Saturday, April 23, 2011

And the winner is..................

I’ve been a little quiet on the blogging front this month, a situation that was capped last weekend when I was admitted to hospital with viral meningitis.  I was released yesterday morning and am now recuperating at home despite the tender ministrations of mini-Falaise who, not unreasonably, believes I owe her lots of Daddy time.  I now have a huge backlog of posts and am going to have to be unusually productive over May and June to get caught up.

If you’ve been following this blog recently, you will be aware that I decided to host a giveaway of a book by one of the authors I selected as being underrated in a Top Ten Tuesday post.  The deadline for entries passed last night and I am pleased to announce that Sarah from Workaday Reads is the lucky winner!  Sarah will (postal services permitting) be receiving a copy of The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers.  It’s a lovely little book and I hope she enjoys it as much as I did.

Finally, I hope everyone who celebrates Easter has a peaceful and enjoyable one and that everyone else has a fantastic weekend.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

2,566: The Test of Time: What Makes a Classic a Classic?

In 1999, to celebrate the impending millennium, Waterstone’s and the Arts Council of England published a collection of 47 pieces by various luminaries of the British literary, publishing and journalism scenes at that time.  Each contributor was asked to opine on what they thought it meant to be a “classic” novel and about their relationship to the classics.  They were also asked to nominate ten “essential” classics for the next 100 years and up to ten books that should never have been called classics.

Amongst the contributors were authors like Michael Moorcock, Kate Mosse, David Lodge and Christopher Priest, publishers and booksellers like Tim Waterstone and Stuart Proffitt, journalists such as Cosmo Landesman and John Humphrys and a few random annoyances like Vanessa Feltz and Julie Burchill.  The pieces ranged from the self-consciously contrary to the depressingly pretentious but the majority of the pieces were entertaining, serious and thought-provoking.

The question of what it means for a novel to be a “classic” is probably one of the most-debated questions in literature studies and I would guess that pretty much every book blogger who has been around for a while will either have addressed it themselves or read (and probably disagreed with) several posts on the topic.  From my own perspective, I am continually changing my position on the matter and don’t yet feel comfortable to set out my own views in a post.

As you would expect, a wide variety of views was expressed in The Test of Time.  Umberto Eco’s well-known definition was trotted out, there were variations on the theme of longevity plus meaning and there was even a view that a classic is whatever Penguin tells us is a classic –not a view I necessarily subscribe to but an interesting take on the issue.  Amongst the views were:

’Classic’ means a novel of which we have formed a never-changing opinion which combines feelings of love for its flesh-and-blood and being moved by its greatness; when I pick it up I wan to read it now no matter how often I have already done so.” – Frank Delaney

“…they, more than others, appear to have something valid and exciting to say to successive ages and generations.” – André Brink

“My definition of classic………is obstinately rooted in the belief that the best literature is that which you carry in your heart from the moment you read it to the moment you die.” – Patrick Jansson-Smith

“A novel must stand the test of time and still be read enthusiastically generations after it was written to qualify for the dubious distinction of “classic”.  That is the only objective measurement: longevity.  Everything else is subjective” – John Humphrys

There were a heartening number of contributors who simply refused to accept a distinction between classic and non-classic, preferring to divide the world into great books, good books and bad books.  There were others who pointed out the fallacy of believing that everything ever written by a “classic” author must therefore be a classic book – surely even the likes of Dickens and Austen had an off-day.

If I had to try and boil down every contributor’s ideas to try and distill a common idea, it would be that a classic is a book that has longevity, that has messages or themes that are appealing to many different generations and that has an interesting plot.  There’s nothing revolutionary there and, indeed, it is pretty misleading to try and reduce 47 different views to a couple of bare-bones lines but there we go.

The best illustration of the difficulty in defining a classic and of the pretentiousness of those academic and artistic types who declaim magisterially that there is “a Canon” (one can almost hear the capital letter) is in the lists of essential classics and "classics that never were" that the contributors submitted.  Here is a list of a few of the books that were listed as essential classics for the 21st Century:

Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
Don Quixote – Cervantes
The Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
Howard’s End – E.M. Forster
The Ambassadors – Henry James
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
Ulysses – James Joyce

And now, a list of some of the books that were cited by contributors as books that should never have been considered to be classics:

Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
Don Quixote – Cervantes
The Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
Howard’s End – E.M. Forster
The Ambassadors – Henry James
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
Ulysses – James Joyce

Notice anything peculiar about the lists?  Yes, you got it.  They are absolutely identical.  Now, admittedly, this is not scientific and there are all sorts of counter-arguments to be made about why many of the books nominated by contributors ended up in both sections but I think it is an amusing illustration of the true subjectivity at the heart of this issue and also a refutation of the concept of The Canon of literature.  One curiosity did emerge, though.  There was widespread agreement that Sir Walter Scott’s work was pretty awful and should never, ever have been called “classic”.

Having read The Test of Time, I am still no closer to coming up with my final position on what constitutes a classic but it has given me much food for thought.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Want to Watch at the Cinema

I haven’t posted for a little while now, due to life getting in the way of writing and also me suffering from a strange kind of lethargy, a little like a soggy dark cloud sitting over my head, threatening to rain.  Nothing serious, I’m just a bit full of gloom at the moment.  I’m pretty much forcing myself to do a Top Ten Tuesday (as brought to you by the Broke and the Bookish) in the hope that it might help drag me out of this state and find my mojo again.

This week’s theme is the top ten books we’d like to see made into movies.  This is a problem and definitely not guaranteed to be an easy post to get me going again.  You see, as I guess will be the case for a lot of you, I’m not a big fan of movies of books.  In general, they are disappointing and, at worst, they are downright disgraceful.  It’s far easier to think of poor adaptations than good adaptations.  I’m almost tempted to list ten books I didn’t enjoy, on the grounds that I’d rather rubbish films were made of bad books than of books I like!  That wouldn’t really be in the spirit of things though so I will play the game by the rules like a good boy.  I’ve tried to avoid listing books that have already been films or TV programmes but I don’t hold out any sort of warranty that I have got this right and please also bear in mind that my taste in movies runs to the mindless and easy – I’m happy to exercise my mind in the written page but not so much at the cinema, where I’m more likely to be exercising my wits to come up with a good reason for Mrs Falaise to allow me to stuff my face with junk food and mega cups of fizzy pop.

Before we start, however, I would like to bring my peculiar burst of generosity to the attention of those of you who do not read this blog regularly.  I am having a little giveaway, as detailed in an earlier post.  To find out more, click here and read until the end!

So, my top ten books I’d like to see made into movies:

1.         The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.  It’s got Dracula.  It’s got historical quests.  It’s got libraries and exotic locations.  It’s got a sufficient patina of literacy that you don’t have to make excuses for reading it but it’s really a good old fashioned yarn.  And there’s sufficient cuttable fat to make the movie adaptation work.

2.         Harlot’s Ghost by Norman Mailer.  This is the story of a junior CIA officer, the son of one of the CIA’s founding fathers, and his coming of age as a young officer during the ‘50s and ‘60s.  It’s a huge and sweeping novel that would require some serious work for the screen but it would be a big film.

3.         The Matarese Circle by Robert Ludlum. I can’t actually believe that this hasn’t been made into a film yet.  An American agent and a KGB agent are sworn enemies but are forced to join forces when both are framed for murder by a secretive conspiracy emanating from Italy and threatening to take over the world.  It is one of my favourite trash thrillers and is eminently big screen-worthy.  Apparently, it has ben optioned by MGM and is scheduled for release next year, with Denzel Washington and, allegedly, Tom Cruise as the stars.  Now, where’s my popcorn and Diet Coke?

4.         The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde.  Actually, I think Fforde’s books are fundamentally unfilmable but there would be something fascinatingly car crash-like about an attempt to do his alternative Britain and Bookworld justice.

5.         The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G.P. Dahlquist.  I’ve posted about this here in the past but I think that a bit of judicious editing could turn this into a fun flick.  Albeit with an 18 rating!

6.         Kraken by China Mieville.  Set in an alternative London, filled with warring cults, magic, new gods and mysterious prophets, a giant squid is stolen from the Natural History Museum and its curator, Billy Harrow, must track it down.  Why?  Because it is just possible that it is actually a god and someone wants to use it to end the world.  Yeah.

7.         Offside by Manuel Vazquez Montalban.  One of the great Pepe Carvalho stories, this one revolves around the signing of Jack Mortimer, European Footballer of the Year, by FC Barcelona.  All of Montalban’s books are enjoyable but there are very few decent films involving football so I’d like to se this one done properly, with lots of sexy shots of Barcelona, one of my favourite cities, and of the Camp Nou, one of the great stadia.

8.         The Red Rose Crew by Daniel Boyne.  I was a (poor) rower at university, love the sport and am in awe of the dedication of international class oarsmen and women.  I chose this, the inspirational story of the 1975 US Women’s eight World silver medal crew, over David Halberstam’s the Last Amateurs and Blood over Water by David and James Livingston because of the wider struggles the crew had against public indifference as well as their own sporting struggles against the might of the Eastern Bloc.  This would be real feelgood, tear-jerking stuff and it’s an emotionally draining read.  The Livingston book would also work, being the story of two brothers rowing in the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, one of the iconic sporting events, but on opposing crews.  It’s a wonderful portrait of sibling rivalry and the effects of competition on family relations.

9.         The Plot against America by Philip Roth.  This is a counter-factual history of America between 1940 and 1942.  It shows an America in which Charles Lindbergh defeats Roosevelt in the 1940 Presidential election and reaches agreement with Hitler to maintain US neutrality.  Slowly but surely, anti-semitism starts to creep into American life and Jewish Americans are encouraged, sometimes by force, to move from the East Coast into the rural mid-West.  It’s a fascinating study of the fragility of democracy.  I think this would make a real Oscar contender.

10.       The Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling.  I can’t believe no-one has thought about making these into films.  Oh, they have?  Really?  Well I never!