The National book that keeps you where it wants you to be

Every country has a classic national book list: a literary identity of stories that encompass the spirit and artistic worth of the people of the country. The spirit often involves the values that the elite of the country hold dear and, they believe, set them apart from other countries. Think of the ANZAC Spirit - of Australian mate ship captured in popular Australian literature. How do you feel just thinking of it: warm, patriotic, grateful, willing?

This 'spirit' is how allies, alliances and foes are formed as each country measures their values against each other's. It is a cultural construct and an inherited tradition, a novel behaviour grown from a tough time, that many accept without even thinking about it because we see ourselves in the spirit and take it as a given truth.

Some European countries consider the Bible to be their number one National Book merely because of the number of copies sold (Foppen 2021). By holding up the Bible as the book of common values, the country identities itself against that which it is not (Muslim for example) and thereby encourages nationalism of the masses who may not be schooled in critical or value led thinking. It is a clever marketing play by the state and hegemony to keep people on their side in case those people are needed for votes, for war or for other status quo reasons (e.g. a show of force at Trump rallies, were we talking of the United States).

Stokes (2017) nominates that in a global study, people nominated that either being born in the country or fluently speaking the language identifies you as belonging to that country. Yet others maintain that a national identity is around literature or food. The commonality is that national identity is not a static thing. It is as dynamic as the times are. Policies on immigration, globalisation, gender, domestic violence, Indigenous Australians, education, any and every policy that effects our people, in turn creates a turning tide of what it means to have a national identity.

Therefore, reading a Best Seller's or static Classic Literature list must be read in context of the status quo: who is deciding who you are, the values you should espouse and why. For some lists it is an algorithm that decides: an algorithm set to seek out previously determined values of importance to selling more books - frequently sales numbers. Participant feedback during my PhD tells me that many working people cannot afford to buy new books - they scour secondhand bookstores, friend's bookshelves, libraries or buy cheaply on audio platforms because listening is easier than reading. This may suggest that lists decided by sales alone are biased towards the values and beliefs of people with disposable income, that can read English rather than just listen to it, and that have time to read. 

For other lists, like the Cannon (THE elitist list of them all), values of literary brilliance are determined by class preference:

The literary canon is part of the larger “canon,” which is a list of the most important, influential, or definitive works in art, literature, music, and philosophy....canons have traditionally been determined by “an elite group of scholars and critics who embraced a work of art and sent it aloft to some deifying realm.”

There may be an inherent bias in choosing from particular lists: it is time to think more analytically about what to read. Should you wish to resist being told who you are and should be, read differently. Read dangerously - read to resist because resistance is useful. Find yourself represented in a book. Buy two of those books and gift one to a friend who may not afford to buy it themselves.

👵🏻 Megan Bayliss: social work supervisor

👩🏻‍🎓 PhD candidate: social and cultural resistance to the status quo.

PS: The cover picture has nothing to do with books that keep you where it wants you to be because it is my book that I wrote to help kids stay safe from sexual assault.

References

Barron, K (2021) The Literary Canon: What’s In It, and Who Makes the List? TCK Publishing. https://www.tckpublishing.com/the-literary-canon/ 

Foppen, A., Schol-Wetter, A., Smit, P. & van Urk-Coster, E. (2021). The Most Significant Book of the Netherlands — And Its Ordinary Readers. Journal of the Bible and its Reception, 8(1), 107-133. https://doi.org/10.1515/jbr-2020-0007

Germano, W. and Nicholls, K. (2020, October 21) Where do reading lists come from (and why do we love them?) Literary Hub. https://lithub.com/where-do-reading-lists-come-from-and-why-do-we-love-them/ 

Gorvett, Z. (2022, March 16) The intangible concept that gives countries power. BBC https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220316-how-countries-get-their-national-identities 

Monash University (2019, January 19). Australian identity: what does it mean to you? A Different Lens. https://lens.monash.edu/@politics-society/2019/01/22/1369645/australian-identity-debate 

Stokes, B. (2017, February 1) What It Takes to Truly Be ‘One of Us.’ Pew Research Centre. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2017/02/01/what-it-takes-to-truly-be-one-of-us/