These overrated literary classics have had more than enough time in the sun. It’s time to spend our time with some others!
Clickbait. The writer is comparing historically-important books that are taught in literature classes to more modern books that can be read for fun.
Sure, we all read stuff for fun, that doesn’t mean the books studied in literature classes are overrated.
Man this is terrible. These works aren’t “overrated”, they stood the rest of time for a reason, and will continue to be influential for decades or centuries to come.
Also anyone that discounts Lolita or Huck Finn for pedophilia and racism respectively, has the reading comprehension of a wet sock, and nobody should take them seriously.
I was oblivious to the racist passages in Huckleberry Finn growing up, but I can definitely concur now that it, too, is hopelessly dated and better left in the past. Not to mention that it’s not a very constructive book to read about the concepts of childhood or boyhood. Coupled together with the casual racism, it’s probably best to choose something else other than Huckleberry Finn.
I’m torn on this.
On the one hand, I don’t want to force nonwhite students to read and analyze those stories that are entrenched in and dependent upon the pain, injustice, and deliberate mass malice that is American chattel slavery.
On the other hand, I think we lose something by not looking it in the eye and through the eyes of contemporaries to see how normal it was, and to use that as a springboard to examine the ways we view and wrestle with ethical issues of today. There is a value to remembering that, at every period, people oppose and reject elements of their societies, as Twain did over the course of his life.
As an aside, here is a link to a blog post that contrasts Huck’s decision not to turn in escaped slave Jim as an act of grace to the Left Behind characters’ unerringly selfish acts, written by one of the few evangelical Christians I can respect (and as a staunch atheist that means a lot) which has had an impact upon how I view the story of Huckleberry Finn.
I’m left-leaning, and I’m sure the right would call me “woke,” but I agree that we shouldn’t change or forget dated books. It’s for a few reasons, but primarily because it’s important to remember historical figures as they were, not who we want them to be. Henry Ford was a Nazi sympathizer. Dahl was anti-Semetic. Wilson actively segregated the federal government. Those things should be confronted. Whitewashing them doesn’t help.
Bah. This is just a piece of clickbait nonsense, or somebody trying to be edgy. I’m actually mildly offended by their “review” of “On the Road”. Just makes me think that they probably haven’t ever read anything other than somebody elses review of it.
The People We Keep is really good though, I’m in the midst of reading it.
