# Classic Books Which Live Up To Their Reputation **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [December 19, 2022, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763 "2022-12-19T02:44:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/81 "2022-12-20T15:02:02Z")
Honestly, I’m not sure I remember there being any female characters in Foundation (the first book, that is, as opposed to any of the sequels or the series as a whole). But while all of the characters were men, it was only relevant that they were men in the sense that they were the sort of person who’d hold political office, or run a trading company, or the like. At the time it was written, the default assumption was that all such people would be men, and so for that audience, it would have significantly changed the book for half of them to be women. But in a modern adaptation, for an audience who expects both genders in those sorts of roles, you could seamlessly change character genders. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/82 "2022-12-20T15:09:31Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > But in a modern adaptation, for an audience who expects both genders in those sorts of roles, you could seamlessly change character genders. Which is what Apple TV did. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/83 "2022-12-20T15:17:42Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Treasure Island has Long John Silver as one of the all-time great villains. Robert Louis Stevenson writes him masterfully. As a reader you’re just as seduced by his charms as the protagonist, young Jim Hawkins. Even after you see Silver commit treacherous murder and realize how evil he is, he eventually comes back around–and damned if you’re not seduced by him again. It’s a book well worth reading. And RLS doesn’t screw around in this book. Unlike a lot of other classics, Stevenson moves the plot along at a pretty brisk pace and doesn’t take us on many tangents. Since it was written for children, I can only assume the tight pacing was for their benefit. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47774/32.png) [@epbrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/84 "2022-12-20T15:34:39Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > The Count of Monte Cristo has never been done justice by a movie. Say _what_?! Have you not seen the Jim Cavaziel/Guy Pearce version? ---
**Author:** ![janis\_and\_c0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/janis_and_c0/32/21_2.png) [@janis\_and\_c0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/janis_and_c0)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/85 "2022-12-20T15:45:01Z")
Another J. Eyre fan here. I came in to say this one… I also will defend Watership Down as a capital C Classic. Battle Cry (Uris) and The Good Earth are also favorites and I would put A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in that category also. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/86 "2022-12-20T16:02:25Z")
> [@epbrown](#): > > Say _what_?! Have you not seen the Jim Cavaziel/Guy Pearce version? That’s the one I specifically had in mind when I said it hadn’t been done justice. That movie was great popcorn and soda–but the novel is so much more than that. If the novel was _Moby Dick_, that movie was Elmer Fudd singing “Kill de White Whale.” ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/87 "2022-12-20T16:09:17Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > In other words they’re something I’d read for fun as opposed to something I’d read because it was assigned by my high school English teacher. I understand and kind of agree, but it’s worth remembering that many (though not all) of the classics _were_ originally something that lots of people read for fun. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/88 "2022-12-20T16:43:14Z")
If standing on the shoulders of giants were to be used about Russian literature then the giant would be Nokolai Gogol. Born Ukrainian, he turned into a lover of Tsarist Russia and the Orthodox church. His views on Jews were ~~problematic~~ anti-semitic, to say the least, not unusual in the early 19th century. For all his faults as a human, as seen from our perspective, he really was an amazing writer. Forget everything you know about classic Russian literature: 3" thick books, with a two page cast of characters that you constantly have to check back on to remember who is who. Gogol is surprisingly easy to read, very funny for fans of the absurd. Almost in the same vein as Monty Python or Doulas Adams. [The Nose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nose_(Gogol_short_story)) is about a man who wakes up one day to find that his nose has taken its leave, to wander around and make a life of its own. If you can find a collection of his St. Petersburg short stories (which should include The Coat), it’s certainly worth your time. > **[Nikolai Gogol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Gogol)** > > Petersburg Tales \[fr\] (1833–1842) > Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol\[a\] (1 April \[O.S. 20 March\] 1809 – 4 March \[O.S. 21 February\] 1852) was a Russian novelist, short story writer and playwright of Ukrainian origin. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/89 "2022-12-20T21:51:12Z")
> [@Love\_Rhombus](#): > > I don’t know what kind of reputation it has in general. Still, I will defend and talk up Watership Down as a beautiful and emotionally draining literary classic until I stop running. Watership Down is definitely a beautifully written book and gripping adventure story. Its reputation is somewhat tarnished nowadays by its distortion of its purported “naturalism” about rabbit behavior in the service of a typically sexist perspective, although its fantasy elements are brilliantly imagined. As Ursula K. Le Guin remarked in her essay collection Cheek by Jowl, > [@](#): > > Rabbits are the protagonists of this strong, well-written novel. Power in the rabbits’ world belongs above all to humans and their terrible machines […] This seems perfectly realistic, sound rabbit psychology and sets the scene for a drama of tragedy and hope. The rabbits speak “Lapine” and can communicate with other animals; they have poetry and a kind of religion, but they don’t wear clothes, build houses, etc.—they are wild rabbits, living like wild rabbits. Or are they? > > The author cites R.M. Lockley’s authoritative observational study The Private Life of the Rabbit several times and is insistent upon Lockley as the source […] He departs radically from Lockley and actual rabbit social behavior, however, in giving the warrens an aggressive hierarchic structure […] all male. Doe rabbits, in the book, are mindless breeding slaves. Their only function is to dig holes, provide sex, bear litters, and raise the kittens. The buck rabbits do all the thinking, planning, and acting and are in unquestioned control of the females at all times […] > > […] Adams shows wild rabbit society as a militaristic male hierarchy, in the teeth of Lockley’s unequivocal statement that “The doe is the centre of the rabbit community, a matriarchy,” and his descriptions of a wild rabbit warren as an “expanded population scattered around the queen or matriarch at the heart of the community.” > > It is quite extraordinary to cite a book as the source of one’s information and then systematically misrepresent that information. […] I might try to swallow the egregious sexism of the book in order to appreciate its virtues; but I won’t, because Adams cheated […] he misrepresented Lockley’s actual description of rabbit behavior. I am more willing than I was at one point to give Adams a partial pass on his male-supremacist fake-rabbit pseudozoology, because I think any late 20th-century fiction writer trying to present an imaginative fantasy of rabbits being brave, strong, determined, or with similar conventionally “masculine” virtues would have a hell of a tough row to hoe. “Rabbit” has long been shorthand for a timid, weak, cowardly man, especially one under the thumb of a domineering woman. I bet that on some, possibly subconscious, level, Adams simply took it for granted that it would be impossible to make actual male rabbits seem to his readers like heroic or even sympathetic characters if he portrayed them in a matriarchal, or even significantly gender-egalitarian, social structure. Still a gorgeous book, though, and I think “classic” is a valid description. I would admittedly like to see this fictional Lapine universe through a less patriarchal lens, but [Adams’ own sequel Tales from Watership Down didn’t really manage to achieve it,](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357427583_The_Second_Sex_in_Tales_from_Watership_Down_1996_by_Richard_Adams_An_Ecofeminist_Appraisal) and I don’t think any other author could believably capture his vision of that world. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/90 "2022-12-20T22:15:44Z")
That is really fascinating! I’d be lying if I said it didn’t change my view of the book, but I thank you for it. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/91 "2022-12-20T22:29:38Z")
No problem! This episode of Kimstu Ruins Everything has been brought to you by the endless task of compromise with grim reality. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/92 "2022-12-20T22:41:45Z")
Is “Dracula” considered a classic? Because I’ve recently read it, and it was good. (Counterpoint: Is “Brave New World” considered a classic? Because I’ve recently read that one, too, and it sucked to high heaven.) ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/93 "2022-12-20T23:03:19Z")
_War and Peace_ has one flaw. Every now and then, Tolstoy will interrupt the narrative, and spend a couple of chapters pontificating on history, or politics, or economics, or religion, or the Meaning of Life. Then he will resume the narrative of Pierre and Andrei and Natasha, which is a fun soap opera. The “philosophy” chapters are a good cure for insomnia. But if you can force yourself through those, the “narrative” chapters are marvelous. Dante’s _Inferno_ is good, provided you get an edition with lots of footnotes, to explain who are all these popes and politicians he keeps ranting about. I like John Ciardi’s translation. I would recommend reading the entire _Divine Comedy_, but most people only want _Inferno._ I read _Moby Dick_ in high school, and found it utterly boring. A few years later, I bought a copy on a whim, and read it cover-to-cover. If you are reading it at your own pace, without a school deadline breathing down the back of your neck, it is a fun book. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/94 "2022-12-20T23:11:41Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Watership Down is definitely a beautifully written book and gripping adventure story. Its reputation is somewhat tarnished nowadays by its distortion of its purported “naturalism” about rabbit behavior in the service of a typically sexist perspective, although its fantasy elements are brilliantly imagined. As Ursula K. Le Guin remarked in her essay collection Cheek by Jowl, Ha! _Watership Down_ was the last bedtime read-aloud I did with my older daughter (she turned 13, and had outgrown the lovely tradition). I was so excited to read the book with her, and had forgotten how extreme the sexism was. (“Oh, I hadn’t forgotten,” my wife said, which is a pretty good example of how privilege works). We had a lot of conversations about it, and about how the book could be beautiful and also really problematic, similar to the conversations we had about _Lord of the Rings_. I excused Adams somewhat because he was extrapolating from real-world rabbit dynamics. Le Guin once again schools me, and I’ll have to let my daughter know that Adams doesn’t even have that excuse. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/95 "2022-12-20T23:27:35Z")
Lolita, for me, belongs on that list, but six is a short list, so who knows. Infinite Jest, definitely, and it’s on there. Moby Dick – I dunno. I did it – just can’t drudge through Melville’s excruciatingly detailed prose. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/96 "2022-12-20T23:42:22Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > **All Quiet on the Western Front**. Very readable and still very relatable. Essential reading for any boy coming of age. This is one that did influence my thinking. It’s hard to see joining an army voluntarily after reading that. (Do war movies have the same effect?) I’d put The Good Earth in a somewhat similar category of influencing thought. Extremely different, but I wonder if Trollope’s Barsetshire novels pushed my thinking in a bit of a conservative direction (although Trollope was left of center by standards of his day and time). Some books I very much liked, but didn’t change me. Ivanhoe ranks high there. I need to read Vanity Fair. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2022, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/97 "2022-12-20T23:42:26Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > At the time it was written, the default assumption was that all such people would be men, and so for that audience, it would have significantly changed the book for half of them to be women. But in a modern adaptation, for an audience who expects both genders in those sorts of roles, you could seamlessly change character genders. Asimov published the first Foundation story in 1942, when he was 22. It was the same year he met his wife. He claimed that prior to that he had very, very little experience with women: not just romantically, but in any context, and I think that continued even after he married. Its painfully obvious in his writing that he knew nothingabout women but didn’t feel comfortable just writing them as people. Instead, he didn’t write them at all. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2022, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/98 "2022-12-21T00:09:17Z")
I was shocked by how boring and poorly written Dracula was. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2022, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/99 "2022-12-21T00:26:00Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Honestly, I’m not sure I remember there being any female characters in Foundation (the first book, that is, as opposed to any of the sequels or the series as a whole). But while all of the characters were men, it was only relevant that they were men in the sense that they were the sort of person who’d hold political office, or run a trading company, or the like. At the time it was written, the default assumption was that all such people would be men, and so for that audience, it would have significantly changed the book for half of them to be women. But in a modern adaptation, for an audience who expects both genders in those sorts of roles, you could seamlessly change character genders. That wasn’t “the default assumption”: that was _Asimov’s_ assumption. He was writing about a time far in the future, and if you think that no American in the 1940s could conceive of a world in which women held office, I’m afraid you’ve studied [a different history from what I’ve studied](https://cawp.rutgers.edu/facts/milestones-women-american-politics). But in any case, it goes beyond that. He didn’t just assume that men would hold all positions of formal authority in the future: he also assumed that these were the only folks who would influence society. In 1942, Eleanor Roosevelt had been first lady for almost a decade; no American could claim that women wouldn’t have a role in the halls of power. Asimov could easily have posited a patriarchal future and still included powerful women. He didn’t, and his book doesn’t hold up well. There’s no real reason to defend it. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2022, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763/100 "2022-12-21T00:56:10Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > _War and Peace_ has one flaw. Every now and then, Tolstoy will interrupt the narrative, and spend a couple of chapters pontificating on history, or politics, or economics, or religion, or the Meaning of Life. Then he will resume the narrative of Pierre and Andrei and Natasha, which is a fun soap opera. I did not enjoy War and Peace at all. It did not live up to its reputation in the least. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classic-books-which-live-up-to-their-reputation/976763.md?page=6)