Michael Gove

What else can you do other than just  put your head in your hands when you hear Goves latest educational policy. Banning American literature from the English Literature syllabus? What the hell! Does he think writers from other nations can't write and have nothing to offer in terms of cultural enrichment. He may be thinking by forcing young people to read Victorian literature he might be injecting these feckless youths with a bit of moral fiber. Umm, yeah. Pick pockets, armed robbers, drunkards, unmarried mothers, murderers and a bit of antisemitism thrown in for good measure. Makes George shooting Lenny in the back of the head a bit lame. Okay, 'Of Mice and Men' does have a brothel, oh yeah, and Curlly's yellow jackets. That might be going a bit too far. All literature has a place and will always be critiqued from the social-political viewpoint of the reader. Reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is not going to turn everyone communist. 

As an English person writing in New Zealand, where does that leave me? Thankfully, I didn't write my book for a GCSE syllabus, but neither did Hardy, Dickens, Elliot, Steinbeck, Miller or Harper Lee. They were chosen for their artistic merit and the salient messages about the society they lived in. Writing in New Zealand, I've met some brilliant writers who struggle to gain recognition simply because of where they are based. If I go back to England to write my next novel, does that make me a better writer?

In the 80s, when I was at school, we were fed Victorian Literature and Shakespeare, to the point where I was led to believe nothing else had any value. When I started writing, I thought I had to be like them to be any good. When the first draft of 'Beneath the Perfect World' was critiqued, I was told Thomas Hardy wouldn't get published if he was writing today. So why does Gove want us to teach young people this is good writing? By modern standards, it's verbose, contains too many elaborate descriptions and relies too much on exposition. Modern writing is driven by the character and the landscape is an integral part of the protagonist.

I enjoy Victorian literature but after writing my own novel, and learning the craft of writing, I thought Hardy was hard work. My editor would have cut out the verbiage and cut the word count down by half, without reducing the story content. There's plenty of modern writers who explore the human condition just as well as Hardy and Dickens; but please Mr Gove, allow our young people to read something they can relate to.