Literature: Why Read the Classics?
by Tamim Ansary
I read the classics as a kid. But I read great gobs of other stuff, too--science fiction, Westerns, Nancy Drew, you name it.
Grown-ups tried to tell me the classic books were somehow better, nobler, because they had stood the test of time. I didn\'t buy that. I liked some of the classics, sure, but I liked pulp fiction too, and I saw no difference. If a book grabbed me, why should I care what my descendants would think of it? The only test that mattered to me was Right Now. We judge a cake by how it tastes in the mouth, not how long it lasts on the shelf. Why should literature be different?
Well, I\'ve grown up, and now I\'ve switched sides.
Popularity v. durability
Today, I do see different kinds of good in literature. There is blockbuster quality and there is classic quality. There is wide appeal and there is long appeal. I don\'t know that one is better, but the two are different, like space and time.
That\'s not to say they\'re mutually exclusive. A popular book can also be durable. But blockbusters don\'t necessarily become classics; and classics don\'t have to go through a blockbuster phase.
And yet...
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Defining a classic strictly as a book that survives the test of time bothers me. I\'m thinking that the qualities of a classic don\'t get added later; they\'re not like that stuff that slowly turns bronze statues green. Whatever is great in a book must be in there from the start. But if time is the only judge, you can\'t tell if it has those qualities except by waiting a hundred years.
Better? Or just older?
By then, it might be hard to know if the book is really appealing to readers or surviving on clout. Would modern readers get all the way through War and Peace if they didn\'t know it to be a classic?
The question applies particularly to children\'s literature, because kids don\'t get to pick from all the books ever written. They must choose from what adults give them. So kids play only a small part in canonizing the literature meant specifically for them. The major players are grown-ups--parents, school boards, librarians, teachers, curriculum experts, award committees, and others.
Let\'s take a look at this process.
8226; Next Page--How books become classics
Esther\'s Classic Literature Blog
By Esther Lombardi, About.com Guide to Classic Literature since 2000
Do You Read the Classics?
Sunday February 20, 2005
Why do you read the classics? Is it for enjoyment? Are you educating yourself on the history of literature? Perhaps you\'re taking a course in high school or college. Or, you may have no idea why you are reading a classic. Read more about literature:
A History of English Literature
Succeed in Your Literature Class
A Student\'s History of American Literature
Biographical Dictionary of English Literature
Literature in Time - Selected Reading List
Studies in Classic American Literature
What Happens in Literature
Introductions to Literature
What to Read
Here are a few quotes on reading the classics:
Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have. - Alan Bennett
A classic is a book that doesn\'t have to be written again. - Carl Van Doren
A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man. - Edmond and Jules De Goncourt
A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness. - Ezra Pound
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. - Italo Calvino
The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish. - Milan Kundera
Enjoy the classics!
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