Nominations for New Classics

[ennison]

Interesting PB. I think I will now lay my hands on these two books as you have made them sound as if I would enjoy them - Lost Memory of Skin and The Good Lord Bird. On the point about historical fiction. To me that has to be set in an era before the novelist's birth in fact sometime before it as if it is his childhood he can remember those times and will have heard his parents talk. A true historical novel would be of the nature of Scott's Heart of Midlothian or Stevenson's Kidnapped.

[ennison]

A minor point about identifying modern classics. There are novels etc coming out now which may attain the status of genre classics. There seems to be nowadays fairly well-defined genres and some writers write within their chosen genre almost exclusively. I do not mean to suggest there were no genres in say the nineteenth century, only fewer and probably not so many really able writers tending to focus on a particular type of novel as in recent decades.

[Pompey Bum]

Good post, Pompey. "Huckleberry Finn", though, is SOMETHING of a historical novel -- at least, it is not set in what was then the present. It was published in 1884 -- and depicts a time before the Civil War. It is probably set in the era of Clemens' childhood, in the 1840s -- 40 years prior to the novel's publication. "War and Peace: was published only 50 years after the era it depicts.

"The Good Lord Bird" is a historical novel in that it features real-life people: John Brown, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman and others. "Finn" does not.

Okay, fair enough--in a way. I mean, Huckleberry Finn isn't anything like a historical novel, even a highly fictionalized one, because no historical characters or events are depicted (unless one counts antebellum America in a general sense). War and Peace is a historical novel not just because it includes fictionalized versions historical figures like Kutuzov and Napoleon, but because it presents Tolstoy's theory of history and destiny ("Life and Fate" as Vasily Grossman called it in his book), including a broadside assault on Carlisle's "Great Man" theory of history. War and Peace is not just a historical novel, it is a book about how history does and does not work. Distance in time from the upheavals it describes isn't really the point.

But your point about Huckleberry Finn is relevant. Twain sets the novel in the America of his youth. He uses dialect from the time, and of course the humor of children. So maybe there always was an element of nostalgia to the story. But for me, Twain's genius (when he had his good stuff going) was to write in such honest and legitimate human terms that his work transcended its own nostalgia. That's why it has lived, and in my opinion, why we must guard against its Bowdlerization.

I haven't read The Good Lord Bird, by the way, although I have heard great things about it. I didn't mean to imply that it was necessarily nostalgic just because it's a historical novel (I can't imagine getting too nostalgic for John Brown), just that it is striking how often the two great American literary traditions come wrapped in the swaddling clothes of their 19th century births. It's important not to drift into nostalgia and genre (in a bad sense) if the meanings of new works are to remain relevant.

So does The Good Lord Bird work? Is Brown depicted as a freedom fighter, a terrorist, or something in between? In what way did it remind you of Huckleberry Finn? Was it a picaresque novel (I'll forgive a lot for that, but that's just me). Did it strike you as "politically correct"? Do you think it is likely to be read in the future? (Personally I think having a strong political orientation makes a book less likely to last simply because times change so much, but I don't think that's a very common view).

[stlukesguild]

I glanced at the Booker Awards list and the National Book Awards list: both lists have 11 female winners in the past 30 years (I think -- some authors go by initials, and others by ambiguous first names like "Shirley" or "Hillary", and I don't know the gender of all of them). Since 1984, 7 women have been Nobel Laureates in literature (there are fewer than 30 winners, because some years no award is given). So, by comparison, stlukes' list is male dominated. 35% of the winners on these lists are women; 2% on stlukes' list.

I suspect that the choices made behind the scenes of the Booker Awards, The National Book Awards, and certainly the Nobel prize have far more to do with politics whether these be of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, etc... I read for pleasure. I could probably add Toni Morrison and Wislawa Szymborska... but limited to Modern/Contemporary writers (of the past 30 or so years) I find myself honestly limited in my choices by what I am familiar with and what I think is truly worthy. Undoubtedly my choices are also biased in terms of nationality and linguistics (where I am limited to works available in quality translations into English). But at the same time, I don't buy into the notion that the arts are an Egalitarian endeavor where each nationality, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc... has produced an equal amount of masterful works of art in every known genre.

I actually have far more female writers from earlier periods on my shelves.

[Pompey Bum]

Interesting PB. I think I will now lay my hands on these two books as you have made them sound as if I would enjoy them - Lost Memory of Skin and The Good Lord Bird. On the point about historical fiction. To me that has to be set in an era before the novelist's birth in fact sometime before it as if it is his childhood he can remember those times and will have heard his parents talk. A true historical novel would be of the nature of Scott's Heart of Midlothian or Stevenson's Kidnapped.

Just to clarify, ecurb has read The Good Lord Bird, but not me. I read Lost Memory of Skin and highly recommend it. By the way, I just picked up The War at the End of the World on your recommendation. It looks amazing. Thanks.

[NikolaiI]

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. It's funny, uses the Scottish accent rather well, and says unsayable things about drugs that actually make sense.

Thanks very much for sharing this information! I never knew Trainspotting was a novel. It's one of my favorite movies, although I can only watch it in pieces I'll definitely have to read the novel.

Is the book better than the movie?

35 years takes us back only to 1979 so why not. It's really the reasons for the nomination and the quality of the argument for a book that's really interesting.

That makes sense.

"Ender's Game" is one I don't believe I've seen mentioned.

I think James Michener would make the list as well, although he does get a lot of help from his research team.

[Ecurb]

I have just a minute today -- perhaps I'll post more tomorrow. To answer your question, Pompey, John Brown is portrayed as an insane fanatic, and Frederick Douglas is portrayed as a lecherous blowhard (a portrayal McBride probably couldn't get away with if he were white). One of the fun things about the book, though, is that although Brown is insane and a murderer -- in the end his murderous madness is not so different from saintliness, and he is, after all, an honorable man.

To stluke: I'm sure the awards ARE political (I have no idea if feminist political goals have helped women's books win). Nonetheless, whether a book becomes a "classic" is also political. Isn't a thread about what modern books will become "classics" different (at least slightly) than a thread about which books someone personally thinks are the best of the past 30 years? The reality is that Booker and National Book Award winners have a leg up on non-winners in terms of whether they will attain "classic" status -- and Nobel Prizes are awarded by committees that think the author has ALREADY written some "classics".

Perhaps we should define what we mean by "classic", and what qualities a book must have to qualify.

[stlukesguild]

Nonetheless, whether a book becomes a "classic" is also political.

Certainly. A brilliant writer who writes in Hungarian, Korean, Afrikaans, Swahili, Ndebele, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, Azeri, Kurdish, etc... is at a major disadvantage. There is far less chance that his or her work will be translated into the languages spoken in the major socio/economic/cultural powers. For a work to be recognized as a "classic" it needs to "travel"... beyond its local confines. One may also have the advantage of having attended the "right" schools, made influential connections, been employed in the right place at the right time. Looking to my own area of expertise, I can immediately recognize that Michelangelo quite likely would not be as central a figure as he is in the visual arts had he not been employed by the Medici in Florence and the Popes in Rome, but rather had worked in a small or medium sized diocese in Hungary or Norway.

Isn't a thread about what modern books will become "classics" different (at least slightly) than a thread about which books someone personally thinks are the best of the past 30 years?

Is it? Perhaps slightly... but only if we recognize that what we "like" is not necessarily the same thing as what is "good" or "great". But the very idea of a "contemporary classic" seems a contradiction in terms to me... and predicting which contemporary works will eventually be recognized as "classics" seems little more than a shot in the dark... a sucker's bet at best.

The reality is that Booker and National Book Award winners have a leg up on non-winners in terms of whether they will attain "classic" status -- and Nobel Prizes are awarded by committees that think the author has ALREADY written some "classics".

But how accurate have these awards been historically? By most standards, the Nobel Prize seems to be the award most honored. The winners of this award from the first 60 years of the 20th century include:

Sully Prudhomme
Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen
Bjørnstjerne Martinus Bjørnson
Frédéric Mistral
José Echegaray y Eizaguirre
Rudolf Christoph Eucken
Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf
Paul Johann Ludwig Heyse
Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam
Romain Rolland
Karl Adolph Gjellerup
Henrik Pontoppidan
Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler
Anatole France
Jacinto Benavente
Wladyslw Stanislaw Reymont
Grazia Deledda
Henri Bergson
Erik Axel Karlfeldt
John Goldsworthy
Roger du Gard
Pearl Buck
Frans Eemil Sillanpää
Johann Vilhelm Jensen
Gabriela Mistral
Winston Churchill
Halldór Kiljan Laxness
Bertrand Russell

A good many of these Laureates I have never even heard of... and are probably unknown or forgotten by most others. Now there are a number of Laureates who unquestionably deserved their awards. Among these I would certainly include:

Rudyard Kipling
W.B. Yeats
G.B. Shaw
Thomas Mann
Ivan Bunin
Luigi Pirandello
Eugene O' Niell
Hermann Hesse
Andre Gide
T.S. Eliot
François Mauriac
Ernest Hemingway
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Albert Camus
Boris Pasternak
Salvatore Quasimodo

But even there... who among us can't come up with a list equal or better... or at least certainly better than 2/3rds of the list as it stands:

James Joyce
Marcel Proust
Ranier Maria Rilke
Eugenio Montale
Franz Kafka
Wallace Stevens
Federico Garcia Lorca
Jean Genet
Guillaume Apollinaire
Joseph Conrad
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Virginia Woolf
W.H. Auden
Graham Greene
Leo Tolstoy
Anton Chekhov
Vladimir Nabokov
etc...

I somehow doubt that today's critics are any more discerning as to what will truly stand the test of time and be recognized as a classic.

[JCamilo]

I find funny people are quick to point the "bias" of Stlukes reggarding gender and pointing to the solution using prizes who are even more biased towards the limited world of the limited english literature (or american).

[Paulclem]

I think the attempt to define what qualifies a book as a classic is more difficult to predict than it may have been in the past. Reading 1984 for example, you find a novel which is notable more for the effects of the ideas than the quality of the writing. There are new elements - will there be a film/ box set effect? Will how a novel interfaces with other media have an effect?

[Paulclem]

As for the relevance of the Booker or any literary award - it is merely a filter. The works tend to have a certain literary quality and with the recent inclusion of US authors, it does present a wide range of books from different cultures. Would the recent winner have come to the fore without it?

[JCamilo]

My point is not to you, Paul. You decided for a list and you are not nitpicking someone else list. It is absurd ridiculous to imagine anyone else will be able to bring on a perfect inclusive critery. There is a reason why Bouvard et Pecuchet works even unfinished; it is impossible to include all.

Anyways, the capacity to be translated to other medias is a good factor. That may be relevant for Harry Potter's series, for example. I think for example, Diana Wynne Jones Moving Castle is a superior book, but, despite a good anime, didn't had the same impact. I say, Terry Prachet's Discworld will be "damaged' the same way. In other hand, Trainspotting is a good book, has a good movie with cult following, but as the poster here suggests, the movie and the book are not linked so strongly. Cormac McCarty is already using movies-books relationship to the point it has changed his writing style, The Road for example was made to be movie already.

[Pompey Bum]

Some of the posts above are giving me the oddest feeling of déjà vu.

http://www.online-literature.com/for...New-Literature

"Modern classics" is an oxymoron. The Booker Prize is useful but corrupt. Literary canons are silly, or useful, or neither (I vote silly). But let's have fun trying to guess things we can't know (as with theology, new marriages, and the color of strangers' underwear). That pretty much sums up the other thread, right?

Cormac McCarty is already using movies-books relationship to the point it has changed his writing style, The Road for example was made to be movie already.

I read a rave review of that movie in Esquire, then nada. I'm not in a position to follow American cinema very closely, but if the thing was even released, I never noticed. I assume it merely tanked. Despite its video game potential ("Shoot down the cannibalistic mobs while putting tiny scraps of food in your supermarket cart!"), modern audiences just don't like to be depressed. Ridley Scott is perennially threatening to make Blood Meridian into a movie. (I guess audiences prefer that sort of thing). No Country for Old Men, of course, was "Oscar's fav" a few years back (but then the Cohen brothers have a lot of pull in Hollywood). I wonder if the guy from Sling Blade is still around. He'd make a great Child of God.

[JCamilo]

It is not Deja vu, it is just the Avenger's of Paul's Iron Man.

Anyways, The road is a good book, nothing near the best of McCarty, of course. Also, more typical thrailler like (of course). The movie also. I think the reason of the lack of popularity was timing. Despite that I have sometimes the giggles thinking that the little boy is Jesus Christ, if you analyse you will see it is Walking Dead (a father trying to keep his son alive in a pos-apocalyptic world. The zombies are a detail - in both tv and comics - and in McCarty they are such a detail that they do not appear, but let's suppose they are a local color that the natives do not feel need to mention, like the famous camel in the koran - according to Borges - which was according to Gibbon, both wrong anyways).

No Country was also written with hollywood as a target, I meantioned the road because it is more a "finished package", since No Country still roams in some grey areas that hollywood would not consider typical, but there is no doubt the movie helped him to break out the american label and be a more well-know name outside america, so it will have some height on his chances of prosperity. As Ridley Scott... He probally thinks the Judge is some alien, hence he wants to make it as Prometheus 3.

[Ecurb]

"Modern classics" is an oxymoron. The Booker Prize is useful but corrupt. Literary canons are silly, or useful, or neither (I vote silly). But let's have fun trying to guess things we can't know (as with theology, new marriages, and the color of strangers' underwear). That pretty much sums up the other thread, right?
)

I associate "classics" with Greek and Latin literature -- but making lists and rating things can be fun. In general, though, talking about the lists (What makes a book a "classic"? What qualities in a particular book help it make or miss the list?) is more fun than simply listing books.

I'd forgotten that the early Nobel Literature Prizes have been so controversial to later generations. One reason: our concept of what constitutes "literature" has changed. Bertrand Russell or Henri Bergson would not win Literature Awards today -- and advances in academic fields being cumulative, their books are not as "timeless" as a work of art is. Personally, I think non-fiction literature can have as much literary value as novels -- but perhaps advances in academic fields and our current love of science and modernism makes this an unpopular opinion. Today, "Decline and Fall..." is as likely to be dismissed because of Gibbons' historical errors as it is to be lauded as a seminal literary work.

Joe Simpson, author of the mountaineering "classic" "Touching the Void", recounted a story about literary prizes in his second book. "Touching" was nominated for some major literary award, and his competition included some very famous writers (I forget who right now, and I forget which award it was). Sitting at the gala, he wondered how his book rated -- since he had dropped out of school at age 16 and never written anything before. He won.