Classic Pretentiousness

Posted by Sara Slack in Featured Articles on Nov 2nd, 2009 | one response

Something that is rather inescapable within the world of literature is an underlying hierarchy of pretentiousness. For example, people who read what are considered to be ‘Classics’ are often taken more seriously in academic or literary circles than someone who has just finished a science fiction or fantasy novel. As Mark Twain wrote, however; “A Classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” But the question here is why? And who gets to decide what constitutes as a ‘Classic’ anyway?

If you want to find out exactly what sort of thing is seen as academic, take a look at the dissertations that are written every year by English students at University. Austin, Shakespeare and Milton are always forerunners, followed closely by Virginia Woolf and George Elliot. I don’t think that I would necessarily be pointing in the wrong direction when I say that Universities have a lot to answer for when it comes to the aforementioned pretentiousness. “I had to read Adam Bede at University, and therefore it must be high-brow literature.”

So what are the criteria for being a ‘Classic’? Half the time I expect it to be a secret council of Penguins sat around a table, drinking copious amounts of tea and arguing over who to allow into the club next. (I know that’s unlikely…they’d also be eating salmon canapés as well). But I digress.

The benefits of reading a Classic to something of any other genre still elude me, except for being able to give me some sort of high-brow bragging rights over other people who haven’t had the steel will to force themselves to read something like ‘Adam Bede’ all the way through. I don’t think anyone who is an avid reader can honestly say that they’ve never tried to impress someone else with the volume and variety of their reading lists. Ironically though, most of the time the people you try to impress really don’t care that you’ve read ‘Beowulf’ or the ‘Sermo Lupi’ in the original transcript. People want to talk about what they know, leading to more discussions of ‘Twilight’ (ugh) than ‘Treasure Island’.

Unfortunately, the pretentiousness doesn’t just stop with the reader anymore. I’ve heard rumours for a couple of weeks now that the ‘Science-Fiction’ genre is going to have a new label attached to it, along the lines of ‘Speculative Fiction’. You have to at least smile at the effort of the publishing houses on that score. ‘The Time Travellers Wife’ is, I think, partially to blame for that. But I think it also has a lot to do with stereotypes. ‘Science-Fiction’ is generally the runt of the genre family. The one that everyone acknowledges but no-one really likes to talk about at dinner parties. And why should that be? The writing styles can be just as good, the contribution to society just as great, and they can be just as popular with the non-niche masses. (Yes, they can be. Just look at anything with the ‘Dr Who’ tag on it).

So my advice to you all, dear readers, is to take any book that is labelled ‘a classic in the making’ with a pinch of salt. It’s simply a marketing ploy. If there is a genre that people actually feel guilty for not reading, it’s classics. It’s true that some of them are fantastic reads, just like any other genre, but many of them are bland and overhyped…just like any other genre.

Now please excuse me, I need to get back to reading my copy of the Canterbury Tales.