Steam Room Classics

 This is a riff on a subject Shelly brought up on her Presto Speaks! blogs, about whether there should be a distinction made between classics (or literature) and fiction in general. Shelly acknowledges the distinction for purposes of library shelving, but doesn't buy into the idea that respected literary classics of yesteryear are inherently superior to a recent bestseller.  At least, that's my sleep-deprived take on part of what she said.

I agree for the most part, although I find categories reasonably useful for finding books, not as a standard of quality but more by way of, "for those who like that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like." Few people are likely to enjoy any and every book in a particular section of a bookstore, but it's helpful if you don't have to wade through a hundred romance titles to get to a fantasy novel or space opera.

Still, I have a different take on the qualitative differences between general fiction and literary classics:

Sometime between Christmas and his birthday, John decided to start reading classics in the steam room as part of his seven-days-a-week workout schedule. I think he wanted to see whether they held up as good books or had been rendered unreadable by the passage of time, and whether there was anything to be learned from them for writing purposes. All this was to be done with paperback editions, because of course the steam room would destroy the books.

I bought him several new copies of such things for his birthday, and he picked up several others used.  The results so far:

Wuthering Heights - John found it terribly dull, with unpleasant characters and an unsatisfactory dramatic structure, considering that nothing much happens and one of the main characters dies halfway through. (This is my memory of what he said two months ago, so please forgive me if I get a detail wrong. I haven't read the book since high school.)

A Hemingway short story collection - John says that most of these were vignettes, not stories. He liked a few of them, and disputed the idea that Hemingway always wrote short, strightforward sentences. Overall, he wasn't terribly impressed.

Tom Jones - John gave up after a couple of chapters, pronouncing it unreadable.

John's currently reading a Moorcock book, which isn't getting his wholehearted approval, either. I've given him a spare copy of a Buffy book to try after that.

The fact that something is an acknowledged classic says something about its historical importance, but not necessarily its quality by today's standards. As the age of the work increases, its readability tends to decrease, due to changes in language, changes in culture, and changes in literary convention. The result is that reading the classics frequently becomes an unpleasant task that's supposed to be good for you, like taking that nasty-tasting medicine. I'm not sure it's always worth the trouble.

Karen