QUIBILS AND QUIRKS
(the original text as serialized in The Cariboo Observer)

Dan Lukiv, M.Ed.
English and Creative Writing
McNaughton Centre, Quesnel, BC, Canada
E-mail: lukivdan@shaw.ca

LAST EPISODE/CHAPTER 24: Mooch, searching for the mayor in his dark house, approached another door.

CHAPTER 25: MOOCH TAKES A DIVE

            This next door, also open, revealed a dim bathroom in which pink teddy bears seemed to dance in midair. But Mooch realized he was looking at a shower curtain. And a musty smell almost made him sneeze.
            Mooch, as silent as a sunset, approached the last door. His heart pounded as he turned the wobbly doorknob. A huge bed fell into sight.
            “AAACHOOOOOO!”
            “Oh, my goodness!” he thought. “I’ve woken him up for sure! Wait a minute. I HAVE to wake him up. I have a job to do. I’ve come to SEE the mayor.”
            The bed, however, was empty.
            Feeling disappointed, Mooch slowly returned to the stairwell, thinking: “Should I wait?—I mean, he’s clearly out. I could crawl between his sheets and get his attention when he goes to bed.”

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The Female Void in a World of Masculine Readers

Karenina Lines
Adjunct English Instructor
Chaffey College
E-mail: klines@exchange.fullerton.edu

Men have dominated the literary canon, largely because women were historically denied an equal voice. Women fought for the right to vote, they fought to possess equal positions in the workplace, and now they fight to obtain a comparable role in the literary canon. While women claim progressive equality with men in most disciplines, they continue to be inaccurately represented in the literary canon.  Though women were not published to the extent of men, the fact is that they were published. While the canon should appropriately represent today’s American society, the canon refers not to currently published works but to works that have added historically to our culture.  More women writers, both from the present and from the past, should be included in current academia and anthologies in order to best represent the progress of equality that American society claims to have made.  Instead, works by females end up in what critic Lillian S. Robinson addresses as the “alternative canon” (Robinson 164).   Consistent exposure to the literature of these “alternative” authors is not often gained by students, and it is,
probably quite accurate to think of the canon as an entirely gentlemanly artifact, considering how few works by nonmembers of that class and sex make it into the informal agglomeration of course syllabi, anthologies, and widely commented-upon ‘standard authors’ that constitutes the canon as it is generally understood. (Robinson 154)
As a result, students are educated through a largely male literary voice; unless one is to take a class devoted solely to female literature, the student often misses out on experiencing the true dynamics of society through literature.  Great male works in the canon need not be discarded, but they do need to be combined with great female works in order to “come closer to telling the (poetic) truth” (Robinson 158).  Traditionally male generated criteria evaluates what is worthy of being in the canon; this criteria needs to be altered in order to include females equally in the canon, and in turn, compose a more accurate portrayal of the best works in literature.

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