Classics

I don't think so, but I'm not sure what you mean by classics.

By classics, I mean by something written before 1950, I guess. Things like Austen, Alcott, Dumas, people like that. They're just sometimes easier for me to read... O__o I really don't understand it.

I've just been reading Camus and all I can think is "sociopath???" LOL

Jean Genet is also a headache altho' I love Sartre's theories (infinitely more readable than Notre Dame des Fleurs).

YA is very specifically written for pre-teen audiences. When I was a child, I loved Nancy Drew and such nonsense. I cannot imagine reading it as an adult. (The exceptions I allow for are the very brilliant Harry Potter books and the first volume of The Hunger Games. The former I read to my children and then re-read for myself. The latter I read it for the socio-political line -- not the teen love story -- and was wowed by it.)

Contemporary fiction varies wildly. Caleb Carr's The Alienist is a beautiful example of Wilkie Collins written in modern time. Ditto with writers such as PD James' Children of Men, a very modern dystopian novel.

Some writers like Cormac McCarthy and Chuck Palahniuk are not the easiest read but have very worthwhile messages.

Several novels I can recommend without reservation:

1. The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
2. The Road, Cormac McCarthy (it will end you, but it is worth it)
3. The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova (200 pages too long but gorgeously written!)
4. The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett (also his Fall of Giants
5. Let the Right One In, John Ajvide Lindqvist (Best.Vampire.Book.Ever!)

Holler if you want more. :)

Edited 2012-06-25 01:31 (UTC)

YA is very specifically written for pre-teen audiences.

Really?! I thought young-adult meant, you know, for young-adults, not for tweens. -_- How foolish!

Thanks for the recommendations! I have not heard of any of those books before. I think I'll look them up. :)

Pre-teens are young adults. An adult is anyone of 18 years or older. But the content of so many YA books is mostly for 12-13 year-olds. Girls reach puberty much younger these days, often at 11.

Let The Right One In is a grand book, what a great suggestion. the movie (from Norway) was fabulous as well.

cormac mccarthy and palahnuik are some of our favourites here, too. very poetic prose for such gritty and graphic novels.

YAY! Fellow LTROI fan :)

I LOVED the original movie (didn't see the American version). And that book is nothing short of brilliant.

:-)

i passed on the American version as well. that's not to say that it couldn't have been a right good film but in my mind there was nothing that could have been done to the previous version that would have made it better. that movie was simply gorgeous.

THIS! I felt like the book and original movie were so well done. Why bother making a remake? I didn't understand the impetus.

But I felt that way about Dragon Tattoo as well. :)

Edited 2012-06-25 23:08 (UTC)

yes, and i wish filmmakers would take a moment to ask themselves "will this enhance the experience i've just had watching the foreign adaptation, and how?" perhaps we'd see less CHRIST WHYYYYYYYY? remade films on the market.

mhm, and the string of Japanese horrors like The Eye, The Ring, and The Grudge. perhaps it's because i'm not, but i don't understand the need to have an "American" version of something. i don't mean to sound rude (and apologies if i do), or to imply that all American versions are sub-par because USA's The Office and Being Human would slap me wrong, i just, truly, don't understand why it's become such a common occurrence.

See my gut response was, "Oh, look, they are dumbing it down for the teen population whom they think cannot comprehend anything." :)

I actually do think American versions are sub-par. Some things I get (and this will make you laugh!). For example, when I was watching the British Queer as Folk, I had to have the subtitles on! Sorrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Those accents are really hard to follow! So I am sympathetic when they say American audiences will have trouble with the accents and the slang.

But the fact that it was unacceptable that Eli was, in fact, a boy (castrated) who dressed as a girl -- which brings up the whole question of sexual identity and gender in vampires as Rice so brilliantly did -- really irked me. If we continue to tell teens that these things are "icky", we perpetuate the problem. I very openly discuss same-sex marriages with my students (one of them has two mommies) as well as bigotry and discrimination (hey, this IS Texas, where we still lynch people *heavy heavy sigh*).

I have found that by treating my students as intelligent people capable of intelligent thought, they have risen to the challenge.

Edited 2012-06-25 23:41 (UTC)

Yes, I am like this. I have a passion for the classics, and gravitate toward them in any bookstore. I especially love Dumas' Musketeer saga (all five books).

I do, however, love most YA literature and select historical fiction, so I don't have exactly the same experience as you do. But I will always choose a classic over something modern.

I especially love Dumas' Musketeer saga (all five books).

I've only read The Three Musketeers. I didn't know there were five books. What are the other titles?

1. The Three Musketeers
2. Twenty Years After
3. The Vicomte de Bragelonne
4. Louise de la Valliere
5. The Man in the Iron Mask

3, 4, & 5 were originally (after serialization) one massive volume titled (among other things) Ten Years Later. But most publishers break it up into at least three separate volumes.

Twenty Years After is my favorite of the five.

Sometimes. I think the issue is I can forgive problematic things a lot more easily in classics.

True!

And now...I'm sadly and regretfully thinking about the mess that is called Twilight. D:

I find I can immerse myself a lot more in classics. I have a blistering reading speed for most contemporary fiction, but I'll take hours over a chapter of Dickens or Eliot. Not because the language is difficult or anything of that nature, I just enjoy the experience of reading them more.

Realism, though, is a very 19th Century concept. There's plenty of classic literature that makes no pretension to being realistic in any way.

Not because the language is difficult or anything of that nature, I just enjoy the experience of reading them more.

I know what you mean. I'm also one to go and pick up a book, skip to my favorite part and reread it over and over again.

I wrote this giant response, which you are free not to read. I know you really wanted people to say, yeah books written after Romanticism ended are just not as good, but I have these feelings and that disease, you know that one, where you can't keep yourself from explaining or talking or trying to figure things out. I blame the years and years and years I studied literature for this one.

I used to only read "the classics," particularly those of a British nature ("Did Austen write it? Did Shakespeare? Did Chaucer? then no thank you!" I would say). Now, I tend to read more fantasy and young adult literature.

I think the problem is that the perspective of the reader matters. If you can find a way to sympathize with characters living lives that are vastly different than your own, you can like anything or find most anything couched in its own form of realism. Do the characters act in a way that is in sync with the reality created by the writer? Would someone volunteer to replace his or her sibling in a fight to the death? Would someone push an eight-year-old out a window so that he didn't tell what he saw? Would a drunk lawyer switch places with the husband of the women he loves in order to save that husband's life? Do people spontaneously combust (woo hoo Dickens!)?

I think you need to ask yourself if it is really the realism that draws you to such works. What is it about Austen that you like? She wasn't going for realism, mind you; her goal was satire (see Mrs Bennet, Mr Collins and the father in Persuasion). Alcott was going for realism in Little Women and its sequels. I don't think Dumas was. He liked the adventure. Wait, Dumas pere or fils? Probably pere...

What I know is that I am drawn towards medievalism, towards privileged women who fall in love with lower class men, towards religious and socio-politcal commentary, and towards a more postmodern style of writing. Knowing that, I often swtich back and forth between medieval romance, young adult sci-fi, Victorian literature, Roman history, and whatever else may intrigue me at any given moment (I read this really fantastic book of mathematical history about two years ago and still tell everyone to read it even if you don't like math--"The Artist and the Mathematician")

It may actually be the type of writing popular in the first few decades of the European novel that you are drawn to. You may enjoy the description inherent in Romanticism and other types of works written in the early part of the 1800s. You may enjoy the detail with which the worlds are created and described. Personally, I want to yell at some of the writers of that period and tell them to just get on with it (Walter Scott).

There are modern writers who use this style. As I said, I'm not really as much of a fan of too much description (give me a good absurdist play any day--I love you Samuel Beckett!), so I can't really give you recommendations.

But I think what I'm trying to say here is that rather than say "I love the classics" (which be careful because to many people the classics were written by Greeks and Romans) or "I love the Western Canon" (which is closer to what you are saying), make a list of your favorite books and ask yourself what they all have in common. I remember doing this a long time ago. My books at that time were Dune, The Stand, East of Eden, Pride and Prejudice, Les Miserables and some others that I probably don't love as much any more. The threads I saw there were religion, inter-personal relationships, government, and parent-child relationships (I cannot resist a character with daddy issues--except Jack from Lost).

It's a fun exercise and hey, what's the point of books if not to get you to think about things. Hmmm, maybe I should do this exercise again. My favorites would be all of those ones I mentioned and A Song of Ice and Fire, so I guess I can't play because it's still the same. *sigh*

I know you really wanted people to say, yeah books written after Romanticism ended are just not as good, but I have these feelings and that disease, you know that one, where you can't keep yourself from explaining or talking or trying to figure things out.

Ha! I enjoyed the comment immensely. You've really given me somethings to mull over. And the list idea is a great one!

And I have not heard the term 'absurdist' until today, and had to go look it up, and while this has nothing to do with the term, it made me think of how I love literary nonsense. And while I do love Carroll, I find his other works much more fun than Alice. :D

Thank you for reading the comment!

I love to freak out my students (and random other people) with my ability to recite Jabberwocky. I've never read much of Carroll beyond Alice, but his skills with nonsense verse are something to be applauded.

I was a theater minor years and years ago. I have an insane love for the forms of theater that developed in the 20th century. I love Beckett, Artaud (Theater of Cruelty), and Brecht(verfremdungseffekt!). Really, I love anything that plays with notions of reality and makes the audience participate in the narrative. No passive theater audiences! But I think this is why we diverge in terms of what we appreciate in literature. I appreciate when an audience/reader has to confront the fictionality of the narrative in which it/he/she invests time. My favorite painting does just that in such a marvelous way: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/caulfield-after-lunch-t02033

However, this notion of different levels of reality was used in Atonement and even though I recognize it as masterfully done there, I truly hate that book. There is no way that Briony could ever atone. See and there I'm unable to let go of the catharsis. Brecht would be so disappointed.

I know this comment was intended for the OP but you've given me some ideas, too. I think I'll do that exercise of figuring out what all of my favourite books have in common, just out of interest.

i find that the content in well-known classics is of better quality than that of modern YA fiction, particularly since the explosion of Twilight. i think authors of that period spent more time crafting and focusing on storytelling than those of today. contemporary fiction seems to be about painting a picture readers can relate to on a more superficial level. i say that not in condemnation but, i personally find Edith Wharton a bit more sincere and emotive than L.J. Smith. i'm also rather biased because i have a degree in classical literature. heh, so.

drunkwriter said that Realism is a 19th century concept and i agree. that genre, along with Regionalism of the early 20th century, was heavily influenced by daily life. these are the novels that young adults read now and complain that "nothing happens" in them.

i think, though, that modern non-fiction has a much better flavour than it did fifty years ago and they read much like the realist/regionalist fiction of 1960 and before.

i think authors of that period spent more time crafting and focusing on storytelling than those of today.

So true! There's much more detail and plot than, say, a novel for people my age(22). Young-adult is horrible for the most part, unless you like vampires, wolves, and well, more vampire and wolves and maybe a fallen angel thrown in for good measure.

these are the novels that young adults read now and complain that "nothing happens" in them.

If people really want to see 'nothing happen', they need to go to a young-adult section in a bookstore, and count the endless copies of books in black covers copying each other's contents!

Haven't read much non-fiction, but I have seen a lot of great stuff that my mother reads. She loves southern writers(we live in the USA, by the by), and she knows them all. :)

mm, there does seem to be a common theme among YA fiction these days; supernatural horror/pseudo-erotica. i liked it better when Anne Rice did it 20 years ago :-).

exactly. there's a cycle of regurgitation happening in the literary world thanks to the overwhelming success of a select few. it's a bit disturbing.

oh? what does she read?

If people really want to see 'nothing happen', they need to go to a young-adult section in a bookstore, and count the endless copies of books in black covers copying each other's contents!

Well, yes, there is quite a lot of bad writing that gets published and sold because it is reminiscent of another work that is popular. This is true in any era. There are many books from the 1800s that are terrible and that, rightly so, no one reads anymore. The books dubbed literature, the ones included by Bloom in Th Western Canon</> are there for a reason. We haven't had time to weed the bad works out yet. Give it a few years. Even very popular works are often forgotten once the fad is over.

Yes, absolutely. There are incredible books written today, but not every book is great. Every book in the era of Austen was great either. What the OP calls the classics are just the best of the best that have stood the test of time.

Of course it's more difficult to find the good stuff right now, because we're seeing it all mixed up with the mediocre and the just plain bad.

contemporary fiction seems to be about painting a picture readers can relate to on a more superficial level.

Yes, this is part of the "dumbing down" of the culture. By teaching children to focus on material things and reducing education to test-taking, we have successfully eliminated critical thinking in the younger generation (can you tell I am a teacher? LOL)

That said, there is an elite in this country that is highly educated and the standard of their writing is very high. I was very impressed when grading short stories from a freshman class at Yale. VERY impressed.

But of course what will be published is what will sell to the masses -- a paltry substitute for the wit of Trollope and Wilde and the social commentary of Dickens and Wharton.

ha, i'm one as well. let's stand united in our disaffection of bubble sheets and standards of fluency holding court over comprehension. from what i'm seeing these days, comparative literature, as a facilitator of critical thinking, isn't getting nearly the time it deserves in the classroom. students are told the meaning of a work. "this" is what this book is about. there's no attempt at discussion past that. or my personal favourite, students read literary gold but don't understand WHY it is as important as it is. they just watch the movie after. let's pray they never make a true film of Catcher in the Rye.

i agree. what i've come to notice is that a great many of them can be found writing for comic books or storyboarding video games because the literary market is, to be frank, shite. while the stories of those particular writers would find a good, solid cult base, they wouldn't be what a publisher considered a money-maker and so, they're often overlooked and turned away.

another issue is finding a platform for those writers to expand their skill. graduate schools are accepting 2-3 applicants of hundreds into their creative writing programs. what are those others to do? i wonder how many of them sell out. they vomit up a book or three of mediocre content just to secure a publisher.

yes, i think so, too. i worry after the children growing up reading what's been passed off as literature these days. how will they ever recognize the brilliance of Chaucer or any other work of Shakespeare's past Romeo & Juliet. will they toss out Homer or the Poetic Edda because it doesn't match what's been slutted in film?

oh dear, look at me rant. i'll just stop there.

What kills me is that my students will have packets to complete (yes they are given a grade for it!) for STAAR (we're in Texas) and it can take up to five hours. This is pure bullshit! Remember when we just "educated" and then tested to see what we knew or what our aptitude toward learning was??? Now -- because performance dicatates federal funding -- the test is everything. We literally grind to a halt in October and start ramping up for STAARs.

I actually made my 6th graders read Hunger Games and we discussed it in the context of today's films (Russian Roulette in The Deer Hunter, the mongoose/cobra fighting scene in the first Daniel Craig James Bond and then went back and looked at the gladiators and Roman forms of entertainment to see if man had progressed or not. Now THAT is an example of YA lit worth reading!

what's the packet entail? i taught higher ed but i'm basing my statements off my secondary school student teaching and the 9th and 10th graders we have in our home.

oh yes, the good old days when teachers taught material and the students retained it well enough to write a 1,000 word essay about what they learned. it happens here in the Midwest, as well. (though i'm from the UK, i've taught both places) it's the NEsa test, here. half a year's worth of education tossed in the bin so that the student body can become a well-oiled test-taking machine.

ah! it is a great example. i've done much the same in a low level mythology course. it's amazing to me just how many people are ignorant of classical antiquity's affect on popular culture. from Hunger Games to The Matrix to Death Race 2000 and the connections all the way back to Plato's Republic.

Practice tests, much as one does practice SATs, GREs, etc.

It's the amount of time spent on the practice that irritates me. Then the school board announced that if no one passed the test (because we now have the "Answer A is good, but answer B is better!!!" bullshit), they would then let anyone with a grade of X or above pass.

It's just ludicrous. They make a mockery of education!

Do they test in the UK? My kids did the IB program (my youngest just went to college in Ireland) and the grading seemed much more reasonable.

There is so much money in the industry that preps students for tests! Damn straight they won't give that up. I mean, if you can get mom and dad to cough up $3,000 per kid to pass each grade, would you give it up? They are the most powerful lobby in state legislatures next to pharmaceutical companies.

Yes, 99% of my students had no idea that people were used for entertainment in forced conditions. I didn't use the sex slave trade, focusing instead on dog fighting (big here in Texas), cock fighting in earlier times (I used the James Bond clip as an example). I really wanted to get into the whole "gentlemen's clubs" thing but that would have cost me my job. *grins*

ha, i'm one as well. let's stand united in our disaffection of bubble sheets and standards of fluency holding court over comprehension. from what i'm seeing these days, comparative literature, as a facilitator of critical thinking, isn't getting nearly the time it deserves in the classroom. students are told the meaning of a work. "this" is what this book is about. there's no attempt at discussion past that. or my personal favourite, students read literary gold but don't understand WHY it is as important as it is. they just watch the movie after.

And this is why I have such difficulty getting my college students to participate in discussion. They want me to just tell them what the story/poem/play is about. There's no one answer! What do you think it is about? Disagree with me! Alas, they never pay attention when I tell them that regurgitating what I've said in class is not the way to get an A.

I like to ask my students at various times during the semester why they have to read the material I've picked for them (in the only required literature class at my college). They don't get idea that there are reasons that we pick the material we do outside of our own admiration for the works.

I also like to make them compare the works we study to the things they actually consume outside of the classroom and have gotten more than one undergrad angry at me for pointing out just how bad/misogynist

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<i>ha, i'm one as well. let's stand united in our disaffection of bubble sheets and standards of fluency holding court over comprehension. from what i'm seeing these days, comparative literature, as a facilitator of critical thinking, isn't getting nearly the time it deserves in the classroom. students are told the meaning of a work. "this" is what this book is about. there's no attempt at discussion past that. or my personal favourite, students read literary gold but don't understand WHY it is as important as it is. they just watch the movie after. </i>

And this is why I have such difficulty getting my college students to participate in discussion. They want me to just tell them what the story/poem/play is about. There's no one answer! What do you think it is about? Disagree with me! Alas, they never pay attention when I tell them that regurgitating what I've said in class is not the way to get an A.

I like to ask my students at various times during the semester why they have to read the material I've picked for them (in the only required literature class at my college). They don't get idea that there are reasons that we pick the material we do outside of our own admiration for the works.

I also like to make them compare the works we study to the things they actually consume outside of the classroom and have gotten more than one undergrad angry at me for pointing out just how bad/misogynist <Twilight</i> is.

However, if I can get one nursing student or criminal justice major to love a poem by the end of the semester, then I feel accomplished.

...I certainly enjoy books from anywhere from the modest 1970s Betty Neels Dutch/British romances, to actual classics, to novels set in Regency era but written by those in the last few decades (but not the recent everyone-needs-porn-and-no-context versions), and I have no clue what the modern stuff is about...I don't mean that either meanly or like an old person who never tried, but it seems to me like the most modern things are far too heavily influenced by the LOL OMG tl;dr sensibility for my taste, and to almost or completely lack that oomph and insight that makes me respect the author and learn something, since I am not interested in gore or pornography or fanfiction that steals characters and then pretty much makes them do violence and porn (yawn)...and I am old enough to remember things taking more time, from cooking to reading to relationships to whatever, and that VALUING things matters too...I hope you know what I mean by all this...!

but it seems to me like the most modern things are far too heavily influenced by the LOL OMG tl;dr sensibility for my taste

this is so aptly put that i did actually lol.

Amen, sister. *heavy sigh*

erm, brother ;-)

Sorry! Guys are so rarely on comms like these.

No offense! *proffers hand of apology and friendship*

No.

But generally classics are considered such because many many people consider them good - what's being published now hasn't been through that same screening process. It's like having a "best of" compiled by readers (and critics and others) that's filtered down.

There was a lot of badly written low-reading-level dreck in children's literature (what now is called juvenile/middle-grade and young adult, since the categories got split) all along. But the stuff that's stood the test of time and is still in print tends to be the good stuff. So comparing that (and I'm currently binging on Rosemary Sutcliff) to the average YA on the shelf now...well, the stuff now looks poorly written, simplistic, and simplified. I'm sure there's still some stuff there that'll be classics 50 years from now (and not necessarily the popular stuff like Hunger Games or Harry Potter, which have fine qualities but comparable reading level to some of the older stuff is not one of them), but it's hard to find it.

Classics aren't representative of the times they were written in--they're the best and most popular stuff that people thought was worth keeping in print. So if you like your reading preselected for quality, and you like the themes and styles found in classic lit, those are great reasons to read it.

Classics

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written while (unironically) wearing a Wuthering Heights t-shirt

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