So many books now considered classics and must-reads were at one time controversial. The reason they're not anymore is that they;ve been explained out. All the angles have been covered, all the latent (and possibly subversive) meanings have been nicely bundled. Moreover, now they embody great angst or great conflict or something... of the time. They're part of the doctrine.
It's why, in my opinion, the canon is so inflexible at times and new books like Harry Potter are vilified. People are afraid of what they don't know. Goes to show we're not that open-minded after all...
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