<p>Sure there are exceptions (To kill a Mockingbird and others) but most “classics” I read utilize obscure words, long and convoluted sentences, and bizarre word arrangements that confuse more than enlighten. Does anyone know why it seems a criteria for a classic is to make a layman suffer through it?</p>
<p>In the periods when most “classics” were written, laymen didn’t write books. It wasn’t until the (later) 20th century that the general Western populace had enough leisure time for reading, writing, or general education. To Kill a Mockingbird was written after the rise of the middle class, after the triumph of the modern industrial revolution.</p>
<p>In consequence, anyone who had the time indoors (not in fields, factories, washingrooms or kitchens), the proper materials (paper, ink, pens, a desk to write on), the ability to read/write, and the connections to have their works published was probably a higher-class snob. They liked their higher-class status, in most cases. They showed it off with erudition. They might not have purposely excluded lay people in this manner, but that’s the way it worked out.</p>
<p>Hence, we must read Hawthorne, Dickens, Eliot, Austen, Thackeray, and heaven knows who all else who grew up in a privileged environment. The criteria is that it exists from previous times, and in those times these sorts of people wrote books.</p>
<p>You might also mention the lack of grammatical standards long, long ago. This is also true of punctuation (jane austen, for example). If you learn the history of the English language, you will partially answer your question.</p>
<p>Im guessing, but it may have been that the raison detre of many of our greatest writers did not conform to the didactic and noble goal of enlightening high school and college lit students.
It may even be that they, instead, saw what they didwritingin terms far more suggestive of the subtle principles drawn upon by painters and played upon by musicians… </p>
<p>…just a thought.</p>
<p>and To Kill a Mockingbird is written for high school and college students? Sorry that last post doesn’t make any sense because that is not a difference between ‘heavy handed prose’ novels and readable ones.</p>
<p>Art? Irony? who are they written for?</p>
<p>No work of “art” that I am aware of was ever written for any “students”…not even a middling work of art like “To Kill a Mockingbird”.</p>
<p>However, there are those that come with explanatory pictures and illustrations for those who are interested in something a little-less heavy handed; if you wait long enough some of them will even become plot devices on Bugs Bunny ;)</p>
<p>there is as much delight obtainable
from the peculiar arrangement of
words as is from the meaning they convey</p>
<p>great post, tkm. there were some good points in there, thought im not sure i believe that the upper classes would show off status in writing a novel that takes a creative mind and a lot of hard work. i believe the writing of novels by the upper classes was more of a culture thing. it must be related to leisure of course, but that doesn’t mean they are all haughty or erudite on purpose, as in, considerably wordier than they are in conversation. i dont think they showed off their high status with writing, in fact i dont think most of them would have had that thought at all in their writing. what would they even think, “oh man those stupid peasants/factory workers, i am going to use so many words that they will never understand, idiots…” they were just more educated because they had the means of being educated, not so much paper, ink, and pens, but time and a tutor. but anyway i remember watching a documentary about TR out in the midwest, and he was trying to mingle with the rough midwestern cowboys, but it was documented that when he was trying to lead the cattle in a certain direction, and he was screaming, “Hasten forth! Hasten forth! Quickly!” this doesn’t prove anything, but he obviously wasn’t trying show the cowboys how he was different, or the cattle how he was upper-class. </p>
<p>i think it is as if 100 years from now, people called our obscure and hard to read.</p>
<p>I think that oversimplification is one of the pitfalls of modern writing, despite being a worthy comprimise, and prefer the classical prose, even if it only substantiates thinking for the sake of thinking.</p>
<p>yeah, charles darwin’s origin of species surprisingly has awesome prose :)</p>
<p>Of course it was, he was raised on the English of the King James Bibile ;)</p>
<p>My guess is that it was the style at the time, to have long and elaborate prose. One can compare it to the Baroque movement in art. Then in the 20th century, naturally, there was a reaction to the ornate style, and thus you have Hemingway and Joyce, whose vocabularies are very sparse and to-the-point.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Until he makes up 100 letter words and what not.</p>
<p>
Or the popular transition from progressive rock to punk rock (lousy punk rock!!!)</p>
<p>“thus you have Hemingway and Joyce”…</p>
<p>…and his Finnegan’s Wake; Ezra Pound’s Cantos; Elliot’s Prufrock and Wasteland and the bulk of Stevens and Borges…“whose vocabularies are very sparse and to-the-point.”</p>
<p>Wait a minute uh-oh!</p>
<p>Okay, Joyce = bad example. But it’s true that Modernism’s esoteric, style is very much different from the exaggerated mannerisms of its precessor: English Victorian writings.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s “criterion” for the singular. Thank you latin, the source or cause of much of the obscure (and not so obscure) words.</p>
<p>As to the classics, they are what they are. Most will probably grow on you with further reading, but most people dislike a book or an author or a style or a motif for no apparently visible reason.</p>
<p>There is a very clear reason. It’s because said books or authors suck.</p>
<p>Or something like that.</p>