Hemingway | David Fekete

Entertainment Value in Literary Classics

Let’s agree that there are classics of literature.

I’ve just started reading the Russian classic, Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev. I didn’t know what to expect when I bought it. I was surprised with what I found in the first pages. It was spellbinding! I really enjoyed reading this classic!

I have had the idea, like a lot of people, that classics of literature are boring and dense and you have to plod through them. And that’s true of some. But not many.

Can it be that classics are classics because they are entertaining? Another way to phrase this is to say that classics are entertaining because they are written well. The artful style of telling a good tale is what makes the classic entertaining.

I first noticed this with Hemingway. I discovered Hemingway in graduate school, at the age of 27. I still remember sitting in the student lounge late at night reading, For Whom the Bell Tolls. I couldn’t put it down. At the time I was reading Hemingway, he was considered great literature. In fact, Hemingway did win the Nobel Prize for literature, and a Pulitzer Prize. Today, some scholars are debating Hemingway’s literary standing because in an age of feminism, his work is too macho. But his innovation with language, I believe, will secure his place in the literary pantheon regardless of whether he is too macho or not.

I notice an analogous entertainment value in the works of Tom Wolfe. His works are artistically plotted, and riveting to read. It’s always risky to try to discern the artistic value of contemporary writers, but I think that he may well be considered a major author of our time. He is most certainly a popular and successful writer. But I believe that his works will be considered classics after this age passes into history.

In fact, I find Shakespeare equally entertaining. If it isn’t the pace of the psychology, Shakespeare is an entertainer. A sword fight will break out after a heavy scene, or when psychology becomes too overwhelming. I don’t need to say anything about Shakespeare’s union of sense and sound. If we lived in Elizabethan England, Shakespeare’s language wouldn’t be hard to read or hear in a performance. With footnotes, contemporary readers can follow the story and discover the delights that the Bard offers.

Great literature delights. Maybe that’s why such literature is considered great. Much could be said about why literature delights–accuracy to the human situation, plot tensions that we feel . . . But that is material for another blog. This one is about the entertainment value that great literature possesses, that makes literature great.

Fame

Fame and success are not always meted out in a person’s lifetime. Some great artist were relatively obscure in their own lives, and did not know that they would be important later, after their demise. All they knew was that their work didn’t catch on. And they were unknown–and that, for their whole lives. They didn’t make it.

William Blake was known to some of the Romantic poets, but achieved no real fame. Shelley wrote these verses about his own life,

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,

Nor peace within nor calm around,

Nor that content surpassing wealth

The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned—

Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.

Others I see whom these surround—

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;

To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

F. Scott Fitzgerald had fame and money, but failed to find critical acceptance as an artist. His greatest novel, The Great Gatsby, didn’t sell much and went out of print in a few years. Fitzgerald died thinking himself a failure.

Now we study Blake, Shelley, and Fitzgerald in literature classes, and all these writers are considered great. Every high school student in the United States reads The Great Gatsby.

Hemingway and T.S. Eliot had fame all through their lives, and the respect of the artistic community. Hemingway also had wealth. Intellectual fashion is now debating whether they are still as great as they used to be, but I suspect the laurel wreath will not be taken away in the end.

But Shelley and Fitzgerald had respect among the community of artists in their day. Coleridge and Wordsworth knew and respected Shelley. And Hemingway was Fitzgerald’s close friend. Even in Hemingway’s scathing stories about Fitzgerald in A Moveable Feast, Hemingway praises Fitzgerald as a great artist.

Fame may not be the best measure of a person’s worth. Respect from one’s peers, self-respect, believing in oneself, and the joy of creation alone are not fame, but are abiding satisfactions in lieu of fame. While an artist wants recognition, it is satisfying to enjoy one’s own creations privately, while perhaps also enjoying favorable reception from a few who matter.