there are many good reasons to study particular traditions in which particular canons play outsized roles. All of these reasons are more specific and more delimited than “reading books” or “knowing history.” Every canon is constructed (over and over again) relative to a specific purpose or question

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if you are worried about reading, the list of books should be the least of your concerns

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it’s about engaging a “canon” of philosophical and literary works in roughly the same way that a “this is what they took from us” twitter meme is about engaging a “canon” of early Nintendo games or whatever. Signing on to it to promote “reading” is like signing on to MAGA to promote “women’s sports”

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the right-wing position on the Western Canon is not coherent and is not meant to be; it’s not about reading and thinking with a body of writing but about stabilizing an onanistic image of The West. The same project that demands reverence for Plato to build the image bans reading Plato to maintain it

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Taika’s got what I’ve come to think of as Kevin Smith disease: basically owes his career to critics championing his early work, gets the bad reviews his later films deserve, and tries to blame it on critics. It’s not our fault you lost your fucking fastball, dude!

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