Do you ever worry that certain of your favorite books and authors are disappearing - that young readers of today simply do not want them anymore? I do, and though I risk sounding like a cranky old librarian by saying so, I’m more concerned than ever when I read about school libraries dumping their entire book collections. If film adaptations are anything to go by then Shakespeare and Jane Austen seem to be as popular as ever, and I’m glad of that. But the works of some other classic authors are not faring as well. Wuthering Heights was one of my favorite books as a teenager. Do teens still read it? Do young people still read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock? That really spoke to my friends and me when we were in high school - I typed out a big chunk of it and carried it in my wallet for years. And Dickens - I guess kids are still being forced to read David Copperfield and Great Expectations in school, but the idea that a teenager of today would open The Pickwick Papers in search of light entertainment seems kind of ridiculous. But why? Okay, it’s not relevant to their lives, but it’s not exactly relevant to mine either and I still loved it as a teen. Edith Hamilton’s Mythology is another example. I literally wore my paperback copy to pieces when I was a kid though it held no apparent relevance for my daily life.
I completely understand that today’s teenagers want books that are significant to them. I just wonder why they don’t seem to also enjoy literature that has been loved by many generations before them. I wonder if these classics are going to be neglected into oblivion. And is it a bad thing if that happens? Somehow I think that it is bad, but maybe it’s just that I take it personally - for some reason that I can’t articulate with any clarity, I want these books to be wanted and loved.
What do you think?
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I think that a lot of classics that we cherished are loved by teenagers now–and will be by teens of the future. I just think some books by virtue of topic or writing style don’t wear well. My grandparents’ generation read The Vicar of Wakefield and Lorna Doone for pleasure, and I find them both absolutely unreadable. On the other hand, as a teen I loved the novels of Wilkie Collins (who was a contemporary of the author of Lorna Doone). I also think the world of books is kind of like a longer-term stock market–an author’s value often just goes down, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. In his day Shakespeare was considered a lesser writer than Marlowe and Jonson, and for a long period during the seventeenth century he was completely unappreciated. Hard to grasp, isn’t it?
I inadvertantly spill coffee on almost every library book I take out. There’s doubt that not all great literature is recent fiction. By the way, look for the film version of The Moonstone, which I haven’t seen. The novel, and of course The Mystery of Edwin Drood. There’s a great novella by Henry James that’s also been filmed, where toward the end the character as dramaticlly as possible says, “I’ve lived in foreign parts too long.”
Thanks for your post.
scott
As someone who went to high school in the 70s, it was pretty unusual back then too, for a teenager to pick up a classic to read for pleasure, but I did, so I bet other teenagers did too, and still do now. They just keep it to themselves because it’s weird enough to be a reader in high school, much less a reader of classics.