I’m curious. If some of Dickens and Stevenson are considered classics of the nineteenth century, what should be considered classics of the twentieth century? If “Fahrenheit 451” is a twentieth century classic, what might some of the others be? Would “Dandelion Wine” be included? “The Old Man and the Sea”?

Yes, I'd say! I see a classic as a major work that withstands the test of time, as well as so many cultural changes. The message in the story (or song, poem, movie) can be experienced with the same enthusiam as was realized in the earlier years of the work's existence. Though the reader, listener, viewer may be in a different time and within a far different world, the affects of the piece are still dynamic and undeniable for young and old alike.

I still enjoy teaching The Odyssey of Homer. It is a journey back in time, as is Beowulf. On the open seas with only mystery and danger awaiting over the next wave or upon the next landfall, who can help but remember the images? Reading such works aloud captivates all serious listeners. Taped books are a frequent companion while driving just for this reason.

F451, DW, MC, so many RB s.s. make the list -- but then, I'm partial!

Some official list came out in 1999 but I don't know who did it or where to find it.

Thanks, dandelion, I’m aware of such lists but wouldn’t you agree that no two groups will come up with the same results. I wouldn’t be surprised but that we here would come up with something a little different. For instance, should novellas be included? And if so, would Stephen King’s “The Body” be on a list, or does the language it contains disqualify it. Would someone like E. B. White be considered?

quote:

Originally posted by fjp451:
Yes, I'd say! I see a classic as a major work that withstands the test of time, as well as so many cultural changes. The message in the story (or song, poem, movie) can be experienced with the same enthusiam as was realized in the earlier years of the work's existence. Though the reader, listener, viewer may be in a different time and within a far different world, the affects of the piece are still dynamic and undeniable for young and old alike.

I still enjoy teaching The Odyssey of Homer. It is a journey back in time, as is Beowulf. On the open seas with only mystery and danger awaiting over the next wave or upon the next landfall, who can help but remember the images? Reading such works aloud captivates all serious listeners. Taped books are a frequent companion while driving just for this reason.

F451, DW, MC, so many RB s.s. make the list -- but then, I'm partial!

fjp--

I like your classic ideas.

• Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence.
• The poems of William Butler Yeats.
• Marcel Proust, A Remembrance of Things Past.
• The poems of Robert Frost.
• Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain.
• E.M. Forster, Passage to India.
• James Joyce, Ulysses.
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves.
• Franz Kafka, The Trial, The Castle.
• D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love.
• Tanizaki Junichiro, The Makioka Sisters.
• Eugene O'Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night.
• The poems of T.S. Eliot.
• Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
• William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury.
• The short stories of Ernest Hemingway.
• Kwabata Yasunari, Beauty and Sadness.
• Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Dreamtigers.
• Valdimir Nabokov, Lolita, Pale Fire, Speak, Memory.
• George Orwell, Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Burmese Days.
• R.K. Narayan, The English Teacher, The Vendor of Sweets.
• Samuel Beckett, Endgame, Waiting for Godot, Krapp's Last Tape.
• The poems of W.H. Auden.
• Albert Camus, The Plague, The Stranger.
• Saul Bellow, Herzog, The Adventures of Augie March, Humboldt's Gift.
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle, The Cancer Ward.
• Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
• Mishima Yukio, Confessions of a Mask, The Temple of the Golden Pavlion.
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
• Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart.

Geez, I've read a big whopping three, all three thirty years ago for a school into "heavy" books. Seen a few of the flicks and read other works by some of the authors, though.

Although I hadn’t thought it completely through when I asked the question, I’ve come up with a list (and decided to limit it to ten) of what I think might be called twentieth century classics. And I’m using what I’d like to call “fjp451’s rule”:

“The Grapes of Wrath”
“The Old Man And The Sea”
“To Kill A Mockingbird”
“A Tree Grows In Brooklyn”*
“Fahrenheit 451”
“Dandelion Wine”
“Lonesome Dove”
“Goodbye Mr. Chips”
“Centennial”
“Of Mice And Men”

I wanted to include “Shane” but what to remove?

That’s today’s list of ten. Tomorrow’s might be different.

* Brooklyn was misspelled as Brookline.

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Please, please don't forget Curious George and Where the Wild Things Are. (Let the wild rumpous begin!) Just joking Chapter 31. That is a good list for classics of our time. I beleive all will stand the test of time. I too liked fjp451's description of what a classic is, and I fully agree. Here's my list:

Dandelion Wine
Fahrenheit 451
Stranger in a Strange Land
Call of the Wild
Raintree County
The Winds of War
Gone with the Wind
East of Eden
On the Road
The Hobbitt

As an afterthought, I just want to say I loved reading Shane in school and later, and I also enjoyed Lonesome Dove as well. Both the movie and book, but book way more. Love spaghetti westerns too.

Subject to change as well.

Chapter 31, although you have the tree growing a bit too far north, that's more like my kind of list. Five I've actually read, and five which have at least been on my To Be Read list at one time or another! (Ditto your list, Robot Lincoln. Five read, and at least some of the other five attempted.)

Error noted and corrected. Thanks.

Hey, don't feel bad, dandelion; three is looking pretty good to me! While I've sampled about a dozen of those authors on Walloon's list, I've only read one of those works in their entirety- (Chinua Achabe, Things Fall Apart) and that only a week or two ago! Just took a test on it yesterday, too... uhhh... my head still hurts.

Okay, don't know for sure what or who would be on a definitive list were I to narrow it down to that, but I know I would like to include C.S. Lewis, John Bunyan (his overt religion tends to keep people from reading him and appreciating him as one of the best English prose stylists ever, I think-- I very rarely see him on lists of great books), Frank Herbert, Philip K. Dick, Samuel Butler, George Bernard Shaw, Voltaire, and Oscar Wilde.

(Oh, yeah! and Jame Thurber. He may not deal with such serious themes as most great authors, but he is a massively good wordsmith and I am sure he will continue to be read for years and years to come, thus fullfilling one definition of a classic.)

I just realized that I didn't include anything by Bradbury. But that's a given, right?

Elementary, my dear Mycroft.

There's a movie out about making a movie of "Tristram Shandy" where the joke is no one in the movie has read it. Has anyone here?

Maybe I got the phrase slightly wrong, but Ray Bradbury was called "the ultimate gateway drug" to kids reading the classics, or, if not that exactly, something very similar. Anyone remember the source?

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