I remember very clearly the first time I was properly introduced to the canon.

I knew what it was before then, of course, I'd been to a school that prided itself on sending people to Oxbridge and they'd made sure that I knew. Being one of those singled out as a candidate likely to be accepted, I was given extra lessons in order to familiarise me with the concepts that Oxbridge English applicants were supposed to know about.

A man called William Empson wrote a book called 'Seven types of Ambiguity', I learned (though not why the title was funny), T.S. Eliot also wrote criticism, there was this thing called the Canon…

That was all one needed.

I was ultimately rejected by the venerable dons of Jesus College, Oxford, having been assured by my bearded headmaster that he 'had lots of connections there'. This was the first time I had observed the hideousness of an England without an effective old boy network. I didn't know that it was called the Patriarchy then, but I doubt I'd have felt any happier if I had done…

Anyway.

The Canon.

I learned of the Canon from a living white Irish American male who had a habit of intellectually genuflecting before the works of those he considered great. His penitence at the Altars of Derrida and Morrison was a sight to be wondered at. He claimed his favourite book to be 'Finnegan's Wake', but I did not believe him.

He operated a weekly course - ostensibly a brief history of Academic thought about English Literature. I forget which unnecessarily academic title the course carried, 'aspects' of some 'identity' in some 'post' 'critical' such and such, you know the sort of thing. Week two, I believe, was the canon.

With much abridgement, the seminar may be summed up as follows:

There was this thing called the canon.

It said some things were better than others.

But the social forces present in the minds of those selecting the works of the canon govern which works they select!

The canon isn't trustworthy!

Fuck the canon!

Fin.

In two hours, I had learned all about this thing that had endured over centuries and then I had had it ripped down, challenged walked over and spat on by the brilliance of the radical academy.

The zeal in the eyes of the American!

The sense of victory I was impelled to feel!

Here is Moloch, he had said, Here is the Ziggurat of Marduk and now see the righteous thunderbolt come to topple the follies of men.

Ta-da.

* * *

In my less misanthropic days, I was in possession of a 'girlfriend'. In an example of the interdisciplinary, nay Alexandrian, nature of our university, she was studying French as well as English literature.

On several occasions, this girl, who was the purest reader I've ever met - able to enjoy reading with an innocence and sincerity I'd thought impossible in this saturated age - returned from English literature courses in tears and furies.

'They' were ruining it for her. 'They' were destroying a subject that was more justifiably hers than any other's.

I don't know if she was clear about what 'they' were doing, but she bore the look of Eve apprehending her nakedness and it was tragic to behold.

I had been ruined already, years of fashionable teenage misery had clawed innocence from my heart. I'd striven for an objective sense of cultural engagement so long that I had lost much of my ability to subjectively enjoy the emotional effects of a given text.

(I subsequently got it back, and became a believer, but that's another story)

Now I was observing the same thing happening to her.

* * *

You see, I had never suffered under the canon. I had never felt marginalised by it or been the victim of under representation in the literary sphere. Linton Kwesi Johnson was on my High school syllabus and while I concurred that 'Inglan' indeed was something of a 'bitch', I was never struck by any particular sense of freedom in that revelation.

Yes, I am a white European male, but as the archetypes of society shift in favour of a collective mythos composed ostensibly of 'other' texts - I find myself every bit as emotionally bound into narratives of slavery/the holocaust/female subjugation as I am with the experiences of my ancestors owning shops in Dudley.

For all the talk of identity or 'roots', few among this (however loathsome) generation have any claim to a direct personal connection to any particular aspect of the past. I have empathised with (or imposed my own expectations on) the experience of a gay Jewish new Yorker, a pre-Christian Jonah raging at god, the emotions of a noble slave envisaged by a semi-emancipated woman, the oriental with and without the filters of Ezra Pound…

My identity is legion as it is non-existent.

Furthermore 'Who I am' is the basest question of my dilemma.

I could now construct a defence of the Canon, perhaps claim that its arbitrary nature is irrelevant to its purpose or that social forces cannot be acceptably identified as being solely responsible for my perception that texts attributed to 'Shakespeare' surpass those attributed to 'Alice Walker'.

I can't be bothered though, its been done and done again, work it out for yourself.

I will, however, come to something of a point.

We are living in a state of permanent revolution. It is as though we were the generation after Winston Smith, born into the party and newspeak and altered truth - learning of capital, oldspeak and history solely through the filter of those who came after.

We are told that the present order constructs the past (with the implication that this is unsound), then the present order presents the past and expects its assertions to be accepted.

There is no feeling of achievement to be gained from participating in a radicalism unaltered in forty years.

This is most peculiar, that the establishment supposes itself radical.

That those among us disposed toward radicalism find ourselves disposed far more to ideas a century old.

That the Puce monstrosity of Wyndham Lewis seems vital and the pastels of the various 'readers' in recent theory seem jaded, dull and unattractive.

That those among us possessed of a passion for our subject return from seminars in tears.