True@1stLight
New Member
Sun-SSS said:
Hehe.......
Yup, must be it. *waves from the high road*
-
Welcome
to BookAndReader! We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!
Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.
Classic literature
- Thread starter Wabbit
- Start date
Hehe.......
Yup, must be it. *waves from the high road*
novella
Active Member
Sun-SSS said:
I was meaning to get back to this thread, but I've been feverishly lying in a coma and stuff. Is it too late?
Well, now, Shakespeare's Henry V has stood the test of time, I think. That was set only 200 years or so before Will was born. Gee, and Julius Ceasar, that one's not too too bad.
novella said:
Too late? Never too late for me. Sorry to hear about your coma etc., hope everything's OK now…
Shakespeare was not a novelist, he was a playwrite, and an actor. But since you mention him, please note that I have commented on his genius elsewhere in this forum. Further to that, he was, in his time, breaking new ground in his use of language, presentation of plot. As I said elsewhere, his genius lay in his use of language -- his plots were pure over-the-top soap opera. Compare his writing with that of others of his era. I think your bringing him into the debate diminishes my argument not at all, but supports it.
I have not been dismissing the classics in these posts. I make two points: (1) the great novels of the past cannot have the impact on a modern reader that they had on their contemporaries, because they deal with issues no longer relevant, or at least no longer immediate. And (2) All those novelists who "stood the test of time" were innovators, not imitators. To find innovation today, we have to go back forty years or so.
Zolipara said:
Where did I say that history tells us nothing? Or that there is (not are) no similarity between people of today and those from the past? I did say that there are diffences between the circumstances and issues of the past and those of today. I also said that the major novelists of today rarely if ever address those circumstances and issues, as did the major novelists of the past in their time.
I don't know what you mean by "flamebait." I consider it serious debate. If you have something to contribute I would be pleased to see it; if all you can do is tell us you could say a lot, but won't, I for one am not interested. I would suggest, though, that you read, and take the trouble to understand, what you are responding to.
RitalinKid
New Member
Sun-SSS said:
Sorry to jump in, but it does sound like you're saying that the writings of the past are irrelevant for people reading them today. Keep in mind that sometimes it's the underlying content and not the story that is important. One of the things that I've noticed about "classic literature" is that the story and the situations may sometime seem a little odd, but the lessons or the struggles within the book are usually about human nature which, for, oh, about 10,000 years, hasn't really changed. Plus, reading first hand accounts of how things were isn't a bad way to keep our lives in perspective.
RitalinKid said:
I don't think you need to apologise -- why shouldn't you jump in?
In reply to above quote I say yes, but accounts of how things are now is a better way. Or at least there should be a balance. And it is not accounts, anyway, but rather interpretations we look for in novels.
I agree with what you say on the stuggles of human nature. Shaw said it better than anyone in his writings on Shakespeare. I consider that separate from what I've been saying.
In respect of the other points you make, I can only refer to what I have said already. I don't feel like repeating all that, or re-phrasing everything to make it clear to people who don't understand it. If anyone wants to disagree, please let them answer this question, raised ages ago: If books coming out today are as good as those that came out years ago, why is everyone's favourite book an old one? When Dickens wrote, or when Austen wrote, or when anyone wrote in the middle of the last century, I don't think anyone's favourite book was old. (I'm talking about serious novels here -- not here-today, gone-tomorrow stuff. My favourite reading at the moment is a comic.)
RitalinKid
New Member
I do understand your point of view. I was actually watching South Park earlier tonight, and I realized that some of the most intelligent material they wrote won't be understood years from now and, in some cases, months after the show first airs. That's strictly because it relies a lot on that particular moment in the America. So, it may not be funny or considered intelligent by people outside the American culture. Do you think they'll ever have classes or Cliff's Notes on South Park? I can see some smarmy teacher explaining a screen play of South Park as if it were a work of Shakespeare.
However, I think classic lit is still relevant. Although, one day some lit will be like the Bible. For instance, in the year 3055, you may have to be a scholar to understand the full meaning of certain works. I think that's your main point, Sun. Correct? If you can't read a book without reading a book to accompany it, it's not relevant.
Who knows? Maybe religions will pop up around certain classic lit books too. I read the other day that there is a group of people in Madagascar awaiting the second coming of Bob Marley. He's only been dead for a little over 20 years. ...and my cousin has the book Finding God in The Lord Of The Rings.
I can see some smarmy teacher explaining a screen play of South Park as if it were a work of Shakespeare.However, I think classic lit is still relevant. Although, one day some lit will be like the Bible. For instance, in the year 3055, you may have to be a scholar to understand the full meaning of certain works. I think that's your main point, Sun. Correct? If you can't read a book without reading a book to accompany it, it's not relevant.
Who knows? Maybe religions will pop up around certain classic lit books too. I read the other day that there is a group of people in Madagascar awaiting the second coming of Bob Marley. He's only been dead for a little over 20 years. ...and my cousin has the book Finding God in The Lord Of The Rings.
RitalinKid said:I do understand your point of view. I was actually watching South Park earlier tonight, and I realized that some of the most intelligent material they wrote won't be understood years from now and, in some cases, months after the show first airs. That's strictly because it relies a lot on that particular moment in the America. So, it may not be funny or considered intelligent by people outside the American culture. Do you think they'll ever have classes or Cliff's Notes on South Park?
However, I think classic lit is still relevant. Although, one day some lit will be like the Bible. For instance, in the year 3055, you may have to be a scholar to understand the full meaning of certain works. I think that's your main point, Sun. Correct? If you can't read a book without reading a book to accompany it, it's not relevant.
Who knows? Maybe religions will pop up around certain classic lit books too. I read the other day that there is a group of people in Madagascar awaiting the second coming of Bob Marley. He's only been dead for a little over 20 years. ...and my cousin has the book Finding God in The Lord Of The Rings.
Not exactly, Ritalin. My main point, I think, can be got from consideration that the writers of what we now call classics were not writing to be classicists. They were writing for readers of their own era. I don't think what they wrote is irrelevant to us, I maintain only that it cannot have as much relevance to us as it did to readers of its own era. My gripe (perhaps put too bluntly for some people's taste, but I can't help that) is that what is being written today has too little relevance to our time, or to future generations, or to just about anything. Ephemera has its place, and a certain value, but it is a pity that so little else is coming out of publishing houses these days.
Yes, to your predictions. Already universities here have run courses on Lost In Space. And on religions growing from people's writings, there is a good science fiction novel on that subject. Limbo 90, by (I think) Bernard Wolfe. A long time since I read it, but as I recall a guy comes back from a remote island where he has been studying native culture to find the world following a religion based on his long-ago philisophical scribbings on pacifism. He is everyone's hero, almost a God; he, of course, despises everything he has come to stand for.
Skyler1534
kickbox
SillyWabbit said:
I restarted this thread after a 10 day break after diatribes and defenses regarding Hemingway because I love classic literature and it is, in fact, the only fiction I read. How have we gotten so far off course again?
Yes, today's literature (fiction, that is) is not of the same caliber as literature written 40, 100, 200 or 1000 years ago. Strange as it may seem, this may have something to do with the fact that the public's appetite has switched to movies and voyeuristic reality TV shows, neither of which was around during the time of Dickens or (not as much so, at least) Hemingway and writers of serious literature would have a much smaller market now.
Regardless of the above paragraph, this thread was begun to delve into people's insights and opinions regarding the classics. From my understanding (and it was in the beginning), this thread was to discuss and enjoy each other's knowledge and experience with different works. Classic literature's relationship to modern day literature has little to do with this original purpose, so why not get back to the original issue and enjoy each other's views rather than arguing them?
If you feel the need to argue, take it to another thread. Perhaps one named, "Classic literature's relation to modern day literature". It seems much more appropriate.
Skyler1534 said:
Or maybe, and more likely, the reason so many people are turning to movies and voyeuristic reality TV shows is that they can't find a book that appeals to them. And clearly there is a much larger market now than ever before, for literature and everything else. Elizabethan London, from what I understand, had a population of about one million, and most of them couldn't read.
Threads do go off on a tangent -- happens all the time. Must be the nature of the beast. At least this one hasn't degenerated into a string of half-smart one-liners, as so many do, before dying a natural death. If you want to bring it back on course, then by all means do so.
If you want to, you could lobby the people who run the Forum to stop the thread, or relocate the posts that so offend you. Maybe you could get them to run all posts past you, for your approval, before they appear on the forum. Until you do that, it's up to them to set the rules, not you.
True@1stLight
New Member
Sun-SSS said:
Somehow I doubt that people are flipping through Vonnegut before turning to Survivor. The books that appeal to them are the fluff that is mass produced these days. The market in this area seems overwhelmingly consumer driven.
True@1stLight said:
Maybe, like me, they read him years ago. Vonnegut wrote when? Thirty years ago? Forty? He was contemporary with those few authors I mentioned earlier. An innovator, not an imitator. A minor one, in my opinion -- a bit tiresomely try-hard for my taste -- but good enough to qualify. You make the point I've been making throughout. I rest my case.
P.S. Since Gutenberg, books have always been mass-produced. And production always consumer-driven, too, I would hope. If the stuff that appeals to people these days is the fluff that is produced these days, then why aren't they reading them, instead of turning to Survivor?
bobbyburns
New Member
perhaps you're being a little too hard on people, sun. I don't think they have much of a choice in it. it's like saying that they should like music that they don't like. they can't. everyone's mind is programmed in a certain way.
RitalinKid said:
RitalinKid, you make a thoughtful post. I read again what you said on South Park, and can see how it ties in. I can see that you like to think about things, so further to what I said before, you might care to consider this: When Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn, he was writing to a different America to the one we know today. Then, it was a crime in the South to assist a black man to escape slavery. According to the church, is was a sin against God. For a white boy to associate with a black man as an equal in that time and place was considered outrageous. Someone reading the book back then must have a quite different reading experience to that of someone reading it now, when racial equality is supposedly the norm, and slavery is a crime, racial discrimination a sin. None of which is to say we can't appreciate the book now, just that we cannot appreciate it in the same way or as strongly as someone who read it when it was new. Things have changed so much, since it was written. The same principle, I suggest, applies to all the classics.
If chronology is out, so be it, all you historians out there. It is written this way to make a valid point.
bobbyburns said:
WOT? I thought they were being hard on me!
Well, a bit of hard is good… I like it. Seriously, though, I think I'm being critical of the little choice they have -- the programming, rather than the programmed. Put crap in, get crap out, right?
I was recently asked, with others, to comment on why TV viewers were turning away from serious drama to watch dumb reality shows instead (we have some really dumb reality shows). Broad consensus was that the viewers are dumb and getting dumber. A contrarian from way back, I contended that it was because so much of the drama was so dumb. Competently acted, I think, but half-heartedly plotted, and badly scripted. Especially the dialogue. People just don't talk like that! At least on dumb reality shows people talk like people.
True@1stLight
New Member
Sun-SSS said:WOT? I thought they were being hard on me!
Well, a bit of hard is good… I like it. Seriously, though, I think I'm being critical of the little choice they have -- the programming, rather than the programmed. Put crap in, get crap out, right?
.
......more than a little presumptuous, don't you think?
In regard to switching back to the origional topic instead of arguing, I don't see why? There are enough lists and polls on this site to last you a decade, controlled discussions are by far the fewer these days on this site.
True@1stLight
New Member
Sun-SSS said:
You can't simply misinterpret things and then equate them to things that seem ridiculous. You assuming you know what is best for everyone or what is good vs. dumb televeision, literature, or otherwise is presumptuous. I"m not sure how you simply think you can pawn that off on thought ?
In any case, I apologized for being an ass to you, don't make it a futile gesture. The last line, although I'm sure you found yourself clever, was uncalled for.