Play Book Tag discussion

What makes a book a classic?

Are the books assigned in schools the right books? (what was required reading in school for you?)

Do you think what is viewed a classic is changing today?

Imagine you had to choose one book from our time to send 200 years into the future to represent us. What would you choose and why?

@Jason - your post appears twice. You should delete the other. This one has most views.

What makes a book a classic depends on how you define classic to some degree--people have different opinions as to what fits these three basic definitions:
Belonging to the highest rank or class. Serving as the established model or standard.
"a classic example of colonial architecture."
Having lasting significance or worth; enduring.

I, for one, think it's ludicrous when people talk about things as classics that have been around for not very many decades since fewer and fewer books will make the cut as time goes on. Another example is "instant classic." No one knows which novels today will make the cut.

For my reading, I personally usually draw the line at 50 years old for an adult book, but realize that's a loose definition.


I'm probably the worst person for your last question :)

There is no one current book I think represents us as humans well enough to want to sent it 200 years in the future. This is the type of question that flummoxes me, because there are over 8 billion people on the planet, and even within one country, we don't all think alike.

I subscribe to Italo Calvino about what makes a classic :
“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”

Reading Don Quijote, War and Peace, Lolita or East of Eden for example still speaks to me of universal truths and human nature.
When I was in school, I was reading Raymond Chandler, Douglass Reeman, Joseph Conrad or Paul Feval under my desk instead of the books required by the curriculum, then faked my comments from my mates or from reference books of commentaries and reviews.

I don't think true classics are subject to fashions and I also think we should be careful when we assign this quality to what are simply instances of popularity and artificial hype (marketing). Future generations will make the determination about what we publish currently.

The last question is the most difficult, because I could never limit myself to only one book. I value diversity much higher than some arbitrary rules about what makes a classic. But if I were to chose only one book to save from oblivion, I will probably pick one of my personal favorites that is flying under the radar and is not widely knows, like something by Tarjei Vesaas or The Book of Ebenezer Le Page or The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
And how we define 'our time'? the year I was born? that's already six decades of great books. Maybe the correct question is which book published in the last 5 years do you think will still be in print 200 years from now? I will have to think on this...

I went to school in an era where we only read "classics" in English class. I was also in the college track. The "regular" track read the play of West Side Story (which was a current musical and film) along with Romeo and Juliet. But we stuck to Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, ancient Greek plays, 19th century poetry, etc. I think the newest book we read was Darkness at Noon from 1940, about 25 years before.

Later I was a French major and again we read very few modern works, and in both undergrad and grad school we never read or talked about authors from French-speaking Africa, Asia, or the Caribbean. That has changed, thankfully.

I was recently in a discussion of art history that asked "what is a masterpiece?" One definition was that it influenced other artists. And that discussion pointed out how our views change. Most critics and the public were horrified by Impressionism. It looked to them like the painting weren't finished, the old "my kid could do that" insult. Nobody thought they would be classics.

Algernon wrote: "I subscribe to Italo Calvino about what makes a classic :
“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”

Reading Don Quijote, War and Peace, Lolita or East of Eden for ..."

What a wonderful quote. I haven't even finished your post, just felt the need to express gratitude for sharing.

Here is a list of books I remember reading in school

Number the Stars - Lois Lowry
The Giver - Lois Lowry
Oedipus the King - Sophocles 7th grade
The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton 8th grade
Mythology - Edith Hamilton Summer homework for 9th grade Honors lit.

9th grade Honors Lit.
Night - Elie Wiesel
Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare
Shoeless Joe - W.P. Kinsella

10th grade AP lit.
A Painted House - John Grisham (We had a choice of 5 books)
The Song of Roland

Lord of the Flies - William Golding 11th grade lit

Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller (Senior Paper)

Beowolf (I don't remember what grade) and I think we read some from Grendel - John Gardner too.

High School Creative Writing Class:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft - Stephen King

Also, a lot of excerpts of books, I remember reading part of The Bell Jar, Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno, The Odyssey.

I am sure we read more, but those are the ones I can remember. Surprisingly, I didn't like reading the assigned material was very anti discussing deeper meaning and symbology. I could have had a blast.

The Catcher in the Rye
How I hated that one!

I left off The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Jason wrote: "Algernon wrote: "I subscribe to Italo Calvino about what makes a classic :
“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”

Reading Don Quijote, War and Peace, Lolita or ..."

I have another one, from Bohumil Hrabal:

“If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh, because any book worth its salt points up and out of itself.”

Too Loud a Solitude should be in the modern classic library

This is an interesting conversation. To me, trying to define what makes books classic is like trying to capture air in a bottle. I still don't know why some books earn that title and most do not.

I've read some of the books mentioned here not knowing that they are considered to be classics. It surprised me to learn that they are classics.

I'm trying to think of the classics that moved me, rather than the ones I disliked. These include:

Little Women - read in 5th grade with a friend. My first buddy read. We loved it at our age at the time. When I reread it a few years ago, I found it to be saccharine and moralistic.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - I didn't exactly enjoy it, but it's a book that was representative of its time and place. I certainly remember it.

Night by Elie Wiesel - It vividly portrays the Holocaust. I had the privilege of meeting Elie Weisel in college.

THE ODYSSY - We read it word by word in Latin class. I had a terrific teacher who made it fun, believe it or not.

A Tale of Two Cities - is a book that is representative of its time and place. Again, I had a wonderful high school teacher who made it come alive.

So Big - is a book from the 1920's that I discovered a few years back, due to a review here on GR. It surprised me how much I enjoyed it!

Nice idea Holly, I too was wondering how to answer these questions and think I will follow suite with you on what classics I have read and liked. If a book has a MPG classics, it does not automatically enter into me classifying it that way. Only books that I feel are true classics make the tag requirement of my shelf.

A classic to me is a book that has stood the test of time. So there are only 7 on my shelf at the moment

Maurice Druon's Accursed Kings series

Katherine by Ana Seyton

A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan

The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

I actually do have quite a bit to say on the way they are choosing books today. And I’m not pleased. Because I don’t think these books are actually doing much nor getting kids interested in reading. So I’m not a fan of most of the old books, but I’m also not a fan of the new ones they are choosing. It’s actually pretty horrible. And I’ve complained an English department about it. But not too much cause I still have a kid in the high school.

Right now it’s all about sophomore speech and to be honest I think that that’s a great and excellent project for kids to do. My 15-year-old and his brothers before him and everyone else who has passed through our school system and the sophomore year has had to research and write a persuasive argument on an issue that they care about. And then they have to memorize the speech and give it. And at the end of it for those who advanced fourth is actually a contest. So that’s what we’ve been doing during the snowstorms is editing the speech and now learning to memorize it. My kid goes on Thursday. Again, I just think that’s a really interesting project.

So back to the question about classics, in my classics tag of course things like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre would go in there

That’s all my phone could take…. But I wanted to say I consider other things classics as well that I also threw in. Like gone with the wind is in there and that makes sense as a classic. But so do the Harry Potter books. I’ll have to look more closely to see what else is in there, but I did think that there were some things that just to me qualified as a classic that were more modern. Funny that I can’t remember what they were, but there are books that stand out to me as a classic of the modern era. I wonder if there’s something in the Jewish world that I also threw in there because it was classic to that genre. It may be that something like Dune is a classic too. I’m sure that certain genres have their classics. It’ll be interesting for me to re-pop in there and see what it says. Sorry for the split message. I hope everyone’s having a great day.

It's been a very long time since I was in highschool. It was a disjointed experience, three schools across two state lines with different graduation requirements. There was a 10th grade English class that paired required reading with screenings of classic movies. So we read Rebecca (for the girls) and Treasure of Sierra Madre (for the boys). I think everyone read The Good Earth.

As an educator, I look back at that and I'm appalled.

I filled my English requirement by being on the school newspaper staff. This was very good for my writing ability and since I read widely by choice, it didn't really hamper my background in literature. It did mean that I didn't read some of the standards, like To Kill a Mockingbird and Great Expectations until years later.

My daughter did read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school. She was a high achiever and this is not a difficult book. I don't remember all of the details now, more than 20 years ago, but somehow there was a time crunch for completion of the 'unit' that included some project or presentation as the final. The student teacher handling it advised them to use cliff notes. I'm afraid I didn't make myself popular with either the student teacher or her supervisor.

I do remember one complaint the my daughter had with the required reading. I've thought about it many times since. She pointed out that most of what they were made to read were tragedies. Sad, sad stories, 'And wasn't there enough of that in real life?' It's a valid point, I think. She had at least one friend who attempted suicide.

What makes a book a classic?
For me, a classic is a well-written book that fits one or more of the following characteristics:
- it continues to be read by a statistically significant number of people across time
- it is exceptional in its language, structure, and (sometimes) innovation
- it stands up to repeated readings, with new insights delivered each time
- has influence on other writers and helps shape the canon of literature
- usually has something significant to say about the human condition or has had great impact in its place and time

Are the books assigned in schools the right books?
I think this depends on several factors - where is the school located, are they being influenced by outside factors (such as the politics of banning books), and which books they are selecting - are they representative of a diversity of thought or are they limited to the western canon (as they have often been in the past). I am sure each person's list would be different, so it's hard to know what the "right" books would be. My son certainly had different books assigned in school than I did.

My list included:
Beowulf - Anonymous
Waiting for Godot - Becket
Fahrenheit 451 - Bradbury
Don Quixote - Cervantes
The Canterbury Tales - Chaucer
Heart of Darkness - Conrad
The Red Badge of Courage - Crane
The Divine Comedy - Dante
Great Expectations - Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
The Man in the Iron Mask - Dumas
Silas Marner - Eliot
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
The Diary of a Young Girl - Frank
Lord of the Flies - Golding
Far from the Madding Crowd - Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Hardy
The Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne
Catch-22 - Heller
The Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway
Siddhartha - Hesse
The Iliad - Homer
The Odyssey - Homer
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Hugo
Brave New World - Huxley
The Metamorphosis - Kafka
To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee
The Call of the Wild - London
Billy Budd - Melville
Moby Dick - Melville
The Crucible - Miller
Death of a Salesman - Miller
Paradise Lost - Milton
The Iceman Cometh - O'Neill
1984 - Orwell
Animal Farm - Orwell
All Quiet on the Western Front - Remarque
Cyrano de Bergerac - Rostand
The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
No Exit - Sartre
Hamlet - Shakespeare
Macbeth - Shakespeare
Romeo & Juliet - Shakespeare
Pygmalion - Shaw
Frankenstein - Shelley
The Jungle - Sinclair
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Solzhenitsyn
Oedipus Rex - Sophocles
Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men - Steinbeck
The Pearl - Steinbeck
The Red Pony - Steinbeck
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Stowe
Gulliver's Travels - Swift
Walden - Thoreau
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain
The Aeneid - Virgil
Candide - Voltaire
Slaughterhouse Five - Vonnegut
Our Town - Wilder
The Glass Menagerie - Williams
Plus lots of poetry, mainly from the 19th century.

I don't know all of my son's assigned books, but a few are:
Things Fall Apart - Achebe
A Long Way Gone - Beah
The Kite Runner - Hosseini

Is the canon changing today?
Yes,I think it is becoming more inclusive (setting aside the latest craziness in the US.) International voices are gaining recognition they were long denied.

One contemporary book for the future?
It's hard to choose just one. I'll have to give this some thought.

My son was in high school in the '90's and he complained they read too many "girl books" - The Awakening, The House on Mango Street, The Bluest Eye. The school had a diverse population so I assume they wanted to represent that while also assigning short books.

Back in elementary school, my daughter objected to the serious books they read like Hatchet about survival, and Slake's Limbo, about a boy on his own who lives in the subway. I was bothered by that last one, because there are absolutely no adults who help the kid in his miserable existence.

Looking at my list, I think they are still considered classics, and rightfully so. I actually read more than was technically "assigned" - we got a list of books to choose from, and I read them all.

Robin, I can see how Hatchet could be disturbing to young people. I've read it and not sure if my son had it assigned or not. I haven't heard of Slake's Limbo.

ETA - My son was in school in the 2010s. Well, he's still in school now (going to medical school).

Required reading, as well as what appears on school library shelves, has become such a hot button issue in this country. I can tell you as a primary teacher that it begins as soon as they walk through the door at kindergarten. (And don't get me started about textbook selection and the way publishers market to school districts.)

That said, I think there is great value in a standard core of common knowledge that we all share. We have to start somewhere. Even the debate about what is or isn't a classic has value. As long as it is a debate, and not a bonfire.

I agree about common knowledge. That's why I feel it's important for kids in our Unitarian Sunday School to learn stories from the Old and New Testament. We may not believe them literally but everyone needs to know Noah, Moses, Jesus, and stories like The Good Samaritan (much needed in the US today!)

I agree it's important to discuss. What bothers me most is the idea that we "shouldn't" read certain books, and many parents have views on this. I find it interesting that some of them have not even read the books they are disputing!

Joy D wrote: "I agree it's important to discuss. What bothers me most is the idea that we "shouldn't" read certain books, and many parents have views on this. I find it interesting that some of them have not eve..."

Yes, any parent has always had the right (in most places) to ask that their child not read a certain book or do a certain project. But they want to make sure nobody else can read it either.

It is true that in some places school boards and districts are rejecting the restrictions that had been passed. Usually it is only a few people or even one person who objected.

Robin P wrote: "My son was in high school in the '90's and he complained they read too many "girl books" - The Awakening, The House on Mango Street, The Bluest Eye. The scho..."

Hatchet was a popular middle school book for a while, Maybe still is, I don't know. It is what my son's 6th grade class was reading a few months after his father died in a plane crash. I was very, very concerned. I didn't have to go to his teacher. She came to me. She offered him another book. Call of the Wild, if I remember right. It got my vote, but he didn't want it.

I brought it up with the grief counselor he saw at the time. The therapist couldn't tell me much, patient confidentiality, but he gave the book a thumbs up and told me not to worry about it.
I asked my son about the book then and since. He says he was interested in the survival aspect of the story not the sad part.

I have no idea about what that says about whether that book belongs on a required reading list or not. It was a tough call for me and maybe a wake up call. I wanted so much to help my kids negotiate through the hard stuff, but in the end there was so much I couldn't control.

That need to control is behind all of the book selection objections. But there's no putting a lid on Pandora's box. Banned books often sell better once they have that label.

My classics shelf has a lot of retellings on it, or twists on a classic.

For instance, my last entry was the Eight Heartbreaks of Chanukah, which is a play on A Christmas Carol.... Also on this shelf is:

James (Huckleberry Finn retelling)
Maria (original Von Trapp story)
Hundred Loves of Juliet
The Fiction Writer (Can't remember why)
Salt and Broom - (retelling of some kind)
The Lost Bookshop (Can't remember why)
Beautiful Little Fools (Gatsby)
The Princess Bride
The Great Gatsby
The Myersons of Merton (Jewish Pride and Prejudice)
James and the Giant Peach
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Twelve Angry Men
The Catcher in the Rye
Circe
Lord of the Flies
Romeo and Juliet
Of Mice and Men
Hamilton
The Rainbow Serpent (Dreamland Aboriginal Myth?)
Gone With the Wind
To Kill a Mockingbird
Wicked

Glad you made this a separate topic for this week! I knew there would be a lot to discuss and say. I've not had time yet to read all the posts, so I'm just going to start here with my direct responses, with no influence from what's discussed below.

What makes a book a classic?

I think a variety of factors contribute, and time period alone is not one of them:
Test of time, for sure - is it still being read and enjoyed and not just as part of school classwork.
Relevancy separate from the time it was written or surface plot points
Universality of themes
Is it relatable to the reader
How readable is it
Can it be read by a wide age group?

Are the books assigned in schools the right books? (what was required reading in school for you?)
I'm assuming you are referencing schooling before college/university only. I can't really say except for my own era - late 1960's/early 1970s. It does depend on the type of school you attend - religious and other private schooling vs. public school in the US. I went to a Catholic elementary school and whatever literature reading was excerpts and abridged for youth versions, with our library basically being filled with books with a religious bent -- saints, nuns, miracles come to mind. I probably was particularly disappointed because all I wanted to read were the popular serials of the day: Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames, Hardy Boys, and the like which were not even carried by the town's public library then. We all had to source from each other and our siblings, parents, and grandparents.

The goal was not to light a joy for reading in students, but to educate, provide, NYS a unified program providing a solid base in the books you would ultimately be tested on to get Regency scholarships for college and take the standardized Achievement tests used as part of admissions criteria by colleges, and also that colleges expected you to know.

To some degree, I did get that but in others I didn't from assigned reading. I transitioned to public school from catholic school in 7th grade - as there was no Catholic junior or senior high schools in my rural community. Some of the usual classics were assigned - Johnny Tremaine, The Scarlet Letter, and Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn and other Mark Twain. I also studied French literature - Le Petit Prince, Huis Clos, L'Etranger - mostly contemporary rather tan traditional Balzac for example. But there were more contemporary assignments -- we read Shakespeare but also Eugene O'Neil, Arthur Miller. And, as high school was early 1970s, a time of great change, including to academic programs, we actually had the opportunity to pick what literature classes we took, just as if we were in college - I ended up in one where we read books like Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis and Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo - this was the peak years of antiwar protests after all.

Do you think what is viewed a classic is changing today?

I don't think it ultimately is, despite this ridiculous tendency to declare just about any book an instant classic. I do believe that what older books hold a position as a classic can evolve, leading them to be dropped - personally, The Catcher in the Rye needs to go.

All I know about what is being assigned to be read in schools from what is now called middle school through high school is from the grumbles of friends - like Amy. One friend says she wishes her son's fancy private middle school would mix the reading up more, focus less on social relevancy and diversity, and more on books that will light a fire to read in her son. Her opinion btw is that most of what is being assigned is just crap or too old for them (she's very well read herself). It reminded me of a time being in a bookstore where a father was trying to pick out some classic reading for his son, and while I don't remember what boring tome he was pulling out - Hardy maybe? - and pressing on the kid, my friend and I ultimately stuck our noses in and said 'read Dumas - 3 Musketeers or Count of Monte Cristo - or Kipling's Kidnapped, Treasure Island, adventure and excitement'. This btw was before there was YA -- long before HP. I'd still recommend Johnny Tremaine.

Imagine you had to choose one book from our time to send 200 years into the future to represent us. What would you choose and why?

Hmmm, the book that pops into my mind is James by Percival Everett, and while I do think it has a universality and timelessness about it as well as quality writing, and it will endure, I don't think that's quite the book to send. Over dinner on Saturday night, I got into a vigorous discussion with friends of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, how timely and applicable it feels today. I'd been thinking about it quite a bit recently (it's a favorite - one I've re-read many times) and actually had re-watched the excellent film adaptation just the week before. I'm thinking that's definitely a major contender to send into the future. It's exciting to read but also rich in historical detail and important themes.

Just want to add to my above post - I do not believe there is some minimum number of years that a book has to endure before it can be considered a classic. Going through school during the turbulent years I did saw a swift change what was being published as well as read. Women were being published more and more, as well as writers like James Baldwin. Authors like Trumbo who were black listed in the 50s due to McCarthyism were seeing the light of day. Censorship loosened giving rise to authors like Judy Blume and her books for teens.

I attempted to post yesterday, but Roxie walked across the keyboard and erased it all.

For a book to be a classic:
Says something significant about the human condition.
Enduring readership
Prose is well done
A good story
Gives us some insight into the time in which it was written

While in high school, I like other members here read much on my own and many of them were considered classics we were also given a reading list in preparation for college which was largely filled with classics but some unexpected modern books (for the time were on it) The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Memories of assigned reading
Many short stories which I don't remember, the one that stands out The Monkey's Paw

Plays:
Our Town
Romeo and Juliet
King Lear
Macbeth
Hamlet
Julius Caesar
Oedipus Rex

Novels:
Lost Horizon
On the Beach
Lord Jim
Lord of the Flies
Frankenstein
David Copperfield
A Tale of Two Cities
A Separate Peace
To Kill a Mockingbird
Great Expectations
Silas Marner

One contemporary book for the future?
I guess this question is asking about a somewhat recently published book? (Theresa suggested A Tale of Two Cities and I think that one will endure whether or not we send it forward.)

I think I might choose Playground by Richard Powers. It captures something essential about our era where we are facing the impact of human civilization on the environment, and our struggle to think beyond our own lifetimes. It's well-written, ambitious, and includes elements of science, technology, and environmental destruction. These are issues that we will be judged upon in future generations. I feel pretty confident we will be found wanting. Whether we head off these crises or fail catastrophically (as we're currently headed), future readers would understand what we knew, when we knew it, and how we tried to think our way through it.

Another current book that I thought would become a future classic (and I thought this just after I read it) is Endling. It portrays a unique moment in time when Russia invaded Ukraine, and not only gives the reader an idea of what it was like, but also how it impacted an author who was in the process of writing a different type of book and had to change tracks to create this one. She leaves the first part intact so we can see where it was originally headed.

I don't remember what novels I read for school or if any were classics. I read a number of them on my own because my mother read classics. Also literary fiction. But I read many other things as well, but I couldn't stand the Harlequin romances of the time--the only time I read them was when there was literally nothing else to read where I was.

That said, I liked some romance, but it had other stuff to it and much of it has stood the test of time.

I have three books as well as a series to mention as possible classics for the future.

These are:

James - The author said he pictures the novel as being in a conversation with Mark Twain's classic books. It shows the perspective of Jim, the enslaved Black character.

Exit West - It creatively highlights the issue of mass migrations and how it is affecting so many people world-wide.

The Tsar of Love and Techno - Here is what I wrote in my review. "Sometimes you can see the genius in an author's writing, while not finding his book enjoyable to read. "The Tsar of Love and Techno" is that kind of novel for me. At times while reading it, I was in awe of Marra's ability to write such a sweeping history of Russia/USSR in the way that he did. The book begins in 1937 and continues to an unknown time in the future."

The above three books are tough to read. I hope that future generations might also find joy in reading the Harry Potter Series Box Set by J. K. Rowling. The release of each one of these books caused so much excitement and celebration.

I was thinking about how one thing *I* think a classic should do - need not be all but some - is first and foremost, instill a joy of reading. It needs to entertain, not just educate or moralize. Be just a good story. It should also touch on something that is personal to everyone. After some thought, my single book to send ahead:

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

I could create a course syllabus with that book at the center. It is entertaining, tells an intriguing story. It's a retelling but also incredibly original. It is broad but also intimate, touching on something every person who reads it recognizes and even years for: the need to be seen, heard, and remembered. To have a name that is yours, and a sense of having left some small imprint.

Because Addie is immortal, it is timeless, as is the art she has created or inspired through her lives. Plus Addie's immortality is very human - not that from mystical powers or magic or like vampires. That grounds it in real life and emotions and relationships.

Holly R W wrote: "I have three books as well as a series to mention as possible classics for the future.

These are:

James - The author said he pictures the novel as being in a conversation with Ma..."

Great choices for great reasons! The only one I have not read is the Marra.

Thanks, Theresa! ;0)