After a long career as a writer, editor, radio host, and communications consultant I decided at midlife to go back to graduate school, lured by the siren song of the much-discussed, much-debated, much-vilified Canon.

In other words, I  became … Canon Fodder.

This site takes a look at what happened during my  back-to-school years and noodles around with the question posed to me at a conference in 2015: Why dork around with books?

If you’re in  a hurry, or just not much of a word person (well, then hey, what are you doing here?), have listen to this:

How I Became Fodder for the Canon

This cultural moment – when the humanities, especially the field of English, are said to be in crisis – seems a good time to ask, Who put the “great” in the Great Books? Who decides what they are, and how does that decision morph and shape-shift over decades? Still, today, right now, what is the role, the hold, the pull, the inexorable force  exerted by a handful of characters, objects, notions: the madeleine, the Moor, the moors, the whale, the prince, the orphan, the adulteress, the heiress, the governess?

During my time in graduate school, I had a few encounters with the Canon, and I began a journey toward a new life as a teacher. You can start with this introduction if you’re an orderly type, or just jump in anywhere. If you’re particularly interested in my thoughts on teaching, have a look at this.  If you enjoy reading about someone struggling and floundering, you might want to turn to Learning How to Read a Poem. And if you want a little insight into why there’s been so much struggling and floundering, I have Something to Tell You. At the end of two years of education, two years of messing around with texts, I found I was far from my original goal of reading everything. But I did brush up against a few canonical writers, and the traces of those encounters are found here: Shakespeare, Woolf, Keats, Melville , Wharton. 

And if you want to hear the song that plays over and over in my head while thinking about this material, right this way …