When modern writing reaches classic status
Defining when novels becomes classics
Liz Foley, Vintage Classics Editorial Director
What makes a book a classic? Many great minds have come up with different answers to this question: the Oxford English Dictionary defines classics as works ‘of the first class; of acknowledged excellence’; Mark Twain called them books which people ‘praise and don’t read’; and Oscar Wilde referred to them as ‘bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms’. My favourite answer is by Italo Calvino, the author of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller: ‘A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say’.
It’s usually accepted that to be considered a classic a book has to achieve a level of critical and popular success that endures for many years. However, even this is a tricky standard to be rigid about – Moby-Dick, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Frankenstein are just a few of the works we happily refer to as classics today which were poorly reviewed when they were first published. It’s also true that the length of time a book has to wait to achieve classic status seems to vary: many people would consider Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee or Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie to be classics even though both of these were published relatively recently.
Both of these books won the Booker Prize and this kind of literary accolade has an influence on which books people predict will become established classics. Alongside the Booker both these books also won numerous other plaudits and the general critical consensus remains that these are significant works of art. This kind of success acts as a recommendation for new readers who then approach these books positively, secure in the knowledge that many previous readers and critics have judged them to be worth consideration.
Possession by A.S. Byatt and Amsterdam by Ian McEwan are also both Booker Prize-winners and these books have had their reputations as modern classics confirmed by being studied at schools and universities. Being adopted onto the curriculum and deemed worthy of academic examination is another important facet to the idea of defining classics. There usually has to be more to these books than simply a rollicking good story – either in terms of the depth of the issues they discuss, the innovative nature of their stylistic form or the impact they have on contemporary culture.
This perception of the ‘depth’ of classic works, however, can sometimes put people off reading these books. How many people have been turned off the idea of picking up Middlemarch, despite seeing it relentlessly praised by living authors and critics as one of the best books ever written, because it brings back memories of analysing every sentence of huge and worthy tomes at school? This isn’t helped by the rather dour and difficult-looking covers that often dress classic books. It’s not surprising that many readers don’t feel that the classic works of literature have much relevance to them when they are confronted by paintings of scowling women in huge skirts, or drab-looking country scenes. When planning the launch of the Vintage Classics imprint this August it was concluded that a much fresher, less intimidating approach to the cover art was a key issue in attempting to bring new readers to these works.
Works like Middlemarch, Gulliver’s Travels, Crime and Punishment, and Oliver Twist deal with perennial themes such as love, death, loyalty, self-fulfillment, guilt, and violence that modern novelists are still exploring. Despite the huge changes in society throughout history, the subject matter of human experience that writers explore in their work is often very similar. Some of the older classics have even more specific contemporary relevance: What Maisie Knew by Henry James is a depiction of the life of a little girl from a broken home which still resonates today. Even more topically, The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad deals with the threat of terrorism in London, which was an issue of great concern to readers who experienced the period in the late nineteenth century when there were bomb plots directed at London transport and key monuments.
It is easy to see the classics as a separate group of hallowed, dusty works rather than as points on an ever-growing and changing line of literature that continues into the future. Regarding the classics as books that are only for serious reading or study not only disguises the fact that most of them are fantastically enjoyable but also doesn’t do justice to the variety of works that make up what is known as ‘the canon’. This attitude can also suggest that classic works should be considered as historical artefacts rather than vibrant, engaging, hugely varied pieces of writing. Sometimes there can be more similarities between a classic work and a modern work than two written at the same time. For example Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Crime and Punishment were both published within a year of each other and yet they cover very different ground.
Another reason that the classics are of continued interest today is because of the influence they have on modern writers. All writers are readers. In interviews with authors they are often asked to name their favourite books, or the books that have taught them the most about writing. Often the same work can inspire authors in entirely different directions – everyone knows that Bridget Jones’s Diary is based on Pride and Prejudice but not so many know that it was also very much in Mark Haddon’s mind as he wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, or that Austen is one of Irvine Welsh’s favourite writers.
The connection between the classics and modern writing gave Vintage the idea for a novel way to celebrate the launch the list – the Vintage Classic Twins. The Twins are ten limited edition gift packs which consist of two specially designed books from different centuries but with similar themes. For example Martin Amis’s coming-of-age novel has been twinned with The Rachel Papers with Henry Fielding’s equally entertaining story of a young man’s amorous adventures, Tom Jones, under the title Vintage Lust; The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm with Angela Carter’s reworking of these fairy tales, The Bloody Chamber, as Vintage Fear; and A.S. Byatt’s exploration of the late-nineteenth-century world, Possession, with George Eliot’s absorbing 1871 masterpiece, Middlemarch as Vintage Love.
Reading books from different eras in succession or, indeed, alongside one another, can provide a very interesting experience due to the thought-provoking similarities and differences between them, and the ways in which the writers handle the same kinds of subject matter very differently. In each case, the twins consist of an acclaimed modern literary novel and an established classic work. This unique publishing venture hopes to draw new readers to the classics by presenting them to be as relevant and exciting as the work of popular modern writers.
Liz Foley is Vintage Classics Editorial Director
Enter our competition to win the full set of Vintage Classic Twins.
