This is a little bit of a rant, so hold with me. Whenever I get on one of these rants, what usually follows is just a stream of angry words with little rhyme or reason, but it always turns out perfect, so I wouldn’t worry. The order of the day, it seems, is the horrible fascination with classic literature that has been a mainstay in, even a foundation of, most education. It just doesn’t make any sense. And I’m not saying you can’t look back and find a bunch of great books with useful lessons and witty satire. I’m also not saying that books today are any better. It just seems that so much is expected of these old books, and often, they don’t seem to stand up to the scrutiny.
A recent example is a little book, you might have heard of it, called “Great Expectations“. Everybody’s heard of it, it’s just one of those books. Unfortunately, it’s also a rambling, uneventful tale of drudgery and semi-depressing obsession. The reader understands the character’s personality after the first five chapters, do we really need 30 more? It’s not that I don’t understand the cultural importance of the tale. I’m sure it’s been riffed on for the last two centuries. But, and here’s where most people get lost, that doesn’t mean that it’s a good book! This could go for many more so-called “classics” that have lost most of their cultural relevance. It’s time we move on.
