Valley of the Diverse

Campus Report ^ | June 2, 2008 | Malcolm Kline

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Valley of the Diverse

by: Malcolm A. Kline, June 02, 2008

In a recent essay, English professor David Trinidad shows us how the teaching of literature has evolved using Jacqueline Susann’s 1967 novel Valley of the Dolls as a window on the culture. “What would an academic have said, then, about Valley of the Dolls?” he posits in the May 30 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. “It has no literary merit,” is the reply he envisions.

By way of contrast, Trinidad suggests, pedagogues can now say, “It’s trash, and I love it. And I’m going to teach a course on it.”

Trinidad, who teaches at Columbia College, clearly identifies with the latter school of thought. “In 1997 I found myself on the stage of the Tishman Auditorium at the New School, as part of ‘The Other Jackie,’ a discussion of the enduring influence of Jacqueline Susann,” he shares.

Trinidad himself was, in a way, present at the creation. “There would be 11 printings of the hardcover edition before, on July 5, 1967 (the day the British parliament decriminalized homosexuality), the Bantam paperback edition of Valley of the Dolls was released,” Trinidad recalls. “I was about to turn 14.”

He practically grew up with the book. “I have made something of a career out of dwelling on the things that, as a child and teenager, I was not allowed to possess: Barbie, Yardley of London cosmetics, other boys, and Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls,” he writes. “Which means I grew up to be a homosexual who collects stuff from the 60s.”

“And a poet who’s written about the desire and ambivalence such stuff stirs up.” He has also taught at The New School, Rutgers, Princeton and Antioch (Los Angeles)....

[Cicero]

Another way of putting it is that the teaching of literature has gone down the drain into the cesspit, and if you like literature, you’d better either go to a very unusual college that still has a real English department, or else read it for yourself.

Incidentally, I used to know Michael Korda pretty well, the guy who signed up Jacqueline Susann for Simon & Schuster. It was one of his major coups. I remember him saying one summer that he had to fly down to New York to have lunch with two of his clients one week: Jacqueline Susann and Bertrand Russell.

I don’t fault anyone for reading Valley of the Dolls, for amusement or as a sociological commentary on our cultural decay. But it’s too bad when that’s the only sort of thing anyone reads; that, and maybe Toni Morrison.

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I think N.Y.U. is more like $120,000.

[squarebarb]

Exactly.

the teaching of literature and literature itself has gone down the tubes.

Nothing being written except tiresome politically correct narratives, or jittery cool ironic statements.

[Cicero]

There are a few good people writing novels now, but needless to say they are not on the celebrity circuit or being read in English courses.

One of these days I plan to write a kind of review essay on Connie Willis, whose novels are usually found on the science fiction shelves, but who is one of those rare writers who transcends the genre and can be appreciated by readers who normally can’t stand SF.

I especially recommend Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Passage, and Bellwether, but all her stuff is good. It would be very satisfying if a few English courses started introducing students to her work. I’d say the nearest thing to it that I can think of is Flannery O’Connor. Certainly far better than the usual suspects among the “contemporary novelists.”

[squarebarb]

I will go right now to Amazon and order a Connie Willis book.

How I used to love SF! of course I still read Philip K. Dick over again at times. There is an old collection from the ‘Fifties in our little small-town library with ‘best of’, and some of them are as good as anything being written today in any genre.

All right off to Amazon.

[kalee]

I am not a SE fan but Doomsday Book is one of my favorite books.

[Cicero]

Very powerful book. And maybe Passage is even more powerful.