertheless be forced to waste their precious and expensive college time with inferior books in defiance of this fact?

Gilmour deserves the Order of Canada for this.