Dan on...

[puddingdan]

Books

People think that they have to read classic books, that's the problem with some literature. You wouldn't eat something you didn't like or watch a film you hated just because you had to, regardless of whether it was deemed intelligent or a key part of our collective history.

The answer is simple: If you like reading old classical literature,

Comments

[joysilence]

I have mixed feelings about the whole 'classic literature' tag. When I was a teenager and young adult, I made a point of reading all the 18th and 19th century 'classics' I could get my hands on, because I thought that anything that had stood the test of time enough to feature in modern libraries and the school syllabus had a good chance of being a decent read. I found about 75% of the stuff I read easily repaid the effort involved (and in the case of most Victorian stuff, it really wasn't much of an 'effort' anyway) though I never made much headway with the Russian authors and have yet to finish War and Peace! I also HATE Dickens and Henry James. Obviously I was reading this stuff for fun, and not forcing myself to read books that were too hard to get to grips with, but I do also think a case can be made for teaching more abstruse material in the national curriculum, and of course at University level. For instance, when I did my English Lit. GCSE and A-level I had to study some plays by Shakespeare. Before starting the GCSE I'd dipped into my Dad's collected Shakespeare but been put off by the tough language (and, admittedly, tiny little writing. Durrr.) But actually studying those books as part of a course really helped me unlock the magic in plays like Macbeth and King Lear, as well as giving me the analytical skills to read more Shakespeare, so I'm really glad I put in the effort now.

That's not to say I don't have some doubts about the process of categorizing literature as 'classic'. Traditionally, to be a classic book, you had to be written by a dead white guy, usually from a well-off background, so there are all those connotations of sexism and racism to deal with. I know new presses like Virago have tried to address those problems in recent years by printing, say, forgotten great works by women, but funnily enough I still often find myself preferring what they call 'minor classics' to the hardcore Great Tradition ones. For instance, I'll always prefer E.M. Forster's Maurice to anything by Anthony Trollope, and Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea pisses all over its inspiration Jane Eyre (to use the correct literary terminology, har.)

From the moment you acknowledge that objective aesthetic standards exist, then some books are always going to be thought of as better and more enduring than others (there are a whole bunch of other, more precise definitions of what constitutes 'classic' literature, but I can't be bothered looking them all up now, 'cos I went off and did Physics to get away from all that goddamit!) A lot of people now believe that all art is relative, rendering the very idea of classics obsolete. I don't agree with this, and I do believe in aesthetic standards, but the only thing anyone can really do is try out a few 'classics', give them a proper go, maybe using one of those 'Pass Notes' guides, and see what they're like. I'm very glad of my grounding in that kind of literature as it has helped me enjoy the genre fiction that forms 99% of my literary diet nowadays, i.e. ghost stories and crime fiction. Two genres that are usually sneered at by 'proper' critics, funnily enough!