Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
Sure! If the author wrote a book of classic quality published before 1960. After all, Irving Berlin lived to see Alexander's Ragtime Band enter the public domain.
I disagree with so much of this. I don't struggle with Classic as a concept or as a category, nor with reading books from it. Nor is it the worst category, not to me anyway; that would be reserved for science fiction. De gustibus and all that. Harry Potter's not a classic, at least not yet. (And I don't think Harry Potter is well written, either.) I'm willing to admit that a lot of classics are dry and dull, but so are a lot of books taken as a whole. Don't vote for a dry and dull one. Problem solved. Now science fiction, there's dullness for you. [/irony font]
As for the definition of classic, I think Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography holds: I know it when I see it. I think most people do. There might be some quibbling at the margins, but the canon is standard enough for nominating/voting purposes.
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The question that we don't seem to be able to answer is how long does a book have to be out before it can be said to be a classic? If we can answer this, then I think we can do away with all the other silly definitions like it has to be public domain. I think 50 years may be too long for modern classics. I would like to suggest we use say 20 years for a classic. As for the second definition, I think that's quite appropriate.
The problem with classics is that a lot of them do not hold up well and thus should no longer be classed as a classic.