Periodically you come across those discussions where people bemoan the classics they haven't read.

[conuly]

Or they insult and criticize others for not reading enough classics, for preferring more recent fiction to books 300 years old. Anything by Dickens or Shakespeare or Milton is exalted and above reproach, anything written in a modern vernacular or involving recent technology and mores is suspect at best. If you can easily understand it it's trash, if you enjoy it you should have picked a harder book, and if you didn't learn anything (it's understood you won't learn anything unless it's one of The Greats) you wasted your time. Heaven forbid you enjoy any form of genre fiction!

I don't understand this attitude at all. Quite aside from the fact that this, combined with force-feeding tragedies to teens, is what causes people to turn away from The Classics altogether, it's not like your choice of reading material is a matter of moral judgment at all, is it? You should read what you like, and don't worry about whether it's thick and old and respected enough. Who cares?

But with that said, there is one book that's been on my "reading list" (such as it is, I mostly follow my own advice) for most of my life, that I have been putting off reading, and that's The Scarlet Pimpernel. Not because it's A Classic, but because it's talked up a lot in The Girl With The Silver Eyes (now that is a classic!), and I've always wondered what the fuss was about. In fact, not long after the tenth time I read The Girl With The Silver Eyes (and how I identified with Katie!) I located a copy of Pimpernel in our house and attempted to read it.

Yeah. I was about eight. I didn't even make it three pages. And I was a good reader, easily, but there's more to a book than just the combination of words.

This kinda irked me, because Katie loved the book, and her neighbor loved the book, and Katie was awesome, so why didn't I love this book? And every once in a while I'd think about it and go "Maybe I should try again", but I'd remember that bad experience and put it off for a while. It's not like there's any shortage of reading material in this world, however much it might feel like it at times.

Well. I've started reading it online today, and guess what? I get what the fuss was about! Even if I'd persevered, I would not have enjoyed it at that young age, that's clear to me, but I do now. (You guys need to read this book. Seriously.)

Of course, if I'd had the book pushed on me in a "Read this unless you're a stupid smelly person with no taste or sense" fashion I doubt I'd ever have picked it up. I still don't know why people do that. That's the real waste of time.

Comments

[steorra]

"Anything by Dickens or Shakespeare or Milton is exalted and above reproach, anything written in a modern vernacular or involving recent technology and mores is suspect at best. If you can easily understand it it's trash, if you enjoy it you should have picked a harder book, and if you didn't learn anything (it's understood you won't learn anything unless it's one of The Greats) you wasted your time. Heaven forbid you enjoy any form of genre fiction!"

C. S. Lewis has an interesting essay about this phenomenon. In it, he explores what the difference is between "Literature" and books that don't count as "Literature"; equivalently, between high-brow and low-brow books. In the end, he settles on exactly the distinction you've made - how difficult it is. He asks the question "What quality do some books have right from when they're written, but everything picks up after a century or two?", since some authors' works, such as Shakespeare and Dickens, were in the "low-brow" category when they were written but are considered "high-brow" now. And he definitely defends "low-brow" and genre fiction.

[conuly]

That's because C. S. Lewis was a sensible person.

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

The Girl with the Silver Eyes~ Oh my god, I REMEMBER THAT ONE. :D I identified with her in some ways, too... she was quite precocious, wasn't she? <3 Now I want to dig up a copy to reread it. :D

And I, too, have never read The Scarlet Pimpernel before, although thanks to a friend who used to (and maybe still does) LJ RP as Armand St. Just, I know of the Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/) site that has it available for free online and have been meaning to read it... perhaps I should get started on it... >.>

[conuly]

Silver Eyes is a book that will change your life as a kid. That is the absolute truth.

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

I HAD NO IDEA ANYONE BUT ME HAD EVER HEARD OF THAT BOOK. omg. I still have an (extremely well-worn) copy on my bookshelf; I'll have to reread when I get home this winter.

\o/

[conuly]

Oh, no, everybody knows it!

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

Seriously? I never saw it in any bookstores or libraries when I was a kid, or heard anyone mention it-- I always thought of it as my secret, amazing book that no one knew about or something like that.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

That is how I felt about MacDonald Wallis' Legend of Lost Earth when we were ten.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

It came up recently on Loganberry's Stump the Bookseller (http://www.loganberrybooks.com/stump.html). We had never even heard of it before. It wasn't the book the person was looking for, but so what. We get more book recommendations off that site.

[conuly]

What was the book they were looking for?

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

It turned out their book was A Walk Out Of The World. Most of the people who wrote in thought it was The Girl with the Silver Eyes, so obviously a lot of people there are familiar with it.

[gmdreia.livejournal.com]

I'm with you.

The way to get people to appreciate stuff is not to spoon-feed them and tell them what understanding they are possibly supposed to get. I am on a classics kick myself, but I'm actually getting pleasure out of the books (as a 37 year old with life experience, who can relate to the characters) where when I read them as a younger person, I just wasn't ready and ended up *hating* classic fiction for a long time.

I just read Orwell's 1984 and then went into a heavy Kafka kick. I always liked Orwell, but have an appreciation now that I didn't have when I first read him... because now I can relate to 1984's main characters from a more human perspective, one of life experience, as opposed to just analyzing the thing as we're told to do in an English class, or understanding it as political/speculative fiction.

And now I f*cking adore Kafka, who I used to hate. Whereas before, you couldn't get me near that loony with a ten foot pole after a bad experience in college.

Oh and let's add to this, literary snobs, too, can make people hate classics... especially when they have absolutely no sense of humor.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear!

In the case of The Scarlet Pimpernel, I think the "it's a classic and thus must be good" is particularly ridiculous. I mean, it is a good read, but when all's said and done the story isn't all that different from, say, Batman.

Exalting Dickens and Shakespeare is ridiculous too, come to think of it. Particularly Dickens with his pay-per-word blathering (same goes for Victor Hugo...). I actually do like some classics (including Dickens, Hugo or Shakespeare), but just because something is old doesn't automatically mean it's the paragon of good writing, just as being "genre" doesn't automatically make something bad (in fact, much of Dicken's or Shakespeare's writing would be considered "genre" and bad if it had been written today...).

I did like some of the classics I "had" to read for school, though - but I hated others. Though to be fair, in recent years I re-read some of the classics I disliked in school to see if it was just the "being forced" thing that made me dislike them. In some cases, that seems to have been it (or, well, I just was too young), but in many, I still just don't like them. Wuthering Heights, for instance, still bores me to death...

[conuly]

I mean, it is a good read, but when all's said and done the story isn't all that different from, say, Batman.

That's, uh, actually the argument that convinced me to give it another shot!

[leora.livejournal.com]

I loved The Old Man and the Sea, but then, I read it out loud to my brother during a long car trip and we MST3K'd it, which is totally the way to enjoy it. I loved East of Eden. But I skimmed Moby Dick rather than reading it. And I have no desire to read Moby Dick ever. Knowing what I now know about myself, which is that action scenes (in books or movies) bore me beyond all imagining, I really doubt I will ever enjoy Moby Dick. It's one of the few reading assignments I didn't do.

I loved The Crucible though (although when we did plays in school we assigned parts to people in class and did them out loud as plays, since acting was well-respected among my classmates, this worked out well and people tried to actually do a good job with their parts plus I was Goody Proctor for it).

Classics are really a mixed lot. I still feel only meh toward Romeo and Juliet. I find Romeo annoying. And I still think Beatrice is awesome in Much Ado About Nothing.

I would never expect everyone to like every classic, or even every classic that I like. A lot of it is going to depend on individual taste. I also really dislike most Dickens - the writing, not the stories. I think some of it makes for great movies, but it feels bloated to me. However, I think A Christmas Carol is brilliantly written, and even though I am not Christian and don't care for Christmas, I think it's a fantastic book and worth reading for the excellent quality of the writing. It's clever and funny.

[conuly]

I think some of it makes for great movies, but it feels bloated to me.

Paid by the word....

[leora.livejournal.com]

I know. Plus he had been traumatized by poverty in childhood, which seemed to give him money issues. I think he was a brilliant capitalist, but reading a Christmas Carol made me so sad, because I realized just how brilliant an author he could have been. He had so much true talent.

[blackhanddpants.livejournal.com]

I find that a lot of things I bounced off of as a child, I can read now and really enjoy. I never read Hawthorne in high school, he was boooooorrrrrrrrrring, but I read The Scarlet Letter as an adult and y'know what? That's a good book! I loathed Hemingway, but my husband's reading it now and enjoying it, so maybe I'll give it another try. Jane Austen was always "meh" to me, but as an adult I love her books.

So, yeah. Foisting books on people that they're not ready for or not interested in is the wrong way to go about it.

BTW I picked up the Scarlet Pimpernel myself recently; a friend in another forum was reading Orczy and recommended it, and I read the first couple of chapters and went, "Yay!"

Another that I picked up recently that turned out to be Fun Fun Fun: Rafael Sabatini. My husband picked up Captain Blood in a bookstore, in a reprint edition with a foreword by Bernard Cornwell, who is a fave in this house. He read it, and handed it to me: "You'll like this. You'll really like it," he told me, and boy was he right! So, old and grizzled and HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

[conuly]

Jane Austen was always "meh" to me, but as an adult I love her books.

I was quite amazed to come on LJ and find out that she has a large and thriving fandom, tell the truth. She's another "I wonder what all the fuss is about" author, but as her books don't appear to be The Original Secret Identity SuperHero novel I'm still waiting.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Captain Blood! I really want to reread that.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

"You must read these classics or you fail as a reader," is doubly bullshit in science fiction. I have subbed in classes where the students are doing a unit on science fiction and not a single story was written after 1970 because these are the classics... and all written by white men, mostly dead. If it happens again this year I might snap and deliver the curriculum I wrote out on a particularly grumpy day.

[conuly]

That's a timeline that juuuuuuust manages to squeeze out both Butler and LeGuin. Very convenient!

On that note, I follow this site because of the giveaways (free books, how I loves 'em!) and look what was just posted!

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Six short stories, all by men, most I could confirm are white, none I could confirm after 1970, and all Big Pretentious Idea stories. Made of fail. I scribbled out a two-page reading list separated into 'robots', 'animals', 'teenagers saving the world', et cetera.

[conuly]

There are plenty of good pre-1970 sci-fi stories, none of them made the cut either? Wow. Pathetic.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Well, these were... um. "Harrison Bergeron" is the only one I remember by title. Some Vonnegut, some Bradbury, something by Damon Knight I think. Harry Harrison? Those are the four authors, anyway, and I read the stories a bit because the student I was working with had copies and really, just really.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Can I have a copy? Do they not regard Dhalgren as a classic? Martian Quest and all the rest? Shambleau? Witch World? Pilgrimage? Legend of Lost Earth? Judith Merril, Marjorie Bowen, Charlotte Gilman? Are we to assume that Dragonriders of Pern is not classic because the author didn't know when to stop?

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I've heard of two of the titles you mention. The unit was mostly short stories, as far as I can tell, and it occurs to me now that the teacher really missed an opportunity with The Hunger Games.

Dogs and Animals--
Kij Johnson, "The Evolution of Trickster Stories among the Dogs of North Park after the Change"
Connie Willis, "The Last of the Winnebagos"
Eliza Blair, "Friend in Need"
Asimov, whatever it is where they shut down the last zoo in the world and now it's humans and plankton farms
Someone, "The People of Sand and Slag"
Someone, "A Boy and his Dog" even though I haven't read it, whatever

Teens Changing the World--
Cory Doctorow, "Anda's Game"
Sherwood Smith, "Being Real"
Eileen Gunn's story about the kid who will learn to spit

Miscellaneous--
Tempest Bradford, "Different Day" with "To Serve Man"
Octavia Butler, "Speech Sounds" more because it's well-known than because it's my favorite of hers-- it's the only title I could come up with
Something by Tiptree, read blind, then explain about the author
Benjamin Rosenbaum, "Night Waking" with the Bradbury one that's similar but honestly not as good
Someone, "Goddesses" that was on Scifiction and won a Nebula

The actual list is a lot more scribbly and has a lot of thinking-it-through written down, like the robots category that I think is a little too much for people just meeting the genre, but that's easy enough to fix.

The main problem is that the stories have to be at the right level, readingwise, and so does the SF. Entry-level SF is not always 'classic'. I think that's why the classics are sometimes held up as standard reading, particularly when there's not a strong YA section. But I haven't read that much Asimov-- no novels, in fact-- and my Heinlein is pretty limited. I have books to read now and I don't need to spend time catching up on the conversation people had fifty years ago, not when it's a given.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Your list looks great. Many of those we have not read. We have read a lot of Tiptree, "Night Waking" (oh Lord, yes) and "A Boy & His Dog", Harlan Ellison.

When you say "Entry-level SF is not always 'classic'", yes. Analog magazine used to provide a great intro to SF which wasn't always classic, although some of it became so, by both men and women.

Everything I mentioned was written by women before 1970 except Dhalgren which is by a black author, Samuel Delaney. I don't know which ones you were familiar with, I guess I'd assumed you were acquainted with all of them. The best ones for YA from that period would be Andre Norton's books like Witch World, she wrote dozens like that specially aimed at young people. And a lot of young people start with Pilgrimage by Zenna Henderson or Leigh Brackett's Martian Quest.

[beezelbubbles.livejournal.com]

Ooooh... I had this argument sooo many times in my MFA program. A good chunk of my thesis was on the fact that there is no standard definition for what is "literary", *and* that as soon as a genre piece is considered literary, we're not allowed to call it sci-fi/fantasy/whatever genre anymore. (Which happened all the time with me and this one prof. He'd go off on how terrible genre fiction is, and I'd counter with a laundry list of literary genre things, and he'd tell me those didn't count because they're good. Hrmph.)

[conuly]

No True Scotsman, eh? Some people need a course in logic.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I was going to say No True Scotsman, but Conuly beat me to it... so I am just going to say *grump*.

*grump*

That is annoying.

Okay, I said other things too.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Seen this?

http://salon.com/a/sLbQQAA

And you probably already know this one:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/07/a-reader-apos-s-manifesto/2270/

[conuly]

I've never seen either one of those, thank you :)