In Literature, What Makes a Classic? Knopf recently relaunched the library. Editor Sonny Mehta and writers Joan Didion and Z. Z. Packer talk about what makes a classic. NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. If you're a dedicated browser of secondhand bookstores, you've probably come across the volumes of the Everyman's Library; small, beautifully bound hard covers that each feature this statement on the title page: Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide in thy most need to go by thy side. The Library is a literary treasure that includes more than a thousand titles, from Austen to Dickens to Marcus Aurelius. In 1. 90. 6, the Everyman Library was practically a philanthropic mission. Its founder, Joseph Malaby Dent, called it a democratic library at the democratic price of one shilling. A hundred years later, the publishing house of Alfred A. Knopf re- launched the Library, though it set prices a bit higher than one shilling. Along the way, though, Knopf acquired the question inherent to the Library: What belongs in a modern Everyman edition? Bill Blakemore The Family of Man. Copyright 1987, San Francisco Chronicle. Fans found it surprising in 1980 when Kubrick turned out a movie that was apparently no.![]() What constitutes a classic? This hour we'll talk with the publisher and head of Knopf about those questions. We'll also talk with authors Joan Didion and Z. Z. Packers about what they think makes a classic. Later on in the program we'll talk with the authors of the book “Impounded,” which if you'd like to take a look at some of the previously unreleased photos of World War II American interment camps, you can go to our Web page at npr. But first, what is a classic and what isn't? How do you tell a literary lion from a mere cub, and what books get overlooked? Join the conversation. Our number here in Washington is 8. E- mail us: talk@npr. Joining us now from the BBC studios in New York is the chairman and publisher of Knopf, Sonny Mehta. Nice to have you on the program today. SONNY MEHTA (Chairman and Publisher, Alfred A. Knopf): It's nice to be here. CONAN: The original Everyman Library was a rather remarkable achievement that began a hundred years ago. Tell us a little bit about its original mission. MEHTA: Well, it was started in February 1. Joseph Dent, who was a kind of a master London bookbinder turned publisher and was a classic Victorian autodidact. He was the 1. 0th child of a housepainter in Darlington, who left school at the age of 1. London and decided that he wanted to have a library that basically - of beautiful books that encompassed all that was lasting in literature. And his ambition was that for a few shillings the reader may have a whole bookshelf of the immortals. For five pounds, he will procure him 1. CONAN: And as he went about this - now he's not an academic, he's not somebody familiar with even the book publishing business - how did he decide what was a classic and what wasn't? MEHTA: Well, I think he and his son, and they had an extremely gifted editor who was instrumental I think in helping the books be chosen; a man called Ernest Rhys, who essentially edited the complete Library until his death. And they made some choices that might be considered sort of eccentric now but I think the first British author to have a complete works included in the Everyman Library was Jane Austen. CONAN: And not Shakespeare? MEHTA: No, it was Jane Austen, I believe, to have the complete works. MEHTA: Shakespeare was probably - was there very early on, but The Complete Jane Austen I think was the first complete set published. He was followed by Dickens with an introduction by C. K. Then came the great sort of Europeans - Dostoyevsky, Rabelais, Rousseau, Flaubert, Stendhal - and then the near contemporaries - Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, Conrad, DH Lawrence, W. Somerset Maugham, Virginia Woolf - and a host of people in- between who really aren't read as frequently as the authors I've just mentioned. CONAN: Now when you took over this imprint you had some decisions to make yourself. Now I assume some of these relate to questions like what can I get the rights to, but other than that, if it was an open intellectual question, how do you define a classic? MEHTA: Well, there are probably as many definitions about what makes a classic I think as classics. Actually, I think it was Mark Twain who described it as a book, which people praise and don't read. MEHTA: But the one I feel closest to is Clifton Fadiman's. And he said when you read a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before, you see more in you than there was before. CONAN: I guess by Twain's definition, it would be “A Brief History of Time” would qualify as a classic. I can think of some others, too, as a matter of fact. CONAN: Are there any that you've looked at and said, you know, maybe later, but not right now. MEHTA: Yes, I mean we are considering books all the time. We have a Web site that we encourage people to send in their suggestions. And we've had some very interesting suggestions, some of which actually have had - you know, pertain to books that we actually had in the pipeline, like say Paul Scott's “The Raj Quartet.” CONAN: Mm- hmm. MEHTA: But there have been some others that we haven't acted on. Like for instance there was a suggestion quite recently that we consider Jeffrey(ph) Felsen 1. Hot Rod.” I don't know whether you've come across that. CONAN: I seemed to have missed it in my education, yes. MEHTA: It's a huge bestseller through the '5. CONAN: We're going to want your suggestions on both classics that might be considered and on the question what constitutes a classic. If you'd like to join us: 8. TALK. E- mail us: talk@npr. But first, let's welcome Joan Didion to the conversation. Her new- collected book of nonfiction has been released as part of the Knopf Everyman series. It's called “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live,” and she joins us from her home in New York. And it's nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION today. JOAN DIDION: (Author, Essayist): It's nice to be here. CONAN: Now you've been included in the pantheon of nonfiction in the Everyman Library. It's - I guess you can go to bed happy. DIDION: Well, it's a little daunting, I have to say. DIDION: It was an exciting thing. CONAN: How do you think the decisions ought to be made? I don't know if you.. DIDION: You know, I don't even know what a classic is. ![]() It seems to me that basically what you're talking about at any given time, you're always going to end up with things that are going to seem eccentric to later generations. DIDION: But there's a certain body of knowledge at any given time, certain shared narratives and shared information that if you - theoretically, if you had a collection of books, you would - and you read - and everybody read all those, we would all share some knowledge. DIDION: And we would share some values maybe, and - but it's - so it's kind of something you feel as you go along. CONAN: Now you know Sonny Mehta, and I wonder do you call him up every once in awhile after you see a new edition in a bookstore and said you've got to be kidding. DIDION: No, I've never done that. DIDION: No, I feel - generally, it seems to me the choices have been quite good. CONAN: And as you say, it must be daunting to have your own work included in such a list. ![]() DIDION: Well, yes, it is. The other thing about Everyman's Library is basically it seems to me that most of the books in it have crossed two generations, which I hesitate to say is now true of my early work. It has now been read by two generations, and that's basically all we're talking about, I think. CONAN: And, Sonny Mehta, all of the stuff that we were talking about initially was fiction. Obviously, Joan Didion's nonfiction work is what you've included here. MEHTA: In this particular volume, yes. This is just nonfiction. But I think Dent set out not just to publish fiction. He did publish nonfiction, too. I'm thinking about Lord Chesterfield's letters to his grandson, for instance. MEHTA: There was a great deal of nonfiction because - and, you know, there will be more in the Everyman that we're currently working on. CONAN: Let's see if we can get a listener on the line, and this is Brook(ph). Brook joins us from Oklahoma City. BROOK (Caller): (Unintelligible) How are you guys today? In celebration of the 2015 Halloween season, we've collected and ranked 100 of the best horror movies of the 2000s. Free Sex Stories With a Horror Theme. Erotic horror tales involving sex and sexual fantasies between beasts aliens and humans. Horror fiction, or fantasy stories, is. Read Matt Goldberg's American Pastoral review; Ewan McGregor directs and co-stars alongside Jennifer Connelly, Dakota Fanning, and Uzo Aduba. And then there was one. American Horror Story: Roanoke's “Chapter 7” does something too few found-footage fictions manage: It questions why the characters continue filming, and it. Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten, scare, disgust, or startle their readers or viewers by inducing feelings of horror. From the Magazine; How A Christmas Story Went from Low-Budget Fluke to an American Tradition. I'm an English teacher, and oftentimes I'm dialoguing with folks on the Advanced Placement Web site, and we often have the conversation about a book's literary merit. And I was wondering if our guests saw the literary merit and classic as interchangeable terms or if they're different terms. CONAN: What do you think, Joan Didion? DIDION: Well, as I say, I have trouble defining classic. DIDION: So I don't know. I mean obviously I think.. BROOK: (Unintelligible) great fights about what literary merit is, so.. DIDION: .. something - I mean we do want literary merit, I think, all of us. DIDION: There was a book that was in the - sort of in the - it was high school reading at the time I was in high school. ![]() Body horror, biological horror, organic horror or visceral horror is horror fiction in which the horror is principally derived from the graphic degeneration or. And at the time it was nationwide. It was a book that - it was Giants in the Earth, it was called. It was by a Norwegian named Rolvaag. DIDION: And it was - and I had a - it was a - basically it was about American immigration, but it all took place in the Midwest. It was equally mystifying to me in Sacramento and to my husband, who was also assigned it in West Hartford, Connecticut. I mean certain books are assigned because they reflect a societal value. CONAN: So no threat, Sonny Mehta, that Giants in the Earth is going to be the next edition in the Everyman's Library. MEHTA: Well, I did in fact buy it about eight months after I came to work in America, which was about 1. I was traveling and someone had taken me I think it was Seattle, and we were making a progress across that sector, sort of visiting bookstores. And I bought a copy of that because everyone told me it was a classic. DIDION: That's - it's.. CONAN: Savoring every word, I take it. Brook, thanks very much for the call. CONAN: Good luck with your class. CONAN: And, Joan Didion, we wanted to thank you very much for being with us today. DIDION: Well, thank you. American Pastoral Review: Mc. Gregor Whiffs on Directorial Debut. American Pastoral opens this Friday in limited release. I think he’s a charming presence in films and despite his longevity in the industry (he’s been a star since 1. Trainspotting), he’s frequently underrated despite his range and versatility (he has no Oscar nominations and can only get lead roles in independent films). I hoped his directorial debut, American Pastoral, might not only allow him to show another dimension to his acting, but reveal a promising new career avenue. Sadly, Mc. Gregor’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel does neither. Instead, it’s a tedious, uninspired picture that could have worked if it had painted its hapless protagonist as an individual rather than an everyman. Mc. Gregor swings for the fences in his portrayal of an anguished father, but the only thing he hits is an obnoxious metaphor about how the 6. America. The film uses a framing device where writer Nathan Zuckerman (David Strathairn) is attending his high school reunion and bumps into his old friend Jerry Levov (Rupert Evans). He learns that Jerry’s brother, Seymour “Swede” Levov (Mc. Gregor) has recently passed away. Nathan admits he was out of the country for most of the 6. America. We then flashback to where Swede and his wife Dawn (Jennifer Connelly) raise their daughter Merry (Hannah Nordberg) on an idyllic farm. However, when Merry becomes a rebellious teenager (Dakota Fanning), she’s suspected of blowing up the local post office and goes on the run. Swede continues to hunt for his daughter, but the damage is done and his perfect life begins to crumble. Image via Lionsgate. If American Pastoral didn’t have its framing device and was just a story about a man trying to find his estranged daughter, it would work slightly better. The characters would still be broadly drawn, but at least Swede could stand in as an individual undergoing a personal crisis rather than an exemplar for America. As an individual, he’s a hurt parent who can’t give up on his wayward child. That may not carry any lofty subtext, but it’s a universal relationship and it’s where Mc. Gregor invests the film’s emotional energy. Unfortunately, the framing device sets up Swede as America’s golden boy. He’s a soldier (although one who came in at the tail- end of the war so he’s not scarred by PTSD; all of the glory, none of the scars!). He’s a proud businessman whose workforce is 8. African- American. He’s got the dream life of the upper middle class that was promised to every single American after World War II. And then his lefty daughter has to go and mess it all up. Image via Lionsgate. Swede doesn’t get painted as a person. He doesn’t have weaknesses. His biggest mistake is that he loves his daughter too much. He doesn’t give into temptation. He’s basically what white Americans think of when they look back at “better days” because for a white, heterosexual family man like Swede, the postwar 1. Swede’s Jewishness never seems to have any negative impact on his life, and it’s so rarely noted that he may as well be secular). Never mind that anyone who wasn’t a white, heterosexual male probably had a slightly rougher go of things. And anyone who comes to mess up Swede’s perfect existence is the enemy. In this case, it’s the radical left as represented by ne’er- do- well Merry. If Swede is the perfect American, then his wife and daughter are the ones who ruin everything. One day, Merry is a sweet, innocent girl (with the exception of one scene where she tries to seduce her father, a sloppy attempt at foreshadowing how she’ll come to ruin his life) and then we cut forward and she’s an angry radical. She’s now the poster child for how the 6. America, and that our downfall didn’t come from globalization or supply- side economics or any number of factors that shape a rich and diverse nation. It was those damn radical leftists and weak- willed women like Dawn who ran from their problems and hid away in cosmetic surgery. O, woe to the noble American white man. O, woe to the Swede. Image via TIFFIt’s not that Mc. Gregor seems to actively be pushing a political agenda as much as it’s a natural result of the framing device. Mc. Gregor is far more invested in the emotional stakes, but because the framing device recasts the characters as symbols, their emotional journey matters less than what those symbols represent. Mc. Gregor wants to give his fellow actors room to shine, but it all plays as melodrama rather than emotions from real people. The tenor of American Pastoral makes it seem like Mc. Gregor was drawn to the story about a family man whose life was ripped apart by a love for his daughter. In more confident, experienced hands, that could have been enough for a strong picture, and it seems like that’s the picture Mc. Gregor thought he made—a heartbreaking story of a father unable to save his child from her own bad decisions. But by trying to speak to something larger about American history, American Pastoral trips over its own words and spouts nonsense. Horror fiction - Wikipedia. Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten, scare, disgust, or startle their readers or viewers by inducing feelings of horror and terror. Cuddon has defined the horror story as . Horror is frequently supernatural, though it can be non- supernatural. Often the central menace of a work of horror fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for the larger fears of a society. History. This marked the first incorporated elements of the supernatural instead of pure realism. In fact, the first edition was published disguised as an actual medieval romance from Italy discovered and republished by a fictitious translator. Once revealed as contemporary, many found it anachronistic, reactionary, or simply in poor taste — but it proved to be immediately popular. That first novel of Gothic horror inspired such works as Vathek (1. William Beckford, A Sicilian Romance (1. The Mysteries of Udolpho (1. The Italian (1. 79. Ann Radcliffe and The Monk (1. Matthew Lewis. A significant amount of horror fiction of this era was written by women and marketed at a female audience, a typical scenario being a resourceful female protagonist menaced in a gloomy castle. Influential works and characters that continue resonating with film and cinema today saw their genesis in such works as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1. Edgar Allan Poe, the works of Sheridan Le Fanu, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1. Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1. Each of these novels and novellas created an enduring icon of horror seen in modern re- imaginings on the stage and screen. One writer who specialized in horror fiction for mainstream pulps such as All- Story Magazine was Tod Robbins, whose fiction dealt with themes of madness and cruelty. Particularly, the venerated horror author H. Lovecraft, and his enduring Cthulhu Mythos pioneered the genre of cosmic horror, and M. James is credited with redefining the ghost story in that era. Early cinema was inspired by many aspects of horror literature, and early horror cinema started a strong tradition of horror films and subgenres based on horror fiction that continues to this day. Up until the graphic depictions of violence and gore on the screen commonly associated with the 1. EC Comics (famous for series such as Tales From The Crypt) in the 1. Lovecraft stories such as . Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend (1. George A. Romero. Contemporary horror fiction. National Book Foundation in 2. Elements of the horror genre continue to expand outside the genre. The alternate history of more traditional historical horror in a novel such as The Terror exists on bookstore shelves next to genre mash ups such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the historical fantasy and horror comics such as Hellblazer and Mike Mignola's Hellboy. Horror serves as one of the central genres in more complex modern works such as Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, a finalist for the National Book Award. There are also horror novels for teens, such as The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey. Characteristics. Lovecraft's most famous quotes about the genre is that: . Our ancestors lived and died by it. Then someone invented the fascinating game of civilization, and things began to calm down. Development pushed wilderness back from settled lands. War, crime, and other forms of social violence came with civilization and humans started preying on each other, but by and large daily life calmed down. We began to feel restless, to feel something missing: the excitement of living on the edge, the tension between hunter and hunted. So we told each other stories through the long, dark nights.. The rush of adrenaline feels good. Our hearts pound, our breath quickens, and we can imagine ourselves on the edge. Yet we also appreciate the insightful aspects of horror. Sometimes a story intends to shock and disgust, but the best horror intends to rattle our cages and shake us out of our complacency. It makes us think, forces us to confront ideas we might rather ignore, and challenges preconceptions of all kinds. Horror reminds us that the world is not always as safe as it seems, which exercises our mental muscles and reminds us to keep a little healthy caution close at hand. However, she adds that horror fiction is one of the few mediums where readers seek out a form of art that forces themselves to confront ideas and images they . In horror fiction, the confrontation with the gruesome is often a metaphor for the problems facing the current generation of the author. Stephanie Demetrakopoulos illustrates a common interpretation of one of the benchmarks of the canon of horror literature. Demetrakopoulos suggests Dracula was an outlet for Victorian society, breaking through sexual norms with symbolic group orgies, male desire for sexually aggressive women, denial of motherhood, etc. She highlights ways in which the females defy gender boundaries by embodying masculine traits such as intelligence. Judith Halberstam postulates many of these in her essay Technologies of Monstrosity: Bram Stoker's Dracula. The depiction of a multinational band of protagonists using the latest technologies (such as a telegraph) to quickly share, collate, and act upon new information is what leads to the destruction of the Vampire. This is one of many interpretations of the metaphor of only one central figure of the canon of horror fiction, as over a dozen possible metaphors are referenced in analysis, from the religious to the anti- semitic. In 1. 82. 6, the gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe published an essay distinguishing two elements of horror fiction, . In their historical studies of the gothic novel, both Devandra Varma. The Horror Writer's Association presents the Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement, named in honor of Bram Stoker, author of the seminal horror novel Dracula. The International Horror Guild Award was presented annually to works of horror and dark fantasy from 1. Other important awards for horror literature are as subcategories included within general awards for fantasy and science fiction in such awards as the Aurealis Award. Alternate terms. They instead use the terms dark fantasy or Gothic fantasy for supernatural horror. The Penguin Book of Horror Stories. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. Gothic: 1. 50. 0 Years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin. London: Fourth Estate. Nightmare: The Birth of Horror. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers (London: St. James Press, 1. 99. ISBN 1. 55. 86. 22. Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers. New York: Facts On File, 2. ISBN 9. 78- 0- 8. Robert Weinberg, . Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1. ISBN 0- 3. 13- 2. X (pp. Tymn and Mike Ashley, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines. Westport: Greenwood, 1. ISBN 0- 3. 13- 2. X^Hutchings, Peter (2. The A to Z of Horror Cinema. The A to Z Guide Series. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. ISBN 9. 78- 0- 8. Retrieved 2. 9 October 2. Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy and Horror. New York: Thomson/Gale, 2. ISBN 9. 78. 06. 84. Hillel Italie (1. September 2. 00. 3). Ellensburg Daily Record. Retrieved 1. 2 September 2. Stephen King, brand- name writer, master of the horror story and e- book pioneer, has received an unexpected literary honor: a National Book Award for lifetime achievement. Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy and Horror. New York: Thomson/Gale, 2. ISBN 9. 78. 06. 84. Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy and Horror. New York: Thomson/Gale, 2. ISBN 9. 78. 06. 84. Retrieved 1. 5 December 2. Retrieved 2 November 2. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. University of Nebraska Press. Retrieved 2 November 2. Retrieved 2 November 2. Retrieved 2 November 2. Retrieved 2 November 2. Thompson (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1. Horror Writer's Association. Archived from the original on 1. March 2. 00. 7. Retrieved 1. April 2. 01. 0. Archived from the original on 2. June 2. 00. 9. Retrieved 3. October 2. 01. 4. Retrieved 3. 0 October 2. Scarecrow Press, Plymouth. ISBN 0- 8. 10. 8- 6. Brian Stableford, . Wildside Press LLC, 2. ISBN 0. 80. 95. 19. New York: Garland, 1. ISBN 9. 78- 0. 82. Jason Colavito, Knowing Fear: Science, Knowledge and the Development of the Horror Genre. Jefferson, NC: Mc. Farland, 2. 00. 8. ISBN 9. 78- 0. 78. Brian Docherty, American Horror Fiction: From Brockden Brown to Stephen King. ISBN 9. 78- 0. 33. Christopher Frayling, Nightmare: The Birth of Horror. London : BBC Books, 1. ISBN 9. 78- 0. 56. Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, (eds.), Horror: 1. Best Books. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1. ISBN 0. 78. 67. 05. Stephen King, Danse Macabre. New York: Everest House, 1. ISBN 9. 78- 0. 89. H. P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature, 1. Dagon and Other Macabre Tales Arkham House, 1. David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. New York: Norton, 1. ISBN 9. 78- 0. 85. Gina Wisker, Horror Fiction: An Introduction. New York: Continuum, 2. ISBN 9. 78- 0. 82. Andrea Sauchelli .
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