When I was in the midst of receiving my doctorate in American literature from the City University of New York Graduate Center, I made my obligatory pilgrimages to the annual convention of the Modern Language Association. My first was a doozy. I vividly remember a panel I attended on canonical and non-canonical works, where such well-regarded scholars as the incendiary Houston Baker and the all-too-conservative James Tuttleton duked it out over the Western canon and the validity of the "classic."
Both trotted out their respective arguments and in the many years since I have come to take stock in the merits of the two sides. There is definitely room in the canon—whatever that is—for new work that need not labor in the shadow of Melville and Emerson or even the critical sensibility that placed them at the top. On the other hand, there is absolutely no way to regard all published works of literary fiction on par with one another in terms of quality or even critical interest. Charles Dickens is better than Stephen King, just like Stephen King is better than John Saul, who is really not much better than anyone. Now we can argue about what we mean by better, but if we take as one aspect of it my second criterion of "critical interest"—worthiness and worthwhile-ness for critical examination—then, yeah, Dickens is better than King. There is more to say about Dickens' work than there is to say about King's, and on multiple fronts, too: historical, economic, linguistic, sociopolitical.
So, in my mind, there are such things as classics, although I don't much love the term and the baggage it carries. Classics presumably point to works of quality that support that much more critical interest than other works. And this raises, in turn, an issue I have become quite fascinated by: classics I hate.
The hated classic finds its antithesis in the guilty pleasure, which in today's world is hardly a source of shame. Hell, my wife is more than happy to talk about her preferences for American Idol—even though she was less vested in this year's selection of Kris Allen—and I can freely admit my penchant for old Kung Fu movies and Firefall's "You Are the Woman" (please don't hit me). There are many who happily boast a passion for various species of bad art. I have friends who love Z-movie vampire flicks. My sister thinks Dumb and Dumber is one of the greatest comedies ever made. I had a boss who watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer religiously. There is even circulating a much-talked-about documentary on the "best worst movie" ever. Need I go on?
However, we tend to be more circumspect about how much we dislike great art. True, it is easy enough to confide among friends our gut feeling that Giacometti's sculptures seem childish or Verdi is a bore. But put us in a room of intellectual peers or, even worse, acknowledged superiors, and suddenly it becomes a more vexing matter. We still may not like Giacometti or Verdi, but try justifying your response without sounding entirely solipsistic ("What can I say? It doesn't do a thing for me"), all of which seems to raise important questions about our response—and those of our peers. What do they know that I don't? Is it a question of unacknowledged personal immaturity? Or is this classic just another example of mass hysterical bad judgment? (It's been known to happen.) Or perhaps questions of taste really are relative and Stephen King can be as good as Charles Dicken—Heaven forfend!
With bad art, I suspect we're allowed to indulge our innate solipsism. Why am I willing to overlook how crappy old Kung Fu movies are? The escapism, formulaic storytelling, acrobatic choreography are all psychological creature comforts of the circus and childish wish fulfillment. But why do I hate The Scarlet Letter? It's dull, dull, dull, and I'll take the The Blithedate Romance over it in a heartbeat. So what the hell am I missing?
This is not an insignificant question. As a former college teacher, I was constantly placed in the position of rebutting student charges of dullness, an eternal source of frustration that seemed little more than the response of the lazy mind. In my struggle to teach students how to appreciate works by Conrad, Austen, Poe, Blake, and innumerable others, this response surfaced again and again as an ever-elusive combatant whom I could never quite grasp and pin down.
So why do I hate The Scarlet Letter? Why is my memory of it hardly a pleasurable one? Why has this novel never moved me in any way whatsoever? These are all questions that deserve a better answer than "I'm sorry but it's just a dull read." After all, I am more than willing to tolerate the lengthy mood settings in Joseph Conrad or the fine needlepoint psychological excursions of Henry James. I know The Scarlet Letter is a classic; I can even sense it! But there is radical disconnect, one that flummoxes any attempt at quick explication.
So for now, I am without answers; someday I hope to offer better ones. Until then, let me turn it over to you: Which classics have you found to be an utter failure in your experience as a reader?
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Let us return now to the Academy of the Overrated:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HDSFNzptSM
"I mean, I loved it when I was at Radcliffe, but I mean, all right, you outgrow it; you absolutely outgrow it...."
I don't know why you hate The Scarlet Letter. But I know why I hate Jane Eyre -- because it's boring. And because everyone knows how it ends: she marries him, right?
Interesting that I have seen at least two articles lately by prominent art critics who really dislike Francis Bacon -- Jed Perl and Peter Schjeldahl. And they both write about their dislike without sounding solipsistic. As you point out, that's a feat.
She marries him at the end? F***! This totally explains why I didn't get into Harvard.
I wish I could say I outgrew The Scarlet Letter. It just never grew on me to begin with.
But don't be so coy... Fess up, fess up. Everyone has a dirty little secret of this sort.
I really liked Jane Eyre once upon a time (haven't looked at it since about 1991). I liked Agnes Grey more, though (I wonder what that means about me).
As a rule, in my reading patterns of the last 15 years, I've studiously avoided reading "classics" and try to limit myself to entertaining crap. I recently read Russell Brand's My Booky Wook and my husband made fun of me for reading a book with a title like that but then admitted he loved me for it.
I don't think my life is ruined by my not having read Tristram Shandy; Clarissa; the complete Hawthorne; any Faulkner; any Steinbeck; the complete Hemingway; any novel by Joyce.... people who get all het up about this stuff have, as far as I'm concerned, very misguided notions about life, reading, and their dreams of being the next Harold Bloom. So sue me.
I need to come clean on this: I have never made it through A Tale of Two Cities. It was required reading in both high school and college, and although I tried and tried and tried, I could not get through that thing. (Yes, Mr. Notaro- you gave me an A on a paper completely written from Clif notes. But you should have known better).
They should stop foisting the red letter book on kids, but I think Twice-Told Tales is a treasure for later in life. Also, Jeff Ford has a fantastic, funny recent post on the books he hated:
http://14theditch.livejournal.com/273299.html?
Must be that time of year when we reminisce about school...
According to Mark Twain, the definition of a classic is a book that everyone wishes they had already read. And by that definition, I can say I've never read a classic because I can't think of a book I wish I had read and so don't have to bother reading.
It strikes me that what some are citing as 'classics' are books one reads for classes, but that's something different. I can think of books I resented being made to read in school -- Eliot's "Silas Marner" comes to mind, in 10th grade -- but that's an immature basis for a judgment on a book. But at least I've already read it.
The purpose of reading books assigned in college and grad school was something other than one's personal choice for 'a good read' or even a worthwhile experience, and so I can't think of anything that truly seemed a waste of time.
When teaching books from someone else's syllabus, the books I've complained of tended to be more contemporary things pretending to 'classic' or 'necessary' status, a pretense I'm always more willing to skewer than the notion that there is no point in reading "The Scarlet Letter" or "Jane Eyre." The first I have little recollection of -- which means it didn't stay with me -- and I only read it because my daughter had to read it for school; the latter I found preferable to "Wuthering Heights," mainly because I liked Jane's voice and didn't find the multiple tellers of "WH" convincing. I'm glad I've already read "WH" but I wouldn't say I'd never read it again. In fact, I may have.
"A Tale of Two Cities" I was never required to read, and haven't read it, but still might. "Clarissa" may in fact be a book I wish I had already read, or maybe it falls into that category named by Italo Calvino as "Books Which Everyone Has Read and So It's As If You Had Read Them Too."
The Age of Innocence...
I picked up this book during a month-long stay in New York, having been told that it was the most "New York" book, despite its aristocratic milieu-- it was cited as such in a recent New York Magazine piece-- and I thought it might be entertaining. Sure, the book's not a complete flop: it has some funny moments, a few poignant epigrams (a very few), and even contains a tedious plot... which never really gets around to declaring itself. Wharton's intention was subtly, but I felt bored, perpetually wondering why I was reading a book with so little relevance to my life, or to anybody else’s. Even The Odyssey-- especially The Odyssey-- has plenty to say to audiences today about war, family, time, what have you.
The Age of Innocence is about a young man of an incredibly wealthy and influential family, one which sits among only six or seven families that basically hold most of the money in 1870's New York and control most of its business. Young Newland Archer has a problem. He loves a woman who is considered "out there" (there are further complexities) and he is inopportunely being married to another as this true love enters his life. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I wasn't satisfied by the lovers' secret conversations which Archer was so eager to have, and which lead nowhere fast. Too much precious time is spent analyzing women's' clothing.
The reason this book might be considered worthwhile is because of its zeitgeist (and I hate to waste such an exciting word on the descriptions of the dull lives of these dolts). But that's what the book is all about: making the reader understand the entrapment of 1870’s New York life among the aristocracy. Under constricting norms and the harsh judgment of elders, Archer sort of gradually makes a choice between love or stability by his never deciding with finality one or the other. Perhaps some of us are faced with similar choices, and one might be able to make the argument that this book remains relevant for that reason, but I think it would be so much snatching at straws.
As time moves on in New York and the late 19th century becomes the early 20th, this seems to be Wharton's point: that what preceded us always seems antique, and in hindsight a lot of the traditions we thought necessary come to be seen as idiotic, prejudiced, and dull. But most of all, the young don't really care about the minute hardships of their parents’ lives. So don’t read this.