My favorite literature classics

What happened to classic literature? Have we outgrown it, or is it just no longer politically correct?

“Students today have no idea of the writings of Mark Twain, Daniel Defoe, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alexander Dumas, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens or even Edgar Allen Poe. What is the world coming to?”

I grew up in a rural community in East Tennessee. Like most people, we were a bit on the "po" side. Now for those of you that don't know "po", that is Dolly Parton's East Tennessee word for "poor". When my father was in the Army, and returned home from Alaska via Korea as an "expert" marksman, there just wasn't much work in our small community. He built the house we lived in with his own hands. If the standard at the time was to use a 2 X 4 board, my father used a 2 X 6 board. When we put in fence posts, he wanted to look down the fence row and see ONE. If one was a bit out of place, he pulled it up and you did it again. The same was true if the post could be shaken. it came out and the next time, you bloody well tamped it into place. My father passed away on January 3, 2000. He would have been seventy on his next birthday. Part of the old locust wood fence row he and my grandfather "put down", as they used to say, still stands on the back of what used to be called, "the old home place". My father was ten at the time the fence went up. I think sixty years is a good, long time, for a fence row.

However, there wasn't a great deal to do, other than work around the house, and sometimes we could get two TV channels on our old black and white TV. My mother was an avid reader and each Thursday or Friday, we went "to town". it was only four miles from our house "to town", but it was a big day. Going to town meant groceries, trips through the 5-10-25 cent stores, and if we had time, we visited out town library, returned books, and picked up new ones. This was one of my mother's greatest legacies to me. She instilled into me a natural love of reading and the feel of the paper of a new book in your hands, along with its enticing smell.

When I was sick, she read to me. I was sick quite a bit as i remember. Perhaps it was our old coal stove. Who knows? But I began to love books and obviously, I still do. They provide a way for us to escape, and a way to learn about the world around us. They open the doors of our imagination into worlds we would have never seen. Because I read so much, I developed a talent that was then latent. Today I read a page either as an entirely, or at the very worst in thirds. I can finish a Stephen King or Anne Rice novel between Nashville, Tennessee, and Washington DC.

As my oldest son went through junior high and high school, he got a (few) of the classics. He was in a private Christian academy and since they didn't receive federal funds, they could teach pretty much whatever curriculum they chose. My youngest didn't stand a chance.

I have to ask. What was wrong with the works of Mark Twain? What was so deviant of the world of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn? Was it the time period? We do seem to want to erase things that remind some of our population of unpleasant times in their own history. Personally, I revel in it. I am part Cherokee, and the American Indians certainly didn't have a cakewalk. What is wrong with Robinson Crusoe, Tarzan, The Count of Monte Cristo, Kim and Mowgli? Is the world of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield so terrible? To be sure some of Edgar Allen Poe's works can be very dark. But life can be very dark at times.

I think we shield our younger readers too much and by eliminating the classics, we eliminate part of the world's culture, from which there are even today, lessons to be learned!