The impression I’ve had from reading supposed Great Works is that they often (but not always) fail to tell you much that’s new about life or love or the human condition or what have you, but they do often tell you a lot about the evolution of fiction as an art form. That doesn’t generalize all that well, but it does make you a better reader and a better writer.
Another point: if you’re reading works that’re central to your native literary traditions, you’re likely to have already picked up most of their major themes through cultural osmosis. That doesn’t mean they weren’t insightful at the time, but it does mean you’ve been spoiled for that aspect of the books. If you’re looking for new insights in your fiction, reading Great Novels from a culture you don’t belong to is probably a better idea than digging into your native canon.
Depends what’s changing about it. Sometimes I’d say the evolution of media points to genuine improvement, especially when you see it in relatively new branches like rock and roll or comic books or film; we’ve been doing some literary forms for a very long time. Often, though, it reflects external changes in technology or education, changes in language, or just differing tastes and preoccupations. And even that might be assigning too much rationale: sometimes it’s just a random walk based on recombinations of whatever’s been popular in the last thirty years or so.
With this in mind, I’d say modern writers are likely to get more out of responding to technological and social changes than trying to improve basic technique. Reading techno-thrillers or near-future SF, for example, is vastly different when you’ve got a Wikipedia tab open, and yet I can only think of a couple of writers that seem to have realized this potential.
The impression I’ve had from reading supposed Great Works is that they often (but not always) fail to tell you much that’s new about life or love or the human condition or what have you, but they do often tell you a lot about the evolution of fiction as an art form. That doesn’t generalize all that well, but it does make you a better reader and a better writer.
Another point: if you’re reading works that’re central to your native literary traditions, you’re likely to have already picked up most of their major themes through cultural osmosis. That doesn’t mean they weren’t insightful at the time, but it does mean you’ve been spoiled for that aspect of the books. If you’re looking for new insights in your fiction, reading Great Novels from a culture you don’t belong to is probably a better idea than digging into your native canon.
Hence why I thought it might be easy to see where there was room for improvement using more modern techniques.
Depends what’s changing about it. Sometimes I’d say the evolution of media points to genuine improvement, especially when you see it in relatively new branches like rock and roll or comic books or film; we’ve been doing some literary forms for a very long time. Often, though, it reflects external changes in technology or education, changes in language, or just differing tastes and preoccupations. And even that might be assigning too much rationale: sometimes it’s just a random walk based on recombinations of whatever’s been popular in the last thirty years or so.
With this in mind, I’d say modern writers are likely to get more out of responding to technological and social changes than trying to improve basic technique. Reading techno-thrillers or near-future SF, for example, is vastly different when you’ve got a Wikipedia tab open, and yet I can only think of a couple of writers that seem to have realized this potential.