Toni Morrison – Snopes

Reflections from a Culture-Shocked American

terranas20

by Arlette Hernandez

I had always heard tales about the Promised Land called “college.” Growing up with Cuban immigrant parents, college was little more than a goal I needed to meet so I could earn a degree and break the cycle of poverty. It was not until I got into high school when that changed. All my teachers would sit back in their cushioned office chairs, staring off into the distance, eyes glazing over as they talked about college. About pulling all-nighters and roaming through city streets at two in the morning. Or for some, about meeting their husbands and wives, their partners for the past however many million years. College became a place for adventure, not just a place to get a degree. Despite all these different views, everyone always seemed to arrive at the same order: study abroad if you can.

Now flash-forward to five months ago when I found myself walking around Heathrow International Airport, eyes shifting between my phone screen and the semi-friendly faces scurrying past me as I waited to connect to the Wi-Fi. I had waited for twenty minutes, but my neon purple suitcase never made an appearance on the carousel. After filing a report with British Airways, I was tasked with the mission of transporting myself and my backpack—filled with nothing but a MacBook and a copy of Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves—to Bath, a town in the southwest of England, located about an hour and a half (by train) from London. My next three months in the country would be filled with weekend trips, classes on Shakespeare and Chaucer, and an internship at a local bookshop.

My first day on the job was overwhelming. The bookshop may have been small, but every inch was stuffed. Walking through, you would see books scattered shelves and tables, even a cement filled bathtub with books littered on its surface. Yet, the biggest shock came to me when I walked past a shelf curated with some of the staff’s favorite books. As my eyes trailed over the covers, I noticed a familiar title. It was the same book I had brought with me from house—House of Leaves—but the design on the cover was wildly different.

2000 US Pantheon cover 2000 UK Doubleday cover

England is close enough to the US, that the culture shock doesn’t grab you immediately. Instead, it builds up slowly like the suspense in a good thriller novel. I expected the culture shock; I expect all the differences. But for some reason, it never occurred to me that I’d spot those differences in something as simple as a book cover.

As a part of the internship, I had to write a 30-page research paper inspired by my experiences. I followed this theme of book cover designs, mixing it with my own interest in divisions between genre and “literary” fiction. Really, I wanted to demonstrate that books are not neutral objects. Rather, book covers are incredibly meaningful. They are surfaces constructed by marketing strategies, aimed or targeted at certain groups. Nevertheless, I find the differences between covers in the US and UK fascinating.

Here’s another example:

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

2015 UK Hodder & 2015 US Harper Voyager Stroughton cover cover

The difference is pretty striking, right? When I look at the UK cover, I think “sophistication.” It looks like something that would be read by my forty-year-old neighbor who works at a private school twenty minutes away. It’s radically different from the US cover.

The UK cover shows the silhouette of a girl standing atop a grassy hill, in front of a nighttime sky. It looks like we start on the ground, on earth, but presumably end up somewhere in a faraway galaxy. The image of the sky takes of the majority of the cover’s space, and the girl’s body covers perhaps a sixth of the area. She seems to be lost in the stars. While the space theme on the UK cover is realistic, the US cover appears cartoonish in comparison. The US cover features a black background with bold and blocky green letters coated in a gradient theme. Surrounding the letters is an image of a moon and a spaceship. I immediately stereotyped this novel as sci-fi. The spaceship, the lettering, they all scream Star Wars and Star Trek. We look at the cover and think adventure and plot, not “what is the meaning of life?”

You can look at these differences in a few different ways. In terms of age, I get the sense that the UK cover is trying to appeal to an older audience. Because of the contrast between the girl’s body and the stars, the cover suggests that the novel is concerned with man’s search for meaning, something that would likely be of more concern to an older audience. Yet, the US cover, knee-deep in genre tropes, would probably appeal toward a younger audience that cares more about story than commentary. The issue of genre v. literary fiction also plays a role. Traditionally, sci-fi is seen as lowbrow literature, or genre fiction, so a cover that makes direct appeals toward that genre is also targeting its readership. Meanwhile, the UK cover, which evokes some heavy existential questions, targets a more literary crowd.

Sometimes the differences between covers speak more to the author or the novel’s reputation.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

2007 UK Vintage cover 2007 US Vintage cover

When I look at the US cover, it’s like it’s saying, “Yes, this is THE Beloved by THE Toni Morrison. Enough said.” Meanwhile, the UK cover gives a little bit more about the novel’s plot. This is understandable considering the fact that Beloved is a uniquely (African) American novel that is taught in a number of US classrooms. It is undoubtedly a part of the American canon, so a publisher working in 2007—thirty years after the novel was first published—does not have to work quite as hard to sell it.

The differences in cover design make sense. When you change the audience, you also have to change the strategies you use to market a book toward them. Still, I wonder if we can draw any cultural conclusions based on these differences. Does the US prefer more concrete imagery and the UK something more abstract? In the case of Chambers’ novel, does the cover more clearly evoke the sci-fi genre because science fiction novels are more popular in the US than in the UK? I have no idea, but it’s questions like these that keep me up at night.

American Literary Royalty

Amanda Newton

I recently read an article in the online Commentary magazine that listed the top-ranked writers in American literature over the past twenty-five years. Here’s a link to the original piece: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/03/26/mla-rankings/. The list is compiled based upon scholarship published within the MLA International Biography. While there is no ‘official’ list for the canon of American literature, the works cited within MLA offer a pretty decent picture of the canonical works deemed relevant by literary scholars.

According to the list, Henry James is number one with 3,188 pieces of scholarship devoted to his work. One important caveat: this article was written almost exactly 2 years ago, so it’s possible the list has changed somewhat but probably not significantly. I was surprised James’s location at the top of the list; I had not read any Henry James until reading The Portrait of a Lady while studying abroad in Italy last year. The next three authors were less surprising to me: William Faulkner, followed by T.S. Eliot and then Herman Melville, in that order. The rest of the list includes many of the perennial classics that dominate high school English syllabi, from Hemingway to Whitman, Thoreau, and Steinbeck. The only other name that raised my eyebrows was Saul Bellow, who at 706 reference works and ranked at #23 out of 25, barely makes the list as it is. All of this discussion is to say the following: what constitutes inclusion in the American canon? Does scholarship define reputation?

If a work is able to withstand scrutiny and maintain its relevancy years after its publication, certainly it is a candidate for the canon. The author of the Commentary piece, D.G. Myers, is quick to mention that the list is not meant to be comprehensive. There are other qualifications, although they go undefined. In my opinion, chief among these qualifications is a probing argument that changes readers’ impression of culture and society.

The problem with the second of these two definitions is that they can occasionally be contradictory. Postmodern work in the 1960s, for instance, has not existed long enough to receive the scholarship or study of a Henry James novel, and yet there is no question in my mind that authors such as Norman Mailer deserve consideration as contributors to the canon of American literature. The other side of this coin is authors who wrote during Poe’s years without publicity or recognition. Their noteworthy works might have received greater attention and praise had they had access to the sort of publicity available (largely because of technology) in the past few decades.

I can see why Myers quantifies his list the way he does. Tracking MLA documentation is a hard and fast method for numerically comparing works of literary art, and it offers relatively realistic results (based upon my very un-scientific recollections from middle and high school). I am most intrigued to see how this list will ultimately change in another twenty-five years. Given the changes in ranking that have occurred in the past twenty-five (James overtook Faulkner, Frost dropped 5 spots, Toni Morrison rose nine places), I would imagine that the rankings will look incredibly different.

Myers attempts to objectify the largely subjective through his research, and despite my occasional disagreements, I applaud his efforts. The flexibility of the American canon has been under debate for years, and his list provides a good starting point for identifying important literary masters regardless of its comprehensive nature. Who else do you think belongs on the list?

Amanda is a senior English and Global Politics double major from Atlanta, Georgia. Her preferred genre of literature is Creative Non-Fiction, and she enjoys hiking in the American West during the summer.

What Inspires a Writer?

Madeline Thorpe

One of the most interesting concepts in literature is the writer’s inspiration. Whenever I read, I constantly wonder where authors get their ideas for stories and what motivates them to write. Usually I write because I am facing an encroaching deadline. The content of my writing also tends to be dictated by paper prompts and the books listed on my English course syllabi. I decided to investigate authors’ views on writing to gain some insight into their sources of inspiration and to find what really makes a writer tick. Toni Morrison said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Morrison’s statement concerns what the writer believes to be a void in the literary world. The author seeks to fill this void with his or her own writing, a self-motivated way to benefit literature as a whole.

F. Scott Fitzgerald believed that writing develops out of a compulsion to share what one thinks or knows: “You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got to say something.” According to Fitzgerald, writing is not born out of a desire, but a burning need, a mandate to “say something.” I believe writing is people’s way of aiding one another; writers share their life lessons and experiences through their works. A book can be a lifeline from an author to a reader, or even from one author to another. While the writing process can appear complicated and even daunting at times, some writers believe that transcribing thoughts to paper is a natural outpouring of their emotions.

Ernest Hemingway described his thoughts about the writing process: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Personally, I have always been intimidated by writing. Staring at a blank word document when beginning a paper can be scary. Although writing may be hard for me initially, I ultimately agree with Hemingway. The writer’s thoughts should spill from the mind to the page, becoming a reflection of his or her innermost thoughts and the author’s “need” to say something. However, the writing process can often pose difficulties, especially concerning diction. Twain’s statement perfectly describes the need for precise diction: “The difference between the right word and the almost write word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” My first question about authors’ motivations and the root of their inspiration turned out to probe larger questions concerning the writing process and the precision required in creating a literary piece.

Maddie Thorpe has twice served as a Shenandoah intern, once as Poem of the Week Editor and once as Social Networking Editor. She is from Southern California and will take a degree in English from Washington and Lee in spring of 2014.