'Classics' started off meaning Latin and Greek works, then literary works that smacked of similar, and now - what, exactly? Books that are full of bonnets and dust?
Author Kevin Smokler and bookseller Jonathan Main unpick what constitutes a classic, old or new.
READ ON, READER:
Before they were famous (and, in some cases, during): authors' other jobs.
Reading a classic, you can miss a lot if you aren't familiar with the time in which it was written, for example all these boner puns in Shakespeare's plays.
Valley of the Dolls: fifty years old and still TERRIFIC. And feminist?
Play The Great Gatsby game (here's the story of it becoming a pseudo-80s Nintendo game).
One very common characteristic of classic novels: they're full of orphans. Why?
I need to buy As If: The Oral History of Clueless. Here's a taste of how they made the film, and the Suck and Blow party scene.
There's a transcript of this episode at theallusionist.org/transcripts/biglit.
RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
frowst
CREDITS:
Kevin Smokler is the author of Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books You Haven't Touched Since High School. Tweet him @weegee.
Jonathan Main runs one of my favourite shops, Bookseller Crow. Support your independent bookshops! Tweet him @booksellercrow.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, with music by Martin Austwick. A lot of the tracks today are instrumental versions of songs from his arts fundraiser album Kill It With Fire, available on Bandcamp along with the rest of his music.
Find me at facebook.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/helenzaltzman.
