On Re-reading the Classics

Recently at a second hand book sale, I bought a copy of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone. I’d read it many years ago when I was in high school during a period where I tried to read as many of the classic books as I could. Don Quixote, Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, The Count of Monte Cristo, Moby Dick, Little Women, Huckleberry Finn, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and others. At that time I wasn’t as aware that many good and great books continued to be written and I’d never get to the end of any list!

What makes a book a classic and who determines that? There are lists like the best 100 novels. Books that continue to be read and sold in bookstores, taught in literature courses, approved of by critics. But not everyone likes the same books, and some of the older ones don’t necessarily appeal as they once might have. Times do change and so do some of the titles that are read.

Still, certain books stand the test of time and continue to entertain and to provoke thought.

I still find Dickens absorbing. Re-reading David Copperfield some years ago reminded me of what a good story teller Dickens was. I love most of his, though found Bleak House, which I read for the first time recently, too long and quite a chore to get through. Interestingly, Dickens was a mentor for Collins and they remained friends.

The Moonstone, first published in 1868, is often cited as the first great English detective story. There are, however, earlier instances of the mystery and crime genre in Arabic fiction (in The Thousand and One Nights), and Chinese fiction. As well, there are other examples of English language crime fiction, including such stories as ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, by Edgar Allan Poe, published in a magazine in 1841.

Getting back to re-reading The Moonstone, I was first impressed by the several pages of notes at the end that highlighted the origins of some of Collins’ ideas. In other words, he did his research, from drawing on real life crimes, to using historical events, as well as theories of disease and treatments, and personal experience of the effects of opium. The notes are nearly as fascinating reading as the novel itself.

Once into the book, I was charmed and delighted by the humour of one of the narrators, the house-steward where the incidents take place. Collins used several narrators, and Gabriel Betteredge, with his reliance on Robinson Crusoe, “I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life,” is my favourite.

The story draws the reader quickly into the action and along the twisted paths of possible motives, with plenty of false leads and a variety of plausible villains.

Along with the mystery, Collins presents social tensions of the class system, pokes fun and certain kinds of philanthropy, and touches on British Imperialism in India.

I had no trouble at all in reading this book, and thoroughly enjoying it, though it was published nearly 150 years ago. To me that’s a classic!