Pick up a Penguin Classic

Choose 100 literary classics from the last century....basically impossible right? At least impossible to fine-tune a list to suit as many people as possible. That's what The Guardian's John Crace has attempted with his new book Brideshead Abbreviated. His work was featured in G2 last wednesday*, six extracts of his summarised classics.

All the usual suspects can be found in Crace's top 100, from The Great Gatsby to Swann's Way. Crace said he broke it down into ten works per decade and limited each author to one piece. Although this is fair, I find it too clinical to logically catalogue artistic 'oeuvres'. You've got to hand it to him for putting in the leg work in deciding who and what would make the list, it must have involved a large amount of umm-ing and ahh-ing. In the first instance how do you decide on the criteria? Subject matter? Themes? Perception? Style? Length?  

Take it with a pinch of salt. One man's opinion on the status of twentieth century literature, did he decide on his favourites or was he aiming to please? Who was he aiming to please?

Crace's recently released book is a collection of these 100 novels abbreviated into roughly 700 words a piece in the style of so-and-so. Having read the six extracts in the newspaper I will not be buying this book. Arrogant and belittling. Crace's stylistic imitations have a mocking air, intentionally or not, and the notion that a 700 word precis gives the same effect as reading the original is outrageous. As an english literature student, exploring a text in its entirety with nuances of implicit meaning is fascinating to me. Not suggesting that we must write coursework essays on every book we read for a full experience, I want to emphasise that reading the full work is so much more rewarding than one man's take on it. 

If the goal of Brideshead Abbreviated is "now you don't need to read all these great novels but you can feel like you have" then I fundamentally disagree. Particularly with the idea that there is pressure to have read the entire literary canon. This is unrealistic and unnecessary, people should enjoy reading, period, read any genre any author as long as they enjoy it. It is a sign of a consumer society that todays readers may want to have read (a version of) all the classics now. Before I delve deeper into the crevices of this mountainous debate I'll cut to the chase... Yes a summary of 100 classics will display a fresh interpretation and if it inspires readers to read the full version then great! However I take issue with the idea that one has to have read all the 'greats' to be accepted as a wide reader and I feel that Crace could have been more tactful when interpreting and imitating each style. 

I must add that I generally agree with the selection -  which "[reflects] the consensual view of the western literary canon rather than trying to reshape it." and I know next to nothing about what makes something 'great'. Let's hope that Crace's work inspires more people to pick up a penguin classic...

Guardian Feature