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. Anyone who has recently read War and Peace would certainly have disliked the novel Old Man and the Sea. Too thin, too dense text, too simple plot. The Catcher in the Rye Field was censored in America, Hannu Salama was even sued in Finland because of his midsummer dances. 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? Does reading War and Peace belong to general education? I have read Crime and Punishment and I strongly identified with Chekhov's short story Elämäni : the story of a peasant, 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 apparently War and Peace, despite its goodness, 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 Kinonsen's seven uncles, one of Suvi's doctoral aunts says that she got her master's papers thanks to the Illustrated Classics. The Illustrated Classics series included classic books like Robinson Crusoe and Uncle Tuo's Cabin in cartoon form. You can get a literate reputation if you read Pierre Bayard's book How to talk about books you haven't read, on Wikipedia you can find a plot summary of a classic like a 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 read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and Kat of the Wild West, 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.

mika. kahkonenimatra.fi (mika[dot]kahkonen[at]imatra[dot]fi)
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