Sometimes I wonder what will become classics with time. Any thoughts?
Sometimes I wonder what will become classics with time. Any thoughts?
One book that deserves to become a classic is The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon as it such a fantastic story told in a brilliant way. Not sure about the rest of his work, but that one is certainly a winner
Also in this category I would put the 3 K-Pax books by Gene Brewer, Human Traces by Sebastian Faulkes and The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. I don't read a lot of 'modern' fiction, but these few certainly maintain my hope in the writers of today.
"Mere flim-flam stories, and nothing but shams and lies." - Sancho Panza, in Don Quixote, pt. 1, bk. 3, ch. 11 (1605)
I liked The Curious Dog but I don't think it's a classic; it's funny and endearing but not encompassing or deep enough to last generations. I think Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is a classic which will poured over in 20, 30 years by lovers of literature, but not by the average person.
The books that will last will not necessarily be the best written or deepest (is it possible to get down deeper than Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky etc? Hasn't it all be said already?). The works being written today which will still be read 100 years from now are those which best capture the time in which we are living. Some argue that, in time, every writer (with VERY few exceptions) is forgotten. There is some truth to that, but then again no future writer will ever be able to describe life as a down and out in Paris and London in the 1920s as well as Orwell. There will be future writers with far more talent who may try, but we will still turn to Orwell for this simple reason: he was there. If I want to know what life was like in the trenches during WW1 I won't read Birdsong, I'll read Robert Graves' Goodbye to all that or Sassoon.Originally Posted by Dixie Chick
I do sometimes wonder if anything we now regard as genius and classic will still be read 500 years from now. How about 1000 years from now or 4000 years from now? Will even Shakespeare and Homer still be being read? Maybe civilisation and humanity will have changed so much that they'll have less and less to say to us.
Haruki Murakami is busy writing classics as we speak. David Sedaris has been around for a while, and his stuff from the 80's is still just as hilarious now as is it was then. That's all I have for now.
They'll still have the same to say but whether anyone will be interested in listening is a different matter.I do sometimes wonder if anything we now regard as genius and classic will still be read 500 years from now. How about 1000 years from now or 4000 years from now? Will even Shakespeare and Homer still be being read? Maybe civilisation and humanity will have changed so much that they'll have less and less to say to us.
Agreed. However I really wonder if Infinite Jest will hold up in future generations. It's a great work but I don't see it holding up like say Blood Meridian (weird example I know) does. I just finished it and loved it and have a few more Wallace books to get through now but for some reason I just can't see it being a classic 25, 50 years down the road.
Life of Pi (dammit) and the works of Chuck Palahniuk.
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
Perhaps some of Kazuo Ishiguro's books.
And John Updike (though he recently died--2009-- so I guess he is not currently writing)
"All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours." -Aldous Huxley
"Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." -William Blake
I imagine Thomas Pynchon will be read for a good long while to come. But other than him..?
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
I suspect the form of novel is near exhaustion - nothing of late seems to be particularly developmental, so therefore anything particularly canonical will probably exist in a niched section of a specific canon.
That being said, Autobiography of Red, but that is somewhat old now.
I am not so sure about Pynchon, but Mccarthy and Marquez I would place money on as sure things.
While the first half of 20th century was undoubtedly dominated and stered by american writers, the second half has most of its great stars from south america.
Agreed. I forgot about Marquez! And definitely some other SA authors like Llosa...
"All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours." -Aldous Huxley
"Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." -William Blake
I forgot both Pynchon and Marquez, I think people will read them in later years if only for the grandiose of their vision. One Hundred Years of Solitude can be frustrating but it's alternate reality means that, in a sense, it is 'timeless'. I think by its language alone it will be read in the future, which is the most significant factor in old works.
''Actual self-awareness is the knowledge that we are all characters in someone elses dream.''
Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children and Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red.Both are innovative and quirky.
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