There's a place inbetween, though. It's also a matter of who's saying what's a 'classic.' Dickens? Yes: painful. Academia and publishers (who make money off book sales), one guesses, has dictated to us what is and what is not a classic. Why is Knut Hamsun not right alongside Dostoyevsky? Why is "Journey to the end of the night" not beside "Catcher?" There was a feeling I had once after having discovered what I thought were off the beaten path books (novels.) It was a feeling of discovery; this is one reason that one would choose to read things that were old, if not called 'classic' by the literary powers that be. (Of course, these discoveries could by all means be contemporary, too . . .) The first slew of these books were black sparrow and new directions books - hardly off the beaten path, exactly, but a start, and better than 'Treasure Island,' for Christ's sake. For that matter, Dawn Powell is a recent discovery for me. How come she's never taught? Petronius, "Satyricon," why is that never taught? This was written two thousand years ago by a man with a great story (life and literary), reads like it was written yesterday, and I've never seen it once on someone's book shelf. Italo Calvino - "If on a Winter's night a traveler," specifically - why did it take me reading years and years before having heard of him? I've yet to know anyone who's heard of him, muchless read him, though. I'd nominate him for 'classic' titling, but then no one would read him for fear he was boring. Everyone has numerous criteria for reading what they read, but it's sometimes strange that Jaques the Fatalist, for instance, isn't read b/c it's old. It's not a hard read, really. To go back to Hamsun, "Dreamers" & "Mysteries" are both laugh out loud because they are so absurd. Laughter doesn't age. Looking at my book collection, I may as well be a butterfly, a stamp collector. The point is that what are called classics, Dickens, Fenimore Cooper, for instance, are normally the most abbreviated, boring, turn-one-off-to-reading-the-classics book-list that one could dream up. Most of my teachers never broached this subject. I was shoved through the course with the rest of the herd: Here're the classics, most of us don't really want to read them, teacher included, but this is the way it's done. There are exceptions, though - Dostoyevsky, as always, but nevertheless, it's a matter of discovery. It takes searching and realizing that what we're told is good was for sometimes mysterious reasons - some justifiable, others not - and there are mounds of books lurking behind those that are better and more fun, because no one has read them, by and large.
