Classics and Consequentiality

From Canon Fodder: Denouncing the Classics by Sam Sacks, a discussion about literary criticism and what constitutes a classic.

Eliot thought that a classic, in the strictest sense, was a work that apotheosized a great civilization at its zenith; so exacting (or, if you like, priggish) are his standards that literally the only writer to entirely fulfill them is Virgil. He thought Chaucer and Shakespeare were a little too rough around the edges, Goethe too provincial, Pope too mannered. Except for a passing mention of Henry James, he doesn’t even bother to mention the existence of American letters.

Sainte-Beuve is more flexible and encompassing, but he stipulates that a classic can only be truly distinguished by readers who have enjoyed a lifetime of learning and have staked out the leisure to devote themselves to their libraries. It exists as a concomitant to the salon and the ivory tower.

So if Eliot is imperialist and Sainte-Beuve is aristocratic, we need some idea of what makes a classic in a democracy. For that, we could do worse than to turn to Sainte-Beuve’s contemporary Alexis de Tocqueville, who has always seemed to have the new world’s number. In “Democracy in America,” de Tocqueville observed that Americans esteemed the arts and sciences more for their practical applications than for their abstract value—hence the popularity of newspapers, religious treatises, and self-help books. Reading itself was not done for the purposes of something as perversely theoretical as enlarging one’s soul; it needed to have some tangible function in the here and now: “Democratic nations may amuse themselves for a while with considering the productions of nature; but they are excited in reality only by a survey of themselves.”

A look through the Classics section of bookstores—in America or any of the Western democracies—bears out de Tocqueville’s instincts. The offerings are wide-ranging, tilting toward diversity and inclusion. But, more to the point, artistic brilliance is no longer the most important determining factor. What makes a classic today is cultural significance. Authors are anointed not because they are great (although many of them are) but because they are important.

Given that there is no objective criteria for aesthetic evaluation, I have tended towards thinking of books in terms of their consequentiality. How many people has it affected over how many years and how deeply. This, I think, picks up two different attributes - is the subject worth talking about and how well is it being discussed? In this reading, books can drift in and out of the canon, but usually like the roach motel ad, they "check in, but they don't check out!" The mere act of becoming a part of the canon makes you mostly a permanent member. People might not any longer read you all that much but you are of permanent interest. Who, any longer, reads all of Aristotle's Ethics. Perhaps most philosophy majors but not many beyond that I would suspect. But virtually every member of the clerisy will have passing familiarity with the key concepts and likely will have read at least some Ethics.

Then there are the near misses; Lady Chatterley's Lover perhaps, possibly Goodbye to All That! Influential in their time and of both literary and historical interest but not quite there. You also have the bestsellers. Fifty Shades of Grey is quite the global phenomenon in terms of millions of copies sold from such obscurity in so short a time but never destined for the canon.

The measure I have been playing with in trying to put a metric on a book is Consequentiality as measured by annual sales (where available), length of time in print, frequency of citation by other authors, number of foreign editions, and number of foreign language translations. This information is challenging to collect but most of it, other than annual sales is usually available. With the measures you get Popularity (annual sales), Durability (length of time in print), Relevance (citations), and Universality (number of foreign editions and number of languages). Any book that scores in the top quartile on at least three of these measures, ought, I suspect, to be considered a near classic or classic.

With the few hundred I have collected data on, it is both affirming and revealing. Virtually all of the canon excel on three of the four measures, sometimes on all four. But you find a lot of sleepers out there, titles with measures that are near canon in the metrics but never there.