Sharing Thoughts about Books with Others (STBO) discussion

Please share your personal answers to this question in this topic. Thank you.

Here let me start.

Okay where do I begin? How about I describe a Classic with a more modern "Classic." And with that, let me talk about a very controversial Classic where the author went into hiding for decades with bodyguards for over a decade, because the Islamic world leaders ordered a religious fatwah against him. And there were several people that were murdered in the publishing and merchandising industry because of this book. I am talking about the The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.

Back then, regarding the Satanic Verses, I was looking to read more about the author. Although I knew the book itself for being, let's say, controversial. I fell in Love with his previous book, Midnight Children, which is a book I would recommend anyone to start with who is curious about the author, Salman Rushdie. This guy is not an easy author to read, since his style is an avalanche of names, situations, stories... he is a like a true "modernizer" of the language when he started writing his English books. After all, his prose is fresh, complex and he introduces a casual tone to it, as if you were talking to a close friend, but is not simple or low quality. The other great point of his literature is the mixing of fantasy and reality (they say he writes in fantastic realism, but I do not compare him to García Marquez or Moyan). He wrote in "local flavors", meaning, that is Indian literature with British and also Middle-Eastern (the use of tales inside the novels such as 1,001 nights). This complexity is very charming and, he is the "modernizer" of the Indian novels (although he wrote in English, and not in the Indian language).

The Satanic verses is a great book, somewhat considered a modern Classic. It is the writer, writing at his peak. The book offers the reader a mixture of fantasy and reality at its best. It is a very deep introspection to the characters, escaping from stereotypes. He is not only a great storyteller, but is also a great character maker. The use of tales inside the novel to discuss about the dogmas of religion which show how good a short story fiction writer he is. It also shows another of his passions... to put the finger in the eye of the powerful establishment and express his opinion. In Midnight Children he "messed" with Indira Gandhi, Nehru and other Indian politicians, he accused them of incompetence and corruption. Here he gives his opinion about religions and about certain religious people (where Samlamn Rushdie depicted Khomeini in one of the most fantastical short stories inside the novel, and afterwards Khomeini declared the famous fatwa to get Rushdie murdered). He smartly talks about the inconsistencies of dogmas of faith to find weak points in a religion, focusing on an event in The Holly Book, when the Prophet negotiated with the Holly city to keep 3 of their idols if they also accepted his God. The city Decision Makers accepted the deal and later the Prophet regretted and claimed that the message was a trick of Satan, so that the Holy Book would have those "Satanic verses". It is a great concept about how to question a religion, but the book goes beyond that, it is very spiritual. The story of the girl of the moths is the most beautiful story in the book and it shows a case of extreme belief and determination in a Religious Faith.

If you would like to understand a man, more than a simple writer and if you are not afraid of complexity or radical point of views, dozens of character names, with Rushdie you will find an impressive story teller and a modern and superb writer.

So a Classic is something that enlightens you and makes you think thought-provoking thoughts like I wrote above.

Please feel free to share your definition of a Classic. Thank you.

Okay, I've been thinking about this all week since I posted what I thought about what a "classic" is to me, and I seemed to just have typed all positive glowing remarks. Now, all of us readers certainly have come across some "classic" literature and it didn't really entertain or it barely kept us awake, and upon finishing the book we barely remember what we read, right?

There are some "classics" that were ponderous, overwritten, and largely unmemorable. Especially for those of us who are used to reading a more modern writing style.

I think the more interesting debate is, why should "classics" occupy a privileged position with regard to criticism? A lot of what we know of now as "classics" have been elevated into their status due to factors which are completely extrinsic to the quality of writing/story they contain. Okay let us take the oldest surviving long poet story in Old English, Beowulf. Is Beowulf a "good" book? I don't know, but it's still around, and we have nothing contemporary to compare it to, so it's a "classic". Were there a dozen other playwrights putting out things as good as what Shakespeare did who simply were lost to posterity because they couldn't get their play staged in the Middle Ages to the Renaissance era? Who knows? But 400 years later, Shakespeare is synonymous with "classics", and no one even questions the fact that, if a contemporary author invented words in his writing with the same frequency as The Bard (Shakespeare's nickname) did, it would either be unreadable, unpublishable, or grounds for psychiatric evaluation. Is Charles Dickens worth reading in the 21st Century? Why do we even still know who he is? I'm fairly sure it's because he marketed himself well, delivering a precursor to chapbooks, and his readers lapped it up. Many "classics" gradually end up being considered pretty underwhelming to modern readers. For example, "A Catcher in the Rye" is wonderful to many readers. And to many readers it was tedious, slow, and with an utterly unlikeable protagonist. But it was on school reading lists for a few decades, and then - boom!" - it is now considered a "classic".

I think most books, after about one or two generations, become syntactically unattractive and unwieldy. Maybe the overarching themes are still valid, because the Human Experiment is fundamentally the same proposition as it was 1000 years ago, but who wants to wade through the verbiage to find out? I read fiction to enjoy myself, and non-fiction to inform myself. Generally, some "classics" provide me with neither of these things.

My advanced apologies to fans of Charles Dickens, "Beowulf," and "Catcher in the Rye," as I am using them only as examples in this comment.

To me a a Classic is a book that gives commentary about life, human nature, and the world. And furthermore, a classic must be a book that is still applicable generations and even centuries after it was written. A book that still applies to humans and life in general hundreds of years after publication. Now that being said not every classic is for everybody. Many people don’t agree with the perspectives discussed or shown in classics. Other people just don’t connect with certain classics. Some people can’t get past the tedious descriptions of some classics. But at the end of the day reading a classic is a great way to increase your capacity in English literature, understanding, and hopefully expand your views and opinions of the world and the people in it for the better.

I agree with Lucy in the sense that a classic should be applicable to people throughout the centuries. I think the reason that books like Beowulf and Catcher in the Rye stayed around so long is because there were enough people who read them and found themselves believing that it was a story that everyone needed to read. Now in the present day, people continue to find meanings and profound lessons in these books, and some people do not find these meanings and lessons. That is because everyone has a different walk of life and perspective of something.

An example of this was that in school we had to read The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird. One of my classmates loved The Great Gatsby, but didn't care for To Kill a Mockingbird. I was just the opposite. Neither of our opinions are invalid, it's simply that there were books that we could relate to, and there were books we couldn't. That's because we lead very different lives from each other.

To me personally, however, a classic is something provides me an opportunity to learn and grow. In general, I read to either for entertainment or for opportunities to see the world in a new perspective. I live in the modern era, so it's not hard for me to walk up to someone and ask for their personal philosophy on life, but I can't ask someone from the 1800's about their philosophy because- to put it bluntly- they're all dead. The closest I can now get is through books. So even though I may not agree with the philosophy presented in the book, or the plot is relatively bland, or the language is stuffy, but I'll still enjoy the book because it still provides me with a new perspective to explore and think about. The book itself may not be good, but it gave me insight to how people thought and acted hundreds of years ago, and, to me, that has to count for something.

A 'classic', an odd term perhaps when one thinks about it, is to me a book that presents an opportunity to further educate oneself about prevailing ideas of the time. I agree as said above, it should be thought-provoking, and lead one to further enquiry. One also always has the expectation that a 'classic' will be written in the best possible and creative way, whatever the source language.
It's a great question as the line between 'classics' and non-classics, and indeed literature and non-literature, is not easy to define, or is it ?

What are classics to me? Well, could be a book that transcended time up until today because of it's representation of a time, it's bold content or updated theme in every era you look at it.

What I get from reading classics is a peek on a different time, either through the way of writing, the themes proposed or the environment described.

Horror stories can be classics as well. Stories like Stoker's Dracula and Shelley's Frankenstein. I was writing about Frankenstein today, and I realized Frankenstein differed from many other classics. While all novels develop their characters inferiority to add psychological realism, Frankenstein took this development to a whole new level. It considered the human fear of the object, the significance of the image, how our fears and sins haunted our psyches, amongst many others. This novel also explored many pertinent questions such as what it meant to be human and the like.

Shelley's writing had a way of drawing you into the deep psychological horror she wa writing about. You get a monster in the text, but this monster was not just the Creature of the text. It was also Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Perhaps it is also Man. This duplicity was allowed by her language. If you have time, do a quick wiki-search of Shelley's time and the text will become much more meaningful.

Overall, this was one of those stories that taught you something new, made you reflect on something new, every single time you read it, at different stages of your own life. If you have read Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (February group book discussion), you'd find that Frankenstein was somewhat like that, but even darker.