Classic literature

[bixente]

In recent years I've increased my focus on the classics - Dostoevsky, Kafka, Dumas... our local library, alas they didn't have the edition of Les Miserables I so desired , so in my impatience I made the short trek to the place I gave mention to, in which I picked up Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre".

Now then, the point of this thread. I'm finding it rather vague, the purpose. Perhaps we could give mention to classics which are especially meaningful to us?

[YankeyMCC]

1. The Perfect Library

You might find this list interesting, I just saw this today:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/06/nosplit/sv_classics06.xml#6

For me personally some of my favorites among the classics:
"The Secret Agent" by Conrad

"Iliad" and "Odyssey" by Homer (I have both translations by Robert Fagles)

Pretty much all the Steinbecks, "East of Eden" is perhaps the most personally moving for me. "Mice and Men" was my first Steinbeck read and a favorite for that reason and other reasons too of course.

Frankenstein

On Edit: I'm going to include the LoTR series in a list of classics. I'm tempted to put Asimov's Foundation and Robot novels in there as well, and "Stranger in a Strange Land" and a "Fahrenheit 451"

[hedgehog]

2. I read a lot of classics as a kid because there was no such thing

as young adult literature! Can you imagine trying to wade through Faulkner with no guide? Oddly enough, I never got much into Dickens. I went through alot of Jules Verne because it was hard to find any science fiction back then (yeah, and we walked to school uphill in the snow both ways...)
To order a book, you went to a book seller (in my town, book stores also sold office supplies and gift items!) and went through a large book called Books in Print. The titles were listed with the same type used in the phone book and you were out of luck if you didn't have the exact title. Often you'd order the book, wait thre weeks and then get a call saying it was out of print.


Anyways, I remember Jane Eyre well. Can you imagine if Heathcliff had shown up for dinner at the Bennet's house (from Pride and Prjudice)?

[CBHagman]

3. In recent years, Jane Austen.

I read Pride and Prejudice for fun back in the day, and some years later stumbled on Northanger Abbey. When the Jane Austen film adaptation mania commenced in the 1990s, I started working my way through all the completed novels: Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Mansfield Park. I occasionally re-read sections of them all.

For many years I re-read Elizabeth Jane Howard's Getting It Right, which is a good novel and full of references to literature and the arts, even if the book itself is not necessarily a classic. Little Women was another favorite of mine over the years, and so was Wuthering Heights.

There's something wonderful about returning to all of these.

[hedgehog]

4. Little Women gets no respect because it is considered a "girl's book",

but Alcott did make some sharp observations about human behavior. What about the scene where Jo realizes that Beth is dying, and Beth is glad that someone else knows, that she doesn't have to tell anybody? My cousin died of AIDS, and his sister later told me that he was happy that I realized that he was sick and didn't say anything about it to him because he was so tired of having to tell people about it.

[CBHagman]

5. "Little Women" is interesting on many levels.

For starters, it is an intensely moving story. As you noted, there are the relationships which sometimes go beyond words, and which shift and change over the course of the book.

Then there is the aspect of character study. Of all the figures in the book, Jo and Laurie seem the most fleshed out, the most wholly alive and human, and I can't help wondering that if Louisa May Alcott, despite reportledly making Laurie a composite of two different men she'd known, revealed something of her own psyche in Laurie. It's also no coincidence that Laurie and Jo are the two funniest characters in the book.

And when I was a kid, I really didn't get all the cultural references throughout the book -- from German literature to mythology to the Bible to, above all else, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

Add to that that Jo is, after a fashion, a political progressive (note her valuing of character over social status, and her acceptance of a mixed-race child at Plumfield), and it all remains worth discussing, even after a century and a half.

[Aristus]

6. "Tom Jones" is one of my all-time favorite classics.

I don't know how "meaningful" it is; I just know it is absolutely fucking hilarious!

[PassingFair]

7. If you like Tom Jones....

try "Pamela" and "Shamela", too.

Also, Moll Flanders is a RIPPING good read!

[PassingFair]

8. My husband is finally getting around to reading "David Copperfield"...

I haven't read it in over 30 years, but I remember
every character....arguably Dickens' best.