Old Classics or New Literature?

[Paulclem]

Having studied a reasonable number of classic books - by no means all - in the past, and seeding classics into my reading, I am becoming more and more interested in books that may become modern classic novels.

This doesn't seem to be much of a focus on the forum, with the exception of the book club which does a good job of trying to look at a range of styles, periods and types.

What we often get are discussions about lists of classic novels with opinions about particular books from individual posters. This is fine as far as it goes, but should we be looking at more recent novels- in the light of member's experience at what constitutes a classic?

I don't know how you regard awards such as The Man Booker Prize, but in my opinion I think they may be a good starting point for predicting and discussing which novels may become classics. Do we focus enough on these?

I can see the problem - the mass of new novels that are written each year - but we do have a rudimentary filter. Even with this problem, it is possible to spot and study longlisted authors. This year's winner was The Narrow Road To The Deep North, which is the title of the Haiku Master Basho's famous work. The fact that the winner concerns the suffering of allied POWs whilst building the Burma railway has certainly sparked my interest. Hilary Mantel's recent two winners employ an interesting narrative style which worked very well in Wolf Hall.

Should we be looking at more contemporary work on these boards?

[Lykren]

I think I've seen a few conversations on here about the canonization process. What keeps getting reiterated, and what I think is true, is that canonization is basically a plutocratic process, with those who have the time and temperament to dedicate their life energy to studying literature (or whatever medium) being the ones who decide what art will feature in the annals of the great.

But, reading contemporary literature can sometimes have the added value of being easier to relate to! The mannerisms of the past can be off-putting and, I believe, have a distancing effect on modern readers. That doesn't mean that quality of writing shouldn't factor into what we read of contemporary literature, just that the masterworks of the present, if we happen to unknowingly stumble across them, may be more accessible to current generations than any others that will follow.

I'm reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson right now. My friend who is also reading it said that she had zero interest in the subject matter, but was sucked in simply for the graceful presentation of said subject matter. I don't agree with that view entirely, but I do empathize with it. Some of Ames' concerns seem to have relevance to me, others don't, but it's his attitude toward them that I find intriguing.

[kev67]

I often wonder myself whenever I read a list of top great books, whether the classics of the past really are better than the books written now. I don't suppose there were very many people trying to write fiction in the past as there are now. How many authors were there in the C18th compared to now? Authors were not more intelligent or better educated. They lived in different times so they had that interestng perspective. Maybe the classics that have come down to us are just the best of what was available at the time they were written, and that there are numerous contemporary books that are just as good.

[ennison]

That's an interesting point Kev. But I think if you came forward to the mid 19th century you would find a very large number of books being published throughout the British Isles (Not all fiction) and a huge readership despite illiteracy still being common. The classic authors of the past may be like the "classic"authors of today - a couple of great books and four or five ordinary ones. I think reading was a very important activity for the 19th century Middle Class and the educated Working Class. I suspect there were a large number of writers trying to satisfy that and most of them are long forgotten.

[Paulclem]

I think unfamiliar language and circumstances may very well pose a problem for the modern reader who relies on translations from the remote past and requires detailed notes to access the language used in Shakespeare for example. (This isn't helped by schools in the UK requiring his plays to be studied and read when that was not the author's original intention).

My OP really concerns whether we should have more focus on modern works here given that classic literature is a fairly sealed Canon. I've read some really good modern works which employ interesting and innovative narrative structures. One book I'm in the middle of is The Kills by Richard House which concerns the US involvement in Iraq and how this affects the lives of individuals caught up in the corporate exploitation detailed in the book. (This was long listed for the Booker last year). It is the first book I have come across that has a subtext accessed through web pages which can be listened to independently or alongside a reading of the text. As I have the paperback - not realising it had this feature- I haven't accessed these to any great extent. I think it offers a new direction for novels though which could allow the reader to follow up links to relevant history or other works. Would War and Peace benefit from links which could give some historical perspective to the battles? In my opinion it wouldn't make the text better, but could enrich the reading experience further.

I don't think modern novels are easier to read either. Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall keeps the reader on their toes as you don't get any authorial foreground to chapters through usual description, but are plunged into Cromwell's mind stream, orientating yourself as you go along. You can almost hear Mantel calling "keep up"!

Julian Barnes "The Sense of an Ending" was a fascinating read, not for the rather prosaic story, but for how the original narrative presented becomes revised years later and allows you to reflect on how one kind of memory can be interpreted and modified in startlingly different ways.

The modern literary writer often has a very sophisticated arsenal of techniques which they can be used in ways they weren't in the past, good as those classics were.

[cacian]

old skool versus modern.
minimalist versus crowded.

[Paulclem]

old skool versus
minimalist versus crowded.

Meaning what?

[JCamilo]

Well, you are focusing in some kind of modern novels. Even in this site, guys like Dan Brown, J.K.Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Murakami, Stephen King, etc are mentioned and discussed. Are them out of the race for canonization? Can we tell what is the status of Tolkien?

[stlukesguild]

I often wonder myself whenever I read a list of top great books, whether the classics of the past really are better than the books written now.

Certainly they are better than the vast majority of what was written in the past and present.

I don't suppose there were very many people trying to write fiction in the past as there are now. How many authors were there in the C18th compared to now?

What do numbers have to do with it? There are more students being coming out of schools every year with BFAs and MFAs in the visual arts than there were people alive in Florence, Venice and Rome during the Renaissance... yet the sheer number of brilliant artists that came out of the Italian Renaissance far surpasses what might be expected based upon demographics... and far surpasses the number of brilliant artists actively working today.

Authors were not more intelligent or better educated.

That's debatable. We may have a far broader education. The writer today is likely familiar with literature from ancient Greece to the present and familiar with writers from Britain, American, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and even Asia and South America. Dante probably owned a couple hundred books at best and may have had access through various libraries (private and academic) to a thousand more. What he knew was less broad... but he likely knew it in far greater depth. In most cases what he read, was read in the original language (Latin, Italian, French).

They lived in different times so they had that interesting perspective. Maybe the classics that have come down to us are just the best of what was available at the time they were written, and that there are numerous contemporary books that are just as good.

The "classics" are essentially those books that continue to resonate with an audience across time and space. It is quite likely that there are books written in the last 50 or 20 years that will eventually be recognized as classics... but "numerous" contemporary "classics"? Highly unlikely. Of course we are all open to your suggestions as to what contemporary works qualify.

[stlukesguild]

My OP really concerns whether we should have more focus on modern works here given that classic literature is a fairly sealed Canon.

SHOULD? WE? It seems to me that WE SHOULD be reading and studying that which we take the most pleasure in. Personally, I have enjoyed any number of Modern and Contemporary works of literature, but honestly I don't follow contemporary fiction... especially novels... as much as I once did. I read much more poetry... and I might ask SHOULD WE not be discussing poetry more?
Seriously, I don't think anyone with any real passion for literature imagines that the "Canon" is sealed. Jose Saramago, Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez , Yves Bonnefoy, Geoffrey Hill, Anne Carson... can't we all name a number of writers who are prime candidates for "canonization"?

[cacian]

Meaning what?

hi Paulcem
i meant old skool versus modern
minimalist versus crowded
what i meant to say is that classic literature is crowded with images/ideas plots and so the writing is dense
today the writing is rather minimalist compared to it.
there are no more Iliads or De Sartre types of writing.
we tend to veer towards heavy loaded science fictions or fifty shades of grey type of style.

[Lykren]

[COLOR="#B22222"]Gabriel Garcia Lorca

Gabriel Garcia Lorca! I'd love to see what the child of Marquez and Lorca would produce

[Marbles]

Speaking of fiction, what has come down to us as canon should be looked at as history of literature. History as in not the sum total of what was produced but a succession of new discoveries and new breaks in the novel. So the vast, picaresque, adventurist narrative of Cervantes unbounded by time and space takes a definitive break in the expression of Balzac, Flaubert and Dickens, which is quotidian, bounded by modern structures, social institutions, and where time takes on a finite and vicious quality of the cause-and-effect formula. Go further and the disillusionment with the quotidian, in Kafka, breaks into a fusion of dream and reality (Metamorphosis), and later takes on a form of an enormous, uncontrollable, incomprehensible genie of that is a modern state (in The Trial, The Castle).

These are just three major discoveries I have mentioned; there are many other twists and turns and many good novelists that contributed to it. Much of that has found its way into the broader consensus of canon.

Shall we pay less attention to the classics that define for us the history of the novel? I think not. It is vital for our education to approach contemporary or near-contemporary fiction with a balanced view of what came before, how society which produced new writers absorbed it, and made further discoveries for the posterity. Though some might object to Marquez's contributions as yet to meet the test of time, I am in no doubt he represents a definitive new discovery in the onwards journey of the novel, that of primordial myth guiding our destinies in this post-modern world. Like in Macondo, where beds of polished stones, white and enormous, were like prehistoric eggs (One Hundred Years of Solitude), we live in a time where we are in the process of rediscovering ice.

We may ignore classics of the canon to a certain extent, where minor works may be left out for the unavoidable names (a few of those mentioned above), but the more we ignore classics, the more we forget how we arrived in Macondo or how we traversed Terra Nostra.

[kev67]

I often wonder myself whenever I read a list of top great books, whether the classics of the past really are better than the books written now.

Certainly they are better than the vast majority of what was written in the past and present.

I don't suppose there were very many people trying to write fiction in the past as there are now. How many authors were there in the C18th compared to now?

What do numbers have to do with it? There are more students being coming out of schools every year with BFAs and MFAs in the visual arts than there were people alive in Florence, Venice and Rome during the Renaissance... yet the sheer number of brilliant artists that came out of the Italian Renaissance far surpasses what might be expected based upon demographics... and far surpasses the number of brilliant artists actively working today.

Authors were not more intelligent or better educated.

That's debatable. We may have a far broader education. The writer today is likely familiar with literature from ancient Greece to the present and familiar with writers from Britain, American, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and even Asia and South America. Dante probably owned a couple hundred books at best and may have had access through various libraries (private and academic) to a thousand more. What he knew was less broad... but he likely knew it in far greater depth. In most cases what he read, was read in the original language (Latin, Italian, French).

They lived in different times so they had that interesting perspective. Maybe the classics that have come down to us are just the best of what was available at the time they were written, and that there are numerous contemporary books that are just as good.

The "classics" are essentially those books that continue to resonate with an audience across time and space. It is quite likely that there are books written in the last 50 or 20 years that will eventually be recognized as classics... but "numerous" contemporary "classics"? Highly unlikely. Of course we are all open to your suggestions as to what contemporary works qualify.

It depends what you call a classic, but for instance I recently read Humphrey Clinker, written about 1771, which is marketed as one of the Pengiuin English Library novels. I found it interesting from an historical point of view, but if a contemporary version of similar quality was written today, I doubt it would find a publisher. I have just finished Nostromo, which has been described as Joseph Conrad's masterpiece. Conrad was listed as one of the four most important writers in the English tradition by F.R. Leavis, who was a legendary English professor and critic (the other three were Jane Austen, George Elliot and Henry James) I also read recently Leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry. I have read several books by Conrad and several by McMurtry. I think Larry McMurtry is a better writer.

In a top 100 of great novels of all time published by The Guardian, the top 10 were

1. Don Quixote
2. Pilgrim's Progress
3. Robinson Crusoe
4. Gulliver's Travels
5. Tom Jones
6. Clarissa
7. Tristram Shandy
8. Dangerous Liasons
9. Emma
10. Frankenstein

The only two of those I have read were the first part of Don Quixote and (I think) the whole of Gulliver's Travels. I liked the first part of Gulliver's Travels with the Lilliputians, but I did not think the rest of it was so good. I thought Don Quixote was a real bore. It was a joke flogged to death. I slogged my way to the end of the first part, but could not face the second part. I plan to read Robinson Crusoe next year, but I also intend to read The Martian by Andy Weir, which is about an astronaut trapped on Mars. I will be interested to see which is better. I also plan to read Frankenstein next year, and I might read I Robot by Issac Asimov. Again it will be interesting to compare. In the list above, Don Quixote was described as the first modern novel, and Robinson Crusoe was described as the first English novel. To me this suggests that they were important because they were the first, not necessarily because they were the best.

[Paulclem]

Well, you are focusing in some kind of modern novels. Even in this site, guys like Dan Brown, J.K.Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Murakami, Stephen King, etc are mentioned and discussed. Are them out of the race for canonization? Can we tell what is the status of Tolkien?

It's a moot point and worth discussing. I'm thinking particularly of literary works, though there are those who think these authors have merit. Times have changed and it is uncertain what the criteria will be for classic status.