Too often, we forget that fights about what we shouldn’t read are also battles over what we should read. And that every time someone attempts to ban Toni Morrison or Ta-Nehisi Coates, they’re also trying to corral our kids back to Hawthorne and Hemingway, Dante and Dickens.
So perhaps it isn’t surprising that in the midst of a flood of book bans we’re also seeing a fresh effort to rally our forces to the defense of the classics. Hence, an article in the National Review claims that the great books are in need of a “massive salvage operation.” A recent piece in the Federalist calls for a renewed effort to “reclaim our Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian heritage and enter again into the Great Conversation.” And, as if responding to a Florida politician fretting last year that the gadfly of Athens would be canceled, a professor at Columbia University has given us “Rescuing Socrates.”
Reading all this, you’d be forgiven if you thought the Western canon was on its last legs. Let me assure you that it isn’t.
