What Makes A Book A Classic . . . Really!?

Above The Timberline

by Wayne Mergler

ANCHORAGE, AK—(Weekly Hubris)—9/13/10—Recently, while browsing in a bookstore, I overheard two older women conversing about their reading habits.

“I am still trying to read The Last of the Mohicans,” one lamented. “I just cannot read that book, though I try and try. I know it is one of the great classics of literature but I just can’t get into it. I must be stupid or something.”

I felt at once that this was a woman in need of a hug, though I refrained from carrying out my impulse. This poor lady certainly need not feel stupid, or even apologetic, for not finding The Last of the Mohicans to her taste. And she surely needs to be told that Mohicans, while certainly a famous book and perhaps even an important book in the study of American literature, is not and never has been a great book. Don’t misunderstand me. I like The Last of the Mohicans. It was a boyhood favorite of mine and was, in fact, my father’s all-time favorite book. But that doesn’t make it great literature, though it is indisputably a classic.

What then, you might rightly ask, is a classic?

A classic is a book that is very famous, so famous that it has survived and is still read long after its author and the world it describes have gone. A book achieves that kind of fame for many diverse reasons.

First and foremost, indeed, the best reason for a book to become a classic is that it truly is a great book. This means it is a masterpiece of artistic achievement, an important exploration of the human condition, a book so universal in its appeal that it will be appreciated by people of all cultures in all times. Examples of these are few—War and Peace, Middlemarch, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, The Brothers Karamazov—and truly deserve their lofty stature.

The second reason a book might become a classic is that, in its day, it was so enormously popular that it has remained so in the public imagination even generations later, when changing styles and tastes and fads would ordinarily have left it forgotten. Some examples of these might be Ivanhoe, The Scottish Chiefs, and Lorna Doone.

A third reason a book becomes a classic is because it was a work of controversy when it first appeared, a book which perhaps changed society’s thinking, which led to social change or war or revolution. It may not have been great at all, but it touched a nerve somewhere in its readers. Perhaps its impact is still felt today. Examples would be Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Les Miserables, The Stranger, and Germinal. Probably even Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses will forever be remembered as that book which caused so much controversy and led to a death contract for its author. People who try to stamp out or suppress books they don’t like almost always assure the immortality of those books.

A final reason why a book becomes a classic is because it is a first of its kind, something new and wholly original which led to other (and maybe sometimes greater) works. The Last of the Mohicans falls into this category because it is one of the earliest American novels (1820) and because it created the American Myth of the frontiersman reared by Indians, the Noble Savage driven back by progressive European thinking, which is still a major theme of American fiction writers. In a study of the development of the American novel, The Last of the Mohicans is a very important book.

A very small number books, I suppose—Don Quixote comes to mind—do all of the above things. And perhaps those two ladies in the bookstore should save their guilt for that handful of masterpieces that are truly indispensable. Certainly, The Last of the Mohicans is a wonderful read for some, but I suspect that there are many, like the lady in the store, for whom it simply would be a chore and a bore.

That’s OK. Life is too short. There are too many books out there which would please and delight and enchant. Grab one of those and run with it.