What really makes a story feel dated is not so much in the details you describe as in the themes you develop.
Modern Authors Are Awesome !
- Thread starter Ken
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Also, when major elements in the story are dated instead of just the details. As a result modern readers can't get the story or get into it. That happened to me with one. The story was about a baseball game and described the game in full detail and sorta took for granted that readers would know who the players were along with the teams, etc. It was still readable, but just difficult to absorb. (The story was written in the late 40's.)
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I guess I didn't express myself very well. I thought my second paragraph would explain my thought process. It was:
What surprised me was not so much the sexism of the books I was reading, but that I'd read them as a teenager and had not seen sexism in them at all. Blind to it, and I am female.
I would not have been blind to racism at the time, but that was not in the novels I was just rereading. Yep, it was in a lot of books. Anti-Semitism too, I am sure, although I seldom (now I wonder) recall encountering it in books I read in the 1970's and 80's.
Anyway, I hadn't meant to "tsk-tsk" at works of the past. It was more an "Oh my goodness, was this the typical attitude?" It must have been, if the very young woman I was didn't notice in those days.
So, an older book is a time travel device. I would by no means advocate only reading current books. I can see the interesting qualities of both.
The "deep nod" is not a raspberry. It's acknowledgement that in those particular books I was reading, there's a little time capsule.
What surprised me was not so much the sexism of the books I was reading, but that I'd read them as a teenager and had not seen sexism in them at all. Blind to it, and I am female.
I would not have been blind to racism at the time, but that was not in the novels I was just rereading. Yep, it was in a lot of books. Anti-Semitism too, I am sure, although I seldom (now I wonder) recall encountering it in books I read in the 1970's and 80's.
Anyway, I hadn't meant to "tsk-tsk" at works of the past. It was more an "Oh my goodness, was this the typical attitude?" It must have been, if the very young woman I was didn't notice in those days.
So, an older book is a time travel device. I would by no means advocate only reading current books. I can see the interesting qualities of both.
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Agreed. I think there's some kind of historical and contextual thing that makes "great" literature great. I think that a few in this era of novelists will go on to be added to the canon (or whatever you'd like to call the list of great dead authors). I think it's only a matter of time before Philip Roth, for instance, starts getting taught in schools.
Personally speaking, most of the literature that I get really excited about wasn't written until at least the 50s.
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Exactly so. It makes abundant sense, if one is entirely focused on becoming a better writer, to find the greatest inspiration and creative nourishment in contemporary works.
But for understanding anything of the arc of human cultural development in the West, where our current mores and attitudes arose from, and for a grounding in the ways language evolves, there is nothing more useful than reading books of earlier times.
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