The Classic Literature Workshop

And to get back to Lucas's Star Wars franchise, The Empire Strikes Back -- the installment that Lucas had the least involvement in writing-wise -- is generally considered to have the best writting.

literary canons tend to be retconned from contemporary works of great resonance

Er, I don't get what you mean here...

Depends on the country, but, generally speaking, it went from widespread to rare in one generation, and never was mandatory in the age of compulsory schooling.

Not sure what your point is - teaching of (non-classical) fiction in schools is itself very new, only a little more than a century old, and if you look at the mandatory fiction reading list in 1910s, 1930s, 1970s or 2010s, you'll see a lot of changes. So clearly teaching of literature in school doesn't stop Great Works from being reappraised.

The impression I've had from reading supposed Great Works is that they often (but not always) fail to tell you much that's new about life or love or the human condition or what have you, but they do often tell you a lot about the evolution of fiction as an art form. That doesn't generalize all that well, but it does make you a better reader and a better writer.

Another point: if you're reading works that're central to your native literary traditions, you're likely to have already picked up most of their major themes through cultural osmosis. That doesn't mean they weren't insightful at the time, but it does mean you've been spoiled for that aspect of the books. If you're looking for new insights in your fiction, reading Great Novels from a culture you don't belong to is probably a better idea than digging into your native canon.

I'm not sure what the point of your reply is - my comment wasn't about why people read "great literature", it was about how the canonical list of great works changes over time and the implications of that. Perhaps you're eager to signal that you think reading classics is all about signalling?..

Your list of what you think people's motivations are w.r.t. "great literature" has middle-school rebel written all over it. It's not even wrong, and hence difficult to discuss. The fact that you seem to be using "great literature", "fiction" and "classics" interchangeably doesn't help either (e.g. the "fake worlds" clause applies to genre fiction just as well as to literary fiction, but people don't normally claim that romance novels or detective novels teach important lessons).

Those can be some of the factors, depending on the people. Another reason for reading "focus point" works of fiction is that they give you a common topic to talk about. This is true for Cult Classics as well as for Great Classics.

One can thus read fiction for two social reasons; their value as a simulator of interesting and dangerous situations, and their value as a conversation piece.

Ambiguous works that invite a lot of alternate character interpretation or a lot of symbolism are especially appropriate, whether it be Hamlet or Neon Genesis Evangelion; you make the audiences care about what happens, and then you leave them homework (an exercise to the reader).

Don Quixote itself (it was supposed to be a silly comedy and a lampoon of chivalry books, not the Best Novel Ever it's become... well, Part I was; part II takes itself more seriously).

But that's just as I was saying: Don Quixote remains on the list of Great Works (there is no "best novel ever") because new generations find it relevant even as their tastes and understanding shift. To the contemporary audience Part I was LOL-grade funny and to modern readers it's much more tragic; this is probably because we've taught ourselves to empathize much more strongly with someone being ridiculed than people in the 17th century (note: this and not the novel's age! Gargantua and Pantagruel is 100 years older and reads today exactly as the satire it was then, w/o accumulating gravitas). But the novel always supported both points of view; if it didn't, we'd have stopped reading it. There's any number of satirical texts from the same era that are no longer widely read because to us they would just seem stupidly cruel, with no high tragedy involved.

Like Kick-Ass, huh?

Well, no. I don't like Kick-Ass personally, but it's a very successful graphics novel that also resulted in a successful movie. This is incredibly rare and difficult to achieve. If you aim to start with a "great work" of the past and change some stuff around to make it modern, it's highly unlikely that you'll replicate the success of Kick-Ass.

If by "embarassing" you mean "will lower your status in the eyes of a certain demographic, whose cooperation you need in order to achieve your goals",

By "embarrassing" I mean that it'll be embarrassingly badly written.

What are the 'modern, more sophisticated tools'? I think that's one of the things I don't see from your post.

Fix the story? For who? For what purpose? For us, the 0,1% tail of the distribution? The smarty smart pants adults?

If you are unable to successfully reach out to everyone, that's your failure as a writer.

Furthermore, the Sith can save others, the Jedi only save themselves. Why are the Jedi the good guys again?

How do the Sith save others? Is there actually tech. in the movies that is used for this purpose? Or is it just something the Sith could do?

He could save others from death...but not himself.

I didn't mean to imply that all stories were examples of "have your cake and eat it too" moral propaganda.

I agree there's more going on than being entertaining, but I've read many incredibly entertaining (taken in a broad sense) works of literature at school. Shakespeare, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies...

We're trained to expect entertainment from art.

I expect entertainment from entertainment. I want to be moved by art, preferably in a way that can be used again and again in life.

The value of literature isn't in its entertainment value.

Where, then, does it lie, precisely?

Chances are that if you read something in high school, it was both literature and not very entertaining.

Never happened to me. Even The Great Gatsby, which I loathe, is entertaining in that it has cool prose and witty turns of phrase, much in the same way that the operation of a very well-designed torture machine is entertaining to an engineer, without the engineer ceasing to find it loathsome in other ways.

No, this isn't stating the obvious, it's cheap, unthinking cynicism. In reality, TV shows compete against each other very aggressively, and having more complex, interesting, realistic characters can and does bring a huge competitive advantage to one show over another.

TV shows do compete aggressively, but having complex and realistic characters is only a good investment for the small minority of shows that are highly serialized and oriented around complex characters (Mad Men and Breaking Bad are good examples). There is a market for shows like this, but it is small and not terribly profitable.

The big money comes from shows with simple cardboard characters and one-off storylines like The Big Bang Theory (which set a record for biggest per-episode syndication deal ever) and Baywatch, which was syndicated in 142 countries. They have mass appeal and--most importantly--are easy to sell into syndication, where they become permanent cash cows.

Thank you. That does make sense- you might have found some cached knowledge of mine. I would like to point out that there are quite a few painfully crappy shows that people enjoy, but now that I think about it, they tend to go off the air in a couple seasons.

The other important thing about Game of Thrones is the model of payment: the people watching are the customers, not the product.

In other words, it depends on the target demographic.

And then there's surprises like My Little Pony. Wait, a committed artist assembled a dream team of writers, animators, designers, voice actors, musicians, and so on, and set them on a challenging task ("making a girls' cartoon that is awesome"), with a body of executives that was supportive and friendly?

It would have been a surprise if they had failed.

Even the IDW comics are awesome, and are the best-selling IDW series in, like, ever! Does anyone here read those?

You mean the graphic novels, right? I saw the movie but didn't read them.

Reading Shakespeare without footnotes is difficult even for native speakers. Some of the plays work well enough (although there will always be some passages that will be confusing), but the sonnets are mostly incomprehensible.

This exchange reminded me a lot of Brave New World: the idea that in a rational world (and perhaps just with a rational outlook) the drama of certain situations is lost because they just seem silly. Thus Helmhotz's confused reaction to Romeo and Juliet of being gripped by the language, but laughing at the crazy concepts of forbidden love and family tensions

"And yet," said Helmholtz when, having recovered breath enough to apologize, he had mollified the Savage into listening to his explanations, "I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can't write really well about anything else. Why was that old fellow such a marvellous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases. But fathers and mothers!" He shook his head. "You can't expect me to keep a straight face about fathers and mothers. And who's going to get excited about a boy having a girl or not having her?" (The Savage winced; but Helmholtz, who was staring pensively at the floor, saw nothing.) "No." he concluded, with a sigh, "it won't do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one find it?" He was silent; then, shaking his head, "I don't know," he said at last, "I don't know."

Much Ado About Nothing, for instance.

Beatrice and Benedick's relationship troubles make sense: they're shy (possibly "once burned") and can't stop poking fun at each other long enough to admit they like each other. They're being dorky, and that's a fitting subject for comedy.

But Claudio and Hero, on the other hand? Claudio thinks he's seen Hero getting it on with Borachio, but instead of confronting her privately — or even talking to her father and calling off the wedding — Claudio publicly humiliates her in front of the whole villa. To my values, this would be intolerably abusive behavior even if she actually had been cheating, and it's really weird that Hero still wants anything to do with him afterward.

Eugene Onegin comes to mind even more starkly.

What, and miss out on Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and The Caves of Steel and I, Robot and...?

Pardon me, I of course meant to start the date from 'The Hobbit'. Lax of me. Foundation was great, particularly the first time I read it a couple of decades ago.

I've read things from before then, but largely under coercion. I'm utterly unimpressed by Shakespere and want those years of my life back.