Has the Norton Anthology then lost its relevance?
Greenblatt: Not at all. The Norton Anthology was based on the idea that it actually matters to plunge into a comic masterpiece written in the 1300s or to weep at a tragedy performed in the 1700s. What would it mean for a culture to give up on its past? It is vitally important to remind people that the humanities carry the experience, the life-forms of those who came before us, into the present and into the future. Through reading literature we can make ghosts speak to us, and we can speak back to them. Besides — as many studies have shown — cultural knowledge turns out to be good for your career.
And so I continue to stumble through Sophocles and Shakespeare with my students at the community college, even though I'm sure they wonder whether they are getting their money's worth from this class.
Actually, I have been very happy with the way the literature class has been going. It's a smaller group than last semester, and about half of the students are older than I am, so they are happy to sit around and talk about the relationships in these plays. Last week we had a great discussion about whether it would have been better for Oedipus to live in ignorance than to find out his sins. The class was pretty well split in opinion. They may have had a hard time with the language, but they picked up on the themes. They were able to weep at this masterpiece from thousands of years ago.
There seems to be a good rapport among the lit students, and one lady really brought the class to life last week by bringing in warm bunelos. I was only going to eat a bite of one to be polite, but the donut melted away too quickly, reminding me of the donuts from a bakery near where my dad used to work. He could polish off a dozen in no time because they were so airy and sugary when warm that they seemed to evaporate. Only thing missing was coffee, which I'm afraid to drink because this class starts at 8 pm.
We are going to read "Fences" by August Wilson next, because the university next door is staging it in a few weeks. I just read it for the first time myself, and although the language may strike some students as a bit rough (it was a bit jarring to me, at least - it had crossed my mind to take my kids to the play because I'm always looking for ways to sneak some culture in them, but it's definitely too mature for the youngers), I think the students will really enjoy discussing the family dynamics. They've enjoyed talking about how the lovers in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" fall into familiar patterns; in "Fences" I hope they'll listen to the ghosts speaking about the next phase of life: marriage and parenting - and how the songs sung by Troy and Lyons and Gabe (like the stories in the anthology) keep the characters waking up in the morning, even when it seems like they've cut themselves off from all their reasons for living.
Now if I could just figure out how to get the same energy to enliven my composition class. I get a lot of blank stares when I ask for volunteers to read or discuss. Maybe it's time to bring in hot donuts.
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