A Brief History of Personal Canon Formation

Or, a guide for the perplexed

Dear Readers,

I would like to extend a warm welcome to all of the new subscribers to PCF. It seems like a good time to offer a little guide to this newsletter, to what might interest you in the archive and to where we will be heading in the new year. To those of you who have been here a while, I'm so glad that you still find some value in these offerings, and perhaps this will be a helpful refresher on some of the pieces that you may have missed in the past or might want to return to.

Because of all of the links, this will be a long post—too long for email, so to view it, please use the website or the app. I'm not going to index everything, so please scroll through the archive for other pieces that might interest you. And to find out what has been the most popular piece ever published (thus far) in PCF, you will need to read all the way to the end—or you can just skip to it :).

Enjoy!

John

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Introduction: In the Beginning . . .

I started PCF in July of 2023 with a simple idea: that in our era of informational overload, those of us who are serious about literature and music need to become intentional about how we read and listen, that we need to defy algorithmic culture in order to cultivate our tastes humanistically, that we need to curate our own personal canons.

All of the pieces here, all of the critical insights or recommendations offered, are written by a flawed human (actually multiple flawed humans, since we have had a few guest posts). So, if you are tired of Amazon or Spotify telling you what to read or listen to, you have come to the right place.

Here is that first piece that introduced the concept of Personal Canon Formation, in a slightly revised version published later:

The second piece to appear here brought together two figures who feature prominently in my personal canon, the writer and scholar J.R.R. Tolkien and the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, as I imagined the two of them meeting on a train. Here it is in a lightly revised version, published later:

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A Guide to PCF

Now that you have a sense of what is going on here, you may wish to peruse some of what has been on offer at PCF, categorized and linked below for your convenience.

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Books and Literary Criticism

Classroom Journal

At the heart of this project are the books and poems that I have come to treasure during three decades of teaching college students. In the early days of the newsletter I started a sort of classroom journal, in which I wrote about some of the texts that I was teaching in my undergraduate literary criticism course and my British literature survey. For example, here I describe my somewhat eccentric approach to teaching the survey (which I am rethinking after trying it twice, but more on that in a later piece—perhaps):

• Mission Impossible: The English Literature Survey (part 1)

• Not Back to the Future, But Forward to the Past (part 2)

In an early piece about my criticism course, I made the hubristic argument that "English majors" would "save the freaking world":

• English Majors Will Save the Freaking World

In the wake of these introductory pieces, I launched into a few series on some of the texts I was teaching in the fall of 2023. First up was a short series on some of the "founders" of literary criticism, the ancient Greek philosophers Plato, Aristotle, and Gorgias:

• Gorgias Drops the Mic

• The Poet: Public Enemy Number One? (on Plato and Aristotle, part 1)

• Poetry Will Change You (on Plato and Aristotle, part 2)

Then came a series on the history of Shakespeare's canonical status, which included much lively discussion from the emerging PCF community:

• Why Shakespeare? (part 1)

• Hamlet the Doom-Scroller (part 2)

• Tolstoy Cancels Shakespeare (part 3)

• Shakespearean Apologists Respond! (part 4)

• Realism and Anachronism in Shakespeare and Tolstoy (part 5)

Perhaps my favorite of all the series that I have written (though not the most popular) was entitled "Clapping Back to Misogyny," which charted a selective history of women writers responding to sexism in their own historical contexts, which also featured PCF's first guest post, by my amazing friend and colleague,

Laura Vrana

:

• Clapping Back to Misogyny from 1402 to 1949 (part 1)

• A City for Women: Christine de Pizan Claps Back (part 2)

• Listening to Black Women & Radical Joy through the 2023 Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival (part 3, a guest post by

  Laura Vrana
  )

• Jane Austen Claps Back (part 4)

• Fighting for True “égalité” in Revolutionary France (part 5)

• Simone de Beauvoir Crushes the Delusions of Patriarchy (part 6)

Back to the Body

PCF wrapped up 2023 with a three-part series on Hilary Mantel's great novel Wolf Hall, which is a revised version of a chapter from my current book project:

• Burning Books and Burning Bodies in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (part 1)

• The Printing Press and Artificial Intelligence in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (part 2)

• The Texts Remain, the Dead Speak (part 3)

I offered a bit more of the book project in these two posts, and there will be more to come:

• Back to the Body (part 1)

• Back to the Body (part 2)

To be continued . . .

Beowulf

In 2024, PCF embarked on a series of "reading challenges" of favorite texts. A number of subscribers read along and provided commentary that was engaging and engaged. First up was a series on Beowulf:

• Awaiting a Barbarous Burning (part 1)

• Hwæt! (part 2)

• Mære Mearcstapa (part 3)

• Winter is Coming (part 4)

• Revenant Resoluteness (part 5)

• The Dragon, the Treasure, and Radical Empathy (part 6)

The Lord of the Rings

Next came the most popular series on PCF (thus far), an epic, nine-week reading of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which also featured guest posts by the wonderful Substackers

Tiffany Chu

and

Jenn Zuko

. Tiffany has since embarked on her own Tolkienian journey, which I encourage you to seek out.

• The Lord of the Rings Reading Challenge (part 1)

• Tolkienian Style (part 2)

• Who the Hell is Tom Bombadil? (part 3, paywalled)

• Tolkienian Ecology as Living Text (part 4)

• Could “The Council of Elrond” Have Been an Email? (part 5, paywalled)

• Tolkienian Deep Time: Elves and Lothlórien (part 6)

• Tolkienian Deep Time II: The Mountain, the Abyss, and the Hythe (part 7, paywalled)

• Fate and Mercy (part 8, a guest post by

  Jenn Zuko
  )

• Tolkien’s Ents: Ecology Meets Philology (part 9)

• Tolkien and Race: Yes, We Have to Talk about Orcs (part 10, paywalled)

• The Palantír and the Panopticon (part 11)

• Tolkien and the Myth of Decline (part 12, paywalled)

• Gollum and the Fragmented Self (part 13)

• Orc-Talk: Tolkien and Ordinary Evil (part 14, paywalled)

• Tolkien’s Homosocial Fellowship (part 15)

• Heroic Language in The Lord of the Rings, or Tolkienian Style, part 2 (part 16, paywalled)

• “The Eagles are Coming!”: Despair and Hope in The Return of the King (part 17)

• Tolkienian Fate and Free Will: Mount Doom (part 18, paywalled)

• Corruption and Redemption (part 19, a guest post by

  Jenn Zuko
  )

• Tolkien’s Vision of Ecological Catastrophe and Restoration (part 20)

• There and Back Again, For a While—Tolkien and Mortality (part 21, paywalled)

• Éowyn (part 22, a guest post by

  Tiffany Chu
  )

Emma

Almost as epic was my favorite reading challenge thus far, on Jane Austen's Emma, which also featured guest posts by two ingenious Substackers, Susan Bordo and Plain Jane:

• Loving Emma, Despite Her Flaws (and partly because of them) (part 1)

• Miss Smith Goes to Hartfield (part 2, paywalled)

• Two Awkward Carriage Rides Elevate the Novel to New Heights (part 3)

• Charades (part 4, paywalled)

• "Emma could not forgive her": The Reserve and Precarity of Jane Fairfax (part 5)

• The Irrepressible Miss Bates (part 6, paywalled)

• Emma, Love, Desire, Ambivalence (part 7)

• The Garden of England (part 8)

• Do Austen and Wordsworth Speak to Each Other? (part 9)

• Emma’s Arguments: This Won’t End Well (part 10, a guest post by

  Plain Jane
  )

• The Cruelty is the Point (part 11, paywalled)

• A Fight, A Dance, A Naked Knightley, and a Nosebleed (part 12, a guest post by

  Susan Bordo
  )

• The Internal Plot, not the Marriage Plot (part 13)

• Three Weddings and a Baby (part 14)

Gulliver’s Travels

Our final reading challenge of 2024 is still ongoing: Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. It has been unintentionally protracted for reasons explained here. In any case, we will wrap this one up over the next couple of weeks:

• The Second Most Famous Swift (part 1)

• For the Love of a Misanthropist (part 2)

• Gulliver’s Eighteenth-Century iPhone (part 3)

• Fire in the Palace! (part 4)

• The Trauma of Absurdity in Brobdingnag (part 5)

• Human Pets and “Odious Little Vermin” (part 6)

• Gulliver’s Perspectival Challenges (part 7)

To be continued . . .

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Classical Music

I started college as a music major, but I quickly discovered that I was better as a writer than as a musician, so since then I have been an avid listener, and I have done a lot of writing about music, which may be, as Elvis Costello once said, a lot like "dancing about architecture."

Classical Playlists

Aside from some reviews in the series of "Bird-Bolts and Cannon-Bullets" (see below), the first major piece on classical music in PCF was on "The Universe of Leonard Bernstein," which includes a linked playlist of some of my favorite recordings by the great conductor-composer:

• The Universe of Leonard Bernstein (with playlist)

Next up was a survey of favorite recordings of the man whom Bernstein eventually replaced as conductor of the New York Philharmonic: Bruno Walter, a conductor who was alive when Brahms was still active, who served as Mahler's assistant, and who lived long enough to make stereo recordings for Columbia Records. A playlist is included:

• Meet the Artist: Bruno Walter (with playlist)

Another featured playlist focused on the recordings of the wonderful cellist Yo-yo Ma:

• The Genius of Yo-yo Ma (with playlist)

After Walter and Ma, I tried a format that I have not returned to, but I may in the future. I focused on one canonical classical work, and I included a playlist of four recordings in different styles. The work in question was Beethoven's Third Symphony, the "Eroica." Let me know if you would be interested in more pieces like this one:

• Beethoven’s “Eroica” (with playlist)

Ralph Vaughan Williams

In conjunction with the Tolkien Reading Challenge, we embarked on a Vaughan Williams Listening Challenge, which was a sort of expansion of the early piece, Tolkien and Vaughan Williams Meet on a Train. Once again, a playlist is included:

• A Fantasia and a Phantasy (part 1, playlist included in all of these posts)

• A Pastoral Symphony and a Stricken Peninsula (part 2)

• Job: A Masque for Dancing (part 3)

• Vaughan Williams and Angst (part 4)

• A London Symphony (part 5)

• Vaughan Williams Gets Angry (part 6)

• One More Symphony (part 7)

Schubert

In a similar fashion, we launched a Schubert Listening Challenge, including an extensive playlist, to accompany the Emma Reading Challenge:

• Schubert and Me: A Fateful Afternoon in Chapel Hill (part 1)

• Young Schubert (part 2)

• Schubert’s Late Piano Sonatas (part 3)

• Schubert’s Final Sonata (part 4)

• Schubert, Substack, and Serendipity (part 5)

• Schubert’s Late Symphonies (part 6)

• Schubert’s Late Quartets (part 7)

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Pop Music

At the center of the pop music content at PCF have been Prince and David Bowie, two figures who have also brought together the musical and literary threads of this newsletter.

Prince

• “When Doves Cry”: The Song that Followed Me around Europe (part 1)

• What Can Prince Teach Us about the Icelandic Sagas? (part 2)

• Purple Rain Falls on Iceland (part 3)

• Deep Cuts of Purple (part 4)

Bowie

• David Bowie from Space Oddity to Blackstar (part 1)

• A Raincheck on Pain: Young Americans (part 2)

• One Damn Song to Make Me Break Down and Cry (part 3)

1980

Recently I launched a series (still ongoing) exploring the music of the year 1980:

• Same As It Ever Was (part 1)

• Is This the Age of Empires and Dance? (part 2)

• Personal Canon Formation in Action (part 3)

To be continued . . .

Other Reviews

There are a number of pop music and classical music reviews and discussions scattered through the various Bird-Bolts and Cannon-Bullets, which I will not link here. (Please explore the archive.) But here are a few one-off reviews:

• An Encomium of Aimee Mann

• My Favorite Albums of 2024 So Far

• Three Superb Albums by Amazing Women

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Personal Essays and One-Offs

I have expressed here my reticence about writing personal essays, though I have managed it from time to time. Here are a couple, along with other miscellaneous critical pieces:

• Living Narration in Wolf Hall

• Negative Capability in a Culture of Mastery (guest post for Inner Life)

• It’s Never Too Late (or Too Early) to Find Your Voice

• What Actually Is Fatherhood?

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Stacks of the Week

In the early days of PCF, I began a series called "The Stack of the Week," which, as the title suggests, featured a specific Substack each week. This eventually petered out, not because there aren't more great newsletters to explore here, but rather because my time became shorter to explore them. Here are links to all of the Substacks that have been featured (in order of appearance), all of which are superb and deserve your attention:

• Homo Vitruvius by

  A. Jay Adler

• The Neighborly Florida by

  Lara Chapman

• Spiral Notebook by

  Jo Paoletti

• Quiet Reading by

  Tara Penry

• “. . . Only Connect” by

  <Mary L. Tabor>

• The Matterhorn by

  Dr. Kathleen Waller

• Cosmographia by

  M. E. Rothwell

• I Would Prefer Not To by

  Ellen Wilson

• Sparks from Culture by

  david roberts

• Zuko’s Musings by

  Jenn Zuko

• The Recovering Academic by

  Joshua Doležal

• Footnotes and Tangents by

  Simon Haisell

• The Department of Salad by

  emily nunn

• The Austen Connection by

  Plain Jane

• Eleanor Anstruther

• It’ll Be Fun, They Said by

  Jess Pan

• Beyond the Bookshelf by

  Matthew Long

• Substack Writers at Work by

  Sarah Fay

• Bordolines by

  Susan Bordo

• Shades of Blue by

  Michael Cirigliano II

• The Garden of Forking Paths by

  Brian Klaas

• Notes from the Town Hermit by

  Tiffany Chu

• The Beauty of Things by

  Zina Gomez-Liss

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Bird-Bolts and Cannon-Bullets

This is another feature that has run its course due to lack of time. These were miscellaneous reading and listening recommendations, along with some occasional poetry and commentary that I collected once a week. Perhaps this will return at some point when I have accumulated a bunch of things to recommend that don't appear in the main posts. A number of them are paywalled, but many are not, and I encourage you to browse the archive.

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Art by Pier Hardin

I have from time to time featured the art of my dear friend

Pier Hardin

. I encourage you to peruse the archive and admire her work.

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PCF's Most Popular Piece

Last year, the brilliant, prolific writer

Ted Gioia

listed one of my pieces as one of the best essays of the year. This was very flattering and brought in a lot of new subscribers to PCF. For this I am grateful, though I feel that the piece gives the wrong impression of the newsletter, since it is quite bleak in its outlook. In any case, here is the most popular piece ever to appear in PCF:

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So that gives you a sense of what goes on here. Coming in January of 2025 will be an extensive new reading challenge covering the major works of Chaucer, which will correspond to a course that I will be teaching in the spring semester. Then, in the summer, PCF will return to Tolkien for round two, this time taking on The Hobbit and The Silmarillion in addition to The Lord of the Rings. Also, you may expect further installments of my current book project on historical fiction and the body, and, of course, a lot more music.

Thanks for reading, from my fancy internet typewriter to yours.

Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash