04/03/2007 (9:38 am)
Books and stuff
I had to make an emergency trip to the library yesterday after an alarming conversation with a co-worker.
Talking about all the literacy-related events with the Big Read this month, she mentioned that it was funny how some libraries have trimmed stacks of the classics to make room for more popular titles.
Cut out Hemingway, Twain and Dickens? For what, dating guides and comic books?
To each his own, I understand. But this is true to a point.
There are more copies floating around of the book on the newest diet craze than there are with Voltaire’s “Candide.” At least people are reading something, I guess.
In our own library I am comforted to find more than a dozen copies of many of what I would consider “the essentials.”
Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” can be found at 12 different branches and in four different formats. The words of Albert Camus can be found in better than half of those locations.
My personal favorite “Slaughterhouse-Five” is at six branches. And Nietzche’s Zarathustra still speaks from the shelves of four library branches.
But scary indeed if we would enter a library and not find Atlas shrugging.
6 Comments
Comment by Stephanie A
Do you think when these books were contemporary they were talked about in the same way you’re referring to those that are taking up room on the shelves currently?
I’m sure some of these titles were considered pop literature, or more fashionable than lasting. It’s just kind of fun to think about. Maybe “He’s Just Not That Into You” is one of the classics of tomorrow. (Though I’m not sure I’d want to live in that world…)
Also, I don’t know that I would refer to Hemingway as “classic.”
Comment by Mike Ingels
Think about William Shakespeare. He was in the entertainment business. He didn’t write scripts to be read. He just wanted to fill the theaters and make a few bucks. My understanding is that some of the plays only survived in very rough form or by audience members copying down the lines.
My bet is that Stephen King becomes a “classic” author. I’ll also put in a vote for Rod Serling as a future “classic” author. Or how about Matt Groening?
Comment by LunaPierCook
Ah yes, Mike, I see where you’re headed. We should call that the “Galaxy Quest” effect.
Comment by Adam Bennett
Mike and Stephanie:
I agree, in part.
But I think that the view on contemporary fiction is short-sighted because it leaves out the notion that “the classics” are studied because they are the groundwork for the literature that follows.
It may be a bit dry to read Dostoyevsky against Dan Brown or Horatio Alger against J.K. Rowling. However, like in history, you have to understand what came before to fully realize what is now.
Arguably, the books that are coming out now may some day become classified as “classics” and certainly should have their own space in a fully-stocked library now.
Whose to say that Stephen King won’t someday be seen as a classic author alone on his merits for changing his genre of writing.
But the widely-known books we see as classics today have had a major and lasting effect on literature as a whole.
Good books become classics because they encapsulate the world around them at that time in an engaging story and are modeled by others.
That, in my opinion, is why “Huckleberry Finn” will last as long as people care about the classics, while Mitch Albom’s sentimental favorites will fall off the shelves in two decades.
Comment by Mike Ingels
I don’t think that we disagree too much. The best class that I ever took while in college was “Great Books” with UM Professor Cameron. It was as if Homer was reading the Illiad (Why can’t I italicize in the forums?) to me.
However, if memory serves me correctly, Mark Twain was notoriously poor at managing money. So, he took his best-known book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and wrote a sequel. His motivation was, in part, money.
He wanted people to buy the book, so he wrote it in a way that people would love and want to read.
I love the canon. It’s important to study. But these writers aren’t gods. They walk on the earth just like everyone else.
Comment by Stephanie A
Mike,
I took a similar class - Good Books - in which we would always joke, what’s next, Adequate Books or Fine Books? Maybe Kind of Okay, But Not Yet Classic Books?
Shame on you Adam for referring to Dostoyevsky (as possibly dry) in the very same sentence as Dan Brown (I think I just threw up a little).
I too agree that we have to pay respects to the dusty thick bounds, but I think sometimes we’re too caught up in that. I think it may be the approach, that these things are so revered and “must” reads. It wasn’t until someone pointed out to me the humor in Moby Dick - coffins as bouys, cannibals mingling with “christians” - and other such nonsense that it became alive to me.
That said, I do become irritated when some young punk doesn’t recognize that her favorite hip hop artist didn’t come up with that particular turn of phrase or baseline, but is sampling someone else’s.
“. . . because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.” -Melville
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