Quote:
Originally Posted by djulian
Usually, a classic is a book that receives the approval of more than a single generation. Hence, Moby Dick is a classic--multiple generations look at that white whale of a book and say, "Yeah, that's a freakin' novel!"--whereas "A High Handed Outrage in Utica" was popular in its time but not afterwards.
The fuzziness and confusion comes in with the fact that classics fall along a spectrum from "THE WORLD'S MOST IMPORTANT WORKS EVAR!!1!" down to "Meh, kinda important."
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Yeah, but...
Respectfully, the problem with this is that it's essentially either an Appeal to the Masses or an Appeal to Authority -- and those are both logical fallacies.
The Appeal to the Masses argument is basically, "This is a classic because XX% of people who read it AGREE that it's a classic," where XX is some sufficiently high number. So if we can get enough people to insist that "Twilight" is a classic, or Robert Jordan's complete works, or "The Boxcar Children" is a classic, then as long as those people continue to insist that the story is "a classic" for a sufficiently long time, then thus is it so.
The problem is that even if 99% of people agree for the next 100 years that "Twilight" is a classic and must be read, that doesn't mean that the work actually has
objective value, just that it has
subjective value for a large number of people. Therefore, the sentiment should not be, "
Twilight is a classic that everyone should read," but rather simply "
Twilight is a classic that lots of people like, so you might want to check it out."
Since the "Classics! Read 'em!" argument usually hinges on intellectualism, the Appeal to the Masses is usually modified to the Appeal to Authority -- now it's not that XX% of people think a book is a classic, it's instead XX% of
qualified people. But according to whom? There's a reason why a lot of "classics!" lists are composed largely of white, western, male authors and it's *ahem* not because white, western, male authors are inherently more likely to write good stuff. It's because for a very very VERY long time, it was almost a requirement to be a white, western, male person in order to gain entrance to the Special Ivory Tower that decides whether or not Robert Jordan has attained classical status.
Beyond the issues of grandfathering-in a lot of white, western, male works and continuing to overlook the entire world of everything else, the Appeal to Authority is still fallacious because for the same reason that the Appeal to the Masses is: even if every author and professor on earth deem Twilight a classic, the BEST we can say is not "
Twilight is a classic that everyone should read," but rather simply "
Twilight is a classic that lots of authors and professors like, so you might want to check it out."
Incidentally, the reverse is also a problem: if we can't define a "classic" outside of fallacious Appeals to Masses/Authority, then we can't UN-classic-ify a book either. If every man-woman-jack on earth signs an affidavit that "Moby Dick" is dull, tedious, and without literary value, I would presume that YOU (you being the exception to this sudden loathing of Pick-Your-Favorite-Classic) would maintain that "Moby Dick" was STILL a 'classic' regardless of what everyone else on earth said.
(Not picking on you, I swear, just using an example. Hope that didn't sound harsh.
)
Really, ultimately, "Classic" has become a word to mean (1) oldish, (2) probably taught in a class somewhere, and (3) I like it or at least felt smarter for having tried to read it. And that's.......okay. I'm alright with using the word that way. But it
still means that all this "classics have objective value and are determined by strict, unassailable criteria" is so much white noise, in my opinion.
Speaking of, I recommend "White Noise" by Don Delillo as a classic. It's old, probably taught in a class somewhere, and I like it a lot.
