About reading the classics

I was asked if young people still read classics. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov. I told you no. It's rare if anyone reads. The questioner was surprised and indignant. Where is this world going? I tried to explain that the world has changed. Nowadays, there are a lot of good books that young people can relate to and that deal with topics that naturally interest them. Books that tell about the world they live in and that is familiar to them. The only reading options are no longer wars and peaces and Iris rukas and crimes and punishments. Stories about orphanhood, the smell of chimneys and a boy who grew up in the jungle may no longer be very relevant to a young reader.

The questioner did not understand my point of view at all and resented the lack of civility of the youth. Here's how it goes. Classics are born over time, each generation has its own. War and peace those who read it recently would surely have resented it The old man and the sea - novel. Too thin, too dense text, too simple plot. Catcher in the Rye fell into the clutches of censorship in America, Hannu Salama even went to court in Finland Midsummer dances because of. The previous generation has never understood in advance which of the younger generation's books will later gain classic status.

Does a literature lover have to read classics? Do you hear? War and peace reading for general education? Crime and punishment I have read and very much identified with Chekhov's short story My life: the story of a countryman, but War and peace got stuck in the middle of the second part a quarter of a century ago. All good books, but I didn't understand how Raskolnikov was such an incompetent jerk that he spent 694 pages grinding the same guilt. And obviously War and peace despite its goodness, it was so slow that it was left unfinished.

We middle-aged people have, or at least had, at least a theoretical contact with the agrarian society that most of the classics from our parents' time tell about. Today's young people no longer have this touch surface. People born in the 2000st century have grown up in a completely different world than today's middle-aged people. That's why it's pointless to tell young people the books that made an impression on us in their time. It's not the most important thing in terms of culture to force yourself to read the classics, the most important thing is to read interesting books, so that you "learn" to read and get to know the beauty of reading.

In Jukka Parkkinen's book Suvi Kino's seven uncles one of Suvi's doctoral students says that he received his master's papers Illustrated classics thanks to. Illustrated classics series included Robinson Crusoe ja Uncle Tuomo's hut like classic books in comic form. You can get a literate reputation if you read Pierre Bayard's book How to talk about books you haven't read, Wikipedia has a plot summary of the classic as well as the classic.

It's good to know what the canonized classics are about and what their significance is in literary history, but you don't have to read them if you don't want to. Of course, I hope that young people would read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and Wild West Kat, but it is not necessary. Yes, it is possible to stick to those classics even as an adult, if reading remains a permanent hobby or a way of life. And hopefully, thanks to interesting, contemporary books for young adults, it will stay.

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