The Classics, Revised
J.D. Sallinger passed away last week, and his demise led to the usual flurry of knee-jerk tributes and in memoriams. I too noted his death by posting one of my favourite quotes as my Facebook status, not precisely an obituary and perhaps a tad phony but well-intentioned nevertheless. This led to a brief exchange with a couple of friends, who just didn’t get Catcher in the Rye and failed to see why it was deemed such a classic. I argued my point, of course, Salinger’s novel is the original and only teen angst novel, a book so influential that it spawned thousands of copies, although none contains the dark humour and the pure and unadulterated dialogue that made Catcher so memorable. Just as you can’t blame Radiohead for the miserable maelstrom of Livejournals that their Creep unleashed.
But the literary canon, to which Salinger’s novel belongs, is not set in stone, and neither is it the ultimate word in good taste. The emergence of literary criticism has led to a revision of this previously static list, as Feminism, Post Colonialism, Queer Studies and New Historicism have added formerly censored and often neglected voices to the canon, originally a product of a Eurocentric patriarchal society. This is a positive development. How could it not be? Anything that adds wealth and nuance to the debate should be encouraged. Our cultural landscape should be a veritable polyphony, a cacophony of often contradictory views as befits a healthy democracy. However, a brief glimpse at recent Booker Prize nominees might give the impression that one ideology has supplanted all others. It seems that the cultural intelligentsia has taken postmodernism and distilled it to its worst pretentious essence. Nowadays, novels containing something as conventional as a ‘plot’ are frowned upon. Instead, shortlisted books tend be afflicted by the Existential malaise. Symptoms include a complete lack of structure that reflects life’s insufferable randomness, perpetual navel gazing caused by life’s insufferable randomness and people breaking sexual boundaries as a reaction to life’s insufferable randomness. Of course, only people belonging to the upper and middle classes are perceptive enough to spot this, and like H.C. Andersen’s princess they can feel life’s insufferable randomness through a hundred mattresses.
This brings me to Samuel Beckett and his insufferably tedious Waiting for Godot, the original existential drag responsible for the godawful smorgasbord of self-misery that has been on offer ever since. Some might point out that Marcel Proust might be the man to blame for this current narrative void, after all his In Search of Lost Time is famous for being rather non-eventful. But like Salinger, I kinda like him. Also, unlike Becket, he actually wrote his novel in French because he was French, and not because he wanted an added Existential dimension to his oeuvre that could not be achieved by chain-smoking Gauloises and staring intensely into the emptiness. Waiting for Godot or whatever its title is in the original language is therefore my top most hated over-hyped ‘classic’ followed closely, and in no particular order, by:
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera: This is post-modernism at its worst, what I label as Existential onanism. An orgy of nothingness with obscene amounts of emptiness. A non-existent story on the uneventful lives of three particularly whiny members of the chattering classes, whose shallowness is somehow made meaningful by dropping the Prague Spring in the background. As if they could give a monkey’s.
The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood: I can’t decide whether Margaret Atwood is intentionally trying to be a parody of a 70s feminist, a Germaine Greer on steroids, or if she seriously hates all men with the venom I normally reserve for Beckett. I have read a couple of her other books, and I have yet to meet a sympathetic male character. I find her constant rallying against patriarchy quite damaging, as her worldview is often as Manichean as those held by the men she criticizes. By constantly casting women as victims and men as perpetrators, without a single character that straddles these extremes, she is perversely justifying and reinforcing the status quo.
Adam Bede, by George Eliot: The story, a showcase of staid Victorian morality, is quite bad in itself: flirty milkmaid meets downfall after seduction by country squire (I say, you’re a most becoming wench!) But this is the golden age of the omniscient narrator of course. Consequently, and to castigate the poor reader even further, if that’s possible (and George Elliot shows us it is possible), we are treated every four chapters or so to an interlude in which we are patronised to death by essays on rural topography, rural agriculture, rural infrastructure. Having to read it as part of my degree, I actually skipped all these tiresome digressions and looked them up on wikipedia instead.
The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens: Yeah, I know, I’m attacking the bearded dude that was on the 10 pound note until he was replaced by Darwin (presumably Darwin was fitter). This is probably sacrilege and they might not let me through immigration next time I visit their little island. Great Expectations is a wonderful book but sometimes Dickens is like that uncle of yours, the born raconteur, who just won’t shut up after too much sherry. This is how The Pickwick Papers often feels; after a couple of amusing stories, it descends into a increasingly indulgent rambling monologue. Anyway, I always preferred Wilkie Collins.
A true classic - mostly written through an opium haze, like most classics should be.
