W hat makes a “modern classic”? Happily, the back page of the current Penguin reissues has a stab at this sempiternal and – given that it involves defining the word “modern” – horribly loaded question. It begins with an adjectival spotter’s guide (“Contemporary . . . Provocative . . . Outrageous . . . Prophetic . . . Ground-breaking”, etc) before moving on to some diffidently expressed first principles. There is talk of such items possibly leading to “great movies”, of the breaking down of “barriers”, whether social, sexual, or, in the case of Ulysses, the “boundaries of language itself”, even of something described as “pure classic escapism”.
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