A Final Reason to Read Classic Fic

With modern motion-pictures and pot-stirring bestsellers forever trying to outdo each other in finding that New Angle, it can be refreshing to turn to a story long-told

If you’ve ever felt that lately, the quest for a unique plot means the creation of a nonsensical one, or that edgy and bold equates merely to crass and tasteless, then perhaps it’s time you stopped looking to the New Releases shelf for your next read, and instead turned to the old mainstays.

One word: nostalgia

Sure, the plot of Ivanhoe is as good-guy/bad-guy as you can get, and anyone with an ounce of foresight can tell within the first few pages that Tom Sawyer won’t up and die in the final chapter, but the reason these old tales are predictable is because they’re the granddaddies which set the standards.

Unlike modern plots, we’re not expecting to be shocked or tricked by classic stories (even though this is well within the power of more than a few) and it’s this removed expectation of something never before encountered that lets a modern audience sit back, become absorbed and enjoy the ride as fully as any 19th century reader.

One could easily concoct any number of reasons for picking up Beowulf, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War or the collected works of Oscar Wilde. In the end though, what more justification is needed than the simple enjoyment of reading a really old book? It will almost surely guarantee satisfaction (they’ve been around for decades, centuries and millennia for a reason), and ultimately, why does that revolutionary twist or cutting-edge character you’re hunting for need to be one of our own century?