The other day, I came across a really well written article, where the author actually pondered whether the current trend of every tom, dick, Harry, and Arnold jumping on the “I am a writer” band wagon, was not a shade worrisome, and even distasteful. They internet has made writers of us all…yours truly being no exception. The internet has also made redundant, in some cases the need to have an agent, an editor and even a publisher. And finally, the internet has also made redundant, the need, in some cases, to have any real talent for writing….Not everything that was written in ages past was brilliant. There must have been scores of mediocre writers even then. But the sheer volume of material that is now available - thanks to the internet, makes one wonder, does there need to be a licensing authority that can actually function as a means of quality control and should there be some basic skill that one must prove to posses before they go writing all over the place about anything that comes to their mind? We get drivers licenses, don’t we? And they are revoked if we drive irresponsibly, aren’t they? Or should anyone who has something to say, be allowed, democratically, to say it, regardless of how badly it may be written or how irresponsibly…???
The answer to that question (largely rhetorical!) is not going to save or change the world…!! It does bear thinking about though…
I grew up with an understanding that reading the "classics" would help me build character...I completely get it, that the classics defined for my generation were different, very different, than those that were considered mandatory reading for say two generations before me...But I did labour through "Tale of Two Cities" and "Three Musketeers" and "Little Women" to name just a few. I laboured through them, was intrigued by them, revisited them at a later stage in life, and had much to gain from my relationships with these works and their authors. I have lost count, literally, of the number of times I have read “Little Women” and “Pride and Prejudice”. For more contemporary reading, "Catch 22", "One flew over the Cuckoo's nest", "To kill a Mockingbird", "Catcher in the Rye" “The World According to Garp” – these are all brilliantly crafted, evocative and engrossing modern day classics and they too had something to say that resonated with the times and life of the last century.
I do not consider myself a particularly well read person. I am an avid reader though, and fairly open to the entire smorgasbord of literary experiences that can be availed of….However, I failed miserably on a test recently that quizzed you about essential reading as defined by the BBC….!! I consoled myself by saying that even though I had not read 70% of the books prescribed by the BBC as essential reading, I had read enough to snook a crook of a different kind to those who had plowed through “Complete works of Shakespeare” or “Iliad”
What then are the classics for today's teens? With all this writing going on, who is telling stories that teach the timeless values that have defined the very evolution and existence of the human being over the last few decades? Or is that being left entirely to video games, internet social networks and cinema...?!?!
