The Old Ones

In a recent post at his blog Anecdotal Evidence, Patrick Kurp observes:

Based on the content posted at various litblogs, I’ve concluded that many readers devote their time and energy almost exclusively to recently published books. This seems peculiar because while I loyally track certain contemporary writers. . .and read their work as soon as it’s published, and while I review new books for newspapers and thus get paid to do so, I tend to assume that most are a waste of time. In addition, the past is a much bigger place than the present, so it follows that most worthwhile books were published not last week but some time in the previous three millennia. Every minute devoted to reading the new and middling is a minute spent languishing away from the old and dependably superior.

Unfortunately, Patrick never really explains why he thinks old books are "dependably superior," although I assume he would agree with Dorothy W, who, in responding to Patrick's post, suggests that "The books we are debating about today, people won't have heard of 100 years from now. The things we read from the past are by definition the stuff that has lasted, and perhaps that means they're superior to today's books." (Dorothy winds up not quite agreeing with Patrick's presumed definition of "worthwhile," however.)

Surely it is true that the books we're still reading from the past have proven their durability, whereas, confronting the increasing mass of books being dumped onto the market by clueless publishers (the vast majority of which certainly are "a waste of time"), we can't yet know which ones will manage to be considered a century from now as among "the stuff that has lasted." And, of course, some will. Presumably just as many books published in 2006 will make that list as books published in 1906 or 1806. (It's even possible that, given the increase in population over the past two hundred years, even more literary talent is being produced than formerly and that the early twenty-first century will be well-represented indeed on those syllabi of the future.) If Patrick means to suggest that this is not the case, that somehow current fiction and poetry are inherently inferior to that which has been given to us by "the past," then I think he's simply mistaken.

My interest in contemporary fiction comes entirely from a conviction that the best of what's being written now will in the long run stand quite steadily with the best of the past, and that literary criticism has its role to play in making provisional judgments about which books these might be. (In addition to the more mundane judgments about which books might be worth readers' time in the here and now.) Some of these judgments might certainly prove to be wrong, but this is so not because some universal standards based on what's come before will always ultimately prevail (and correct those assessments that sadly failed to observe them) but precisely the opposite: standards will change, and we can't be at all sure that what we now value in works of literature will be shared by future readers. I don't see why this fact should be lamented; those books we now believe to be "dependably superior" have been delivered to us through the same kind of critical filter, and some of them will ultimately not survive continued critical scrutiny.

Conclusions about what is demonstrably "superior" and what "a waste of time" can only be made by those of us readers and critics currently engaged in sorting through the collection of books available to us. If I'm merely forcing my way through some "new and middling" work, I'm eventually going to abandon it. Life is indeed too short to be spent reading lackluster books simply for the sake of "keeping up." But the standards I apply, while strongly influenced by those handed down from the past, can finally only be my own, those influenced by our present understanding of what literature ought to do or what it might be made to do. In my opinion, our obligation to the past is not to passively accept its presumed "superior" achievements but to subject those achievements to renewed examination. Using that method, I find many of the great books of the past are great, but I also find the occasional new (or nearly new) book to be just as "worthwhile" as the old ones.

Comments

[litlove]

I readily agree with this. Comparing a book from the 18th century and a contemporary novel is a rather pointless act of comparing apples and pears. Structures of literature were entirely different, language was radically altered, and naturally the ideology of the times was unrecognisable to the world today. Good literature responds to the social context in which it is written, and it may be that really good literature says something pithy and hard to hear about the way we live now (that might make us want to rush back into the comforting past). But each and every book can only ever be taken on its own merits in the world we currently inhabit, and the wealth of material written about books goes to show how complex a process that is.

[fausto]

Excellent post! Reading classics is important but reading classics only is playing on the safe side, and more importantly cutting oneself from what is happening right now in literarture or in the world - fiction is a great way of finding out truths about the time we live in.
There is absolutely no doubt that among all the contemporary titles we read, there will be future classics. Reading contemporary fiction is trying, failing, discovering, it's fun, it's what makes of reading such an exciting thing. You never know what you will get - while if you read Moby Dick, you can have your mind blown away but you don't step into territories that are entirely unknwon.
I read both classics and new titles, but mainly contemporary stuff, and I don't intend to change: I need the here and now as much as I need the guiding lights of great writers of the past.

[Matthew Tiffany]

I think that the standard by which books were transitioned into the pantheon of "books for the ages" has also shifted dramatically and may not even exist now. Books that were found to be worthy (over many years) were annointed as such in a different cultural space; authors were respected, they had their finger on the pulse, and people paid attention. Tastes and interests have been so segmented in the past twenty years as to make it impossible to find similar "classics" in the works of today, except to have them chosen by academics on high, which will likely not be relevant to the general reading public, as they are more interested in The Next Thing.

[Pete]

Books of the past aren't necessarily superior, since the crappy books of the past have long since disappeared into well-deserved oblivion. It's only the great ones of the past that we remember and revere today. There's probably just as much crap being published today, proportionately speaking, as in the past--but since right now we're surrounded with the great books of the past and present but only the bad books of the present, the past looks much rosier. Read a few pages of some long-forgotten bestseller of 1925 and see if it's really that much better than what's being written today. I'll bet not.

[Dan Green]

I'd even say that the "new and middling" books of today are actually better than the new and middling of yesteryear. This is one way in which the proliferation of creative writing programs has had an effect: in the number of well-written enough but ultimately uninspired novels being published, as opposed to the sheer crappiness of yesterday's alternatives to "great" fiction.

[Alexandre S.]

I don´t know. Imagine that all of literature is divided in baskets according to the century: a basket of XIIth century books, another of XIXth books, etc. Iff all baskets - with the exception of the current or contemporary basket - have gone through a selection, isn´t it wiser to prefer to pick up books from past centuries' baskets? At least if it´s literary quality you´re after and not information about our times?

[donnapoli]

I guess I have a problem with the idea that the greatness of certain old books has been established by a the uniform application of a “critical filter.” My suspicion is that each of these books has reached its exalted status in a different way. Since I’m not sure how books achieve lasting distinction, I’m not confident I can equate durability with excellence. Without actually reading obscure books from the past, my belief in their sheer crappiness must be based on faith in an unknown process.

[Dan Green]

"isn´t it wiser to prefer to pick up books from past centuries' baskets?"

Simply because they've been pre-sorted? Eliminates a few steps--namely the application of critical judgment on the current basket?

[Boris I.]

I think there is something to be said for the excitement of wading through the mass of newly published books in the hopes of coming across that great one that you think will last. Reading classics is valuable, and certainly rewarding, but maybe not as viscerally thrilling as finding a Richard Powers or whoever. Think of living in the time when Hemingway was writing, or Zola, or Shakespeare. Don't we all want that?