Sunday 3 June 2018

Q: "What is a classic book?"


Writer Italo Calvino had fourteen answers to what makes a book a classic. These are my favourites:

  • The classics are books that exercise a particular influence, both when they imprint themselves on our imagination as unforgettable, and when they hide in the layers of memory disguised as the individual's ... unconscious.
  • A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.
  • Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them.
  • A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe...
  • 'Your' classic is a book to which you cannot remain indifferent, and which helps you define yourself in relation or even in opposition to it.
What are some of your classics? (Regular readers will already know many of mine!]

[Hat tip Alberto Mingardi writing about one of his (and my) classics, Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress]
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13 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Lagoon Joseph Conrad

Anonymous said...

The Forgotten Soldier - Guy Sager.

3:16

Mark Wahlberg said...

Robinson Crusoe-Daniel Defoe.

paul scott said...

So not Barry Crump, A good keen man, then

Euan said...

Darkness At Noon - Koestler
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Hemmingway
Huckleberry Finn - Twain

Peter Cresswell said...

Only read three of his so far, and enjoyed them all. I might try this one next.

Peter Cresswell said...

Didn't know this one. I'll take a look.

Peter Cresswell said...

A great list! They're all on mine, too.

Peter Cresswell said...

Once read, always remembered.

Peter Cresswell said...

More talked about than read, I fear.

Craig said...

Lolita - Nabokov
Light Years - Salter
Brideshead Revisited - Waugh
The Remains of the Day - Ishiguro
The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
The Magic Mountain - Mann

Peter Cresswell said...

Brideshead and Gatsby are good reading. Just trying Salter's 'All That Is,' which seems promising. But I never got the appeal of Nabokov, particularly that one. Can you explain it?

Faversham said...

"Sailing Alone Around The World" Joshua Slocum
"Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman? " Richard Feynman
"The Fountainhead" Ayn Rand
"Islands In The Stream" Ernest Hemingway.
"The Short Stories Of Saki" HH Munro
"On The Road" Jack Keroauc
The majority of Christopher Hitchens' later works
...and there's more.

Chris Robertson.