|
There's usually a good reason why a book has attained classic status. Until you've figured that out, whether you end up liking the book or not, you know you haven't learned to read it yet.
As for "Moby Dick", one of the "Jed McKenna" enlightenment trilogy novels contains a detailed reading of this book and makes a good case for why it's the greatest American novel ever. Basically he sees Ahab as the hero - in fact concludes that "Ishmael" is actually Ahab, having survived and come back to tell the tale - who represents what he calls the "breakthrough archetype". Ahab shows you just how ruthless you need to be to really break out of accepted patterns and limitations.
Every true innovator has a little or a lot of Ahab in them.
For example you could even see Steve Jobs as having leant on this figure (why were Macs famously white? ;-)).
As for "A Room with a View", it takes a sort of Jane Austen type set-up and turns it into one of the first airings of a modern idea that authentic passion and wildness is what must live for, to resist the dead hand of everything society and our betters tells us we should be. This is a staple of just about every movie, and we accept the idea of it without even thinking about it.
Forster's version is a bit genteel by modern standards, but it has the great advantage that there is a character (the older Mr Emerson) who actually spells it all out. It's like you can see the ideology actually being put together in front of your eyes.
Lionel Trilling analysed this too in his lit-crit book "Sincerity and Authenticity" which helps you see that the modern and still ascendant ideal of authenticity has its own problems.
|