Does a Great Book have to impact society in a dramatic way, like, say, the muckrakers’ books (The Jungle, etc.)?
Or is it more important that it is internationally renowned, like Don Quixote or Lolita?
Other factors?
I guess what I’m getting at is, I’m trying to find the answer to the question of why some works are supposedly more worthy of your time than other books. That is, in high school, I had to read A Separate Peace. I remember thinking, a sad book, but not something I really appreciated reading - why is this so Great? I would still say that today, as I would about other Great Books, like Catcher in the Rye or others.
On the other hand, The Shining, IMHO, was great in that it elicited many different emotions from me, and unless the writing is good enough and it’s really drawn me in and I’m really into the story, I’ll probably lose interest. There are probaby books you love which you feel are underrated, and should be Great, while others feel they can’t possibly compare to Baudelaire or Joyce Carol Oates (another writer of supposedly Great Books who bores me to tears).
Thoughts? (sorry if this is a bit murky - kind of creating this OP on the fly)
Great books are books that stand the test of time. If people can read them years after they are written, and they still seem fresh, then they are great books.
There is no one agreed-upon list of Great Books - sure, some books appear to have stood the test of time, but there are plenty of folks who don’t like them.
There is no one agreed-upon set of criteria as to what makes a Great Book “Great”.
Some books start our being considered great and are expected to endure and be considered Great (Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga was hailed as classic when it came out in the '20s, now it that series of books are largely forgotten); others are poorly received, but later recognized as Great - too many to name, but obvious examples are the Great Gatsby (didn’t sell well when first published), most Faulkner (wasn’t considered Great until the book critic Malcom Cowley revisited Faulkner’s work years later and argued his greatness) or Moby Dick (sold poorly and only recognized as a good 50 years later).
Shorter books tend to have a greater chance of being considered Classics, because they will get picked for school reading lists.
Some criteria that might be considered when deciding if a book is great:
Innovation - written in new style (Hemingway) about new topics (Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, or Lolita). Don Quixote is considered by many to be the Birth of the Modern Novel, so it’s place as an innovative book is pretty secure.
Popularity - crossed over to the main public consciousness - i.e., Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22
Topic Importance - considered to cover an Important Topic in a new or thoughtful way. To Kill a Mockingbird, for example, with racism.
Technical Greatness - very well written - related to innovation but can also just be a well-written book. Many people hailed Franzen’s The Corrections as not being ground-breaking (if anything it was kind of a retro return to older, plot-driven lit) but very well-written.
I could go on, but you get the idea. The Shining is a very well-written genre book - it is a horror story, not lit per se. Therefore, arguably, its topic is not Important. It was popular, not technically great and not innovative. Based on that - it is not a great book. Having said that, King has endured in the public consciousness for so long, that he is gaining more respect - witness his writing in the New Yorker in recent years. So even though he writes “genre” books, people seem to be a little more willing to acknowledge King’s impact on writing during his era and the Shining is considered his most well-written book. Is is Great? Nah. Will it come to be considered a Classic? It may over time…
Just as a personal observation, a book is great for me if every time I reread it I find new and more interesting things about it. {i]Huckleberry Finn*, The Great Gatsby, and Catch-22 fall into this category for me. I’ve read HF at least four times and it was a completely new book each time.
May I recommend to you her Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque, especially if you’re an admirer of The Shining? Great, creepy stuff in there. Some of her gothic short stories (at the risk of breaking into hyperbole) rival Poe, imo.
I think it has more to do with certain literary critics finally recognizing his writing (some of it, anyway) as being worthy of wearing the mantel of Literary Value. Dickens was as insanely popular as King in his day, but many critics questioned, over the years, whether his stuff could be called Great. And much of it certainly can.
Or look at Hawthorne. Many of his stories could certainly have fallen under the ‘horror’ or ‘fantasy’ label of the time. It’s only with the passage of many years do we look past the sensationalistic subject matter of a lot of his stories and recognize their literary importance.
P.S. The few New Yorker stories of King that I’ve read have, by and large, lacked his usual power. (One exception being “That Feeling, You Can Only Say What it is in French,” which chilled me to the bone.)
I doubt there can be a true objective definition of “great” in regards to books. Some of the snooty literary types will go on in great detail about books they were forced to read in school- the classics. Classics are the ruler by which all other literature (not Literature) is judged. If some professor with a degree does not deem a book Literature worthy, all the students will no doubt hear it often.
This phenomenon I don’t have a term for. It is the fact that when something is taught in a university, it trickles down to the lay person by word of mouth, and word of opinion, and the lay person mimics the student of the art in question so that they seem as cultured and intelligent as the student, and which the student is mimicing the professor. This seems to me like a bit of a self-fulfilled prophecy.
Genre reading isn’t considered real “Literature” by those that try to perpetuate that myth. The professors stuck on the outdated and outmoded MYTH of the Great American Novel. Perhaps they wish to hold onto this far fetched and unfair myth, and thus teach it, fulfilling their own desires so that they retain a job and withold their prestige.
A good novel is one in which it draws the reader in, is seamless and flows the direction the author intends, invokes emotional response, and perhaps even has a moral or a point the author wishes to disparge. That is all. Science fiction, Fantasy, Romance, Mystery, and even Horror can all be great literature. Don’t listen to the hoity toity babbling of those deemed “Great” blather on about how genre writing cannot be considered REAL literature. Ignore their lies, they try to manipulate you into taking their class or reading their book, that is all.
I should also add that more and more genre books are becoming considered great. Slowly but surely, though, to me, there seems to be controversy over them. Brave New World is science fiction, as are Farenheit 451, 1984, Flowers for Algernon, and many others that are gaining recognition, no doubt to the chagrin of many University professors and literary snobs.
Seems to me that the real snobs here are those who prize “genre” literature above “classic” literature. Nobody who really cares for literature is snobbish about it; books can be deemed classic for very different reasons. “Trainspotting” was an important novel when it came out, but is already starting to feel old and irrelevant; that doesn’t take away from the skill of the writer. Most genre literature (especially sci-fi and horror) is dismissed because it’s derivitave and unimaginative, but there are wonderfully entertaining exceptions. A "great " novel is judged on the quality of the writing, and although this is always going to be a subjective call, Emily Bronte was a genius. Stephen King isn’t.
“Most” would be a sweeping and grandly inaccurate generalization. Mainstream literature is crowded with as many hacks as the fields of horror and speculative fiction. Dismissing any genre out of hand as “inferior” in some way to mainstream lit strikes me as dangerous.
Wonderfully entertaining isn’t the exception anymore in genre writing. It’s actually more the rule.
Keek and Moody Bastard (great name, btw) you’re both right and both wrong:
Most of what is written, like all things artistic, is probably of lesser quality, with only a few exceptions rising to the top. If only 1 - 3 books every few years really endure, that means a miniscule percentage out of all Lit, sci-fi, crime, horror, etc. books really endure.
Genre books have been around as long as novels, but only a few cross over and become “generally accepted” classics (whatever that means, but Epimetheus offered some good SF examples). However, only a few lit books cross over and become “classics” too.
When genre fiction fails, it often does because it is derivative and unimaginative. However, the same can be said of straight lit. No big distinctions there.
As a rule, genre writers have been traditionally held to be in a “lower tier” than lit writers. Why? I have no idea. I also see that the lines have become very blurry, with great writers using genre conventions to write truly great stuff. I have also seen purely genre writers so completely embrace their genre that they define a type of literature - Jim Thompson’s pulps, Tolkien’s fantasy, Elmore Leonard’s (good) crime fiction.
No need to quibble about lit vs. genre - the discussion is about what leads to a book enduring…
You’re right; we did get sidetracked. The Glad Bag Yellow and Green Safety Seal is what leads to a book enduring.
Have you seen this thing? It actually locks in freshness!