What would happen if all-time classics were written now?

[FrankJBN]

Hamlet is not a contemporary story - the OP does not contemplate rewriting the classics for our time merely that they never existed before.

The Lion in Winter is a latter 20th century work about Henry II. It is praised for its dialogue, which was not written in contemporary style.

So too the newly issued Hamletwould be considered a period piece.

[Intergalactic_Gladiator]

The Breakfast Club would be a lot different if it was made today.

[Jas09]

@Kepler1571

Maybe not. In literary history there are fecund periods and desert periods, and this sure looks like a desert period. Is there even one transcendent author in the last hundred years? Tolstoy died in 1910. The next one down the list is Joyce, and that’s a long, long fall.

Of course there have been transcendent authors in the last 100 years. Nabokov, to name just one.

Then again, I don’t agree that the fall from Tolstoy to Joyce is nearly as immense as you claim.