The Handmaid’s Tale question

The Handmaid's Tale is certainly one of the greatest pieces of literature to come from the 20th century.

I don't think Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is staying around for a long time.

Another post on goodreads suggested "The Catcher In The Rye" is too out of date for most people to relate to. The angst, the wealth of time to be angsty without needing to pay the rent, the things that are causing angst are somewhat difficult for many to sympathize with today. What do you think?

I agree with Michael. I don't think The Name of the Rose will have staying power. It's a difficult read, even for people who enjoy the classics (and know Latin lol). Now, Catcher in the Rye I just read for the first time and I'm surprised by how much I liked it.

For contemporary books that might become classics I'd say: Toni Morrison's Beloved, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential, and Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn.

I mention the above books not just because they are some of my personal favorites, but because I have been constantly assigned them for class (The Things They Carried I read FOUR times in high school and college combined), Beloved I've lost count.

This is really a great question. One of my first ever lectures on my literature degree was a discussion of the concept of the Western Canon, an achknowledgement of the phenomenon and partly a debunking of it. First of all, the people that really make these decisions as to what becomes one of the famous and revered part of modern literature are either academics -- who bring the importance and value of the works to the attention of the public; publishers -- who promote certain books as 'Classics'; and of course the system of awards bodies, namely the Nobel prize.

I agree with some of the works listed above, and I'll have to look some of the others up(!). However, there are references in this posting to books that definitely are already part of the Western Canon. For example, this chain starts from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale - which judging by it being part of the compulsory reading on the British curriculum for many years, I would say that it is definitely already is part of the canon. Also some of these are Nobel prize winners (Toni Morrison), who again would be widely considered already a part of the canon.

So this is a fun exercise and so here are the recent books that I would consider should be part of the Western Canon:

• Toni Morrison (for various novels) but in particular Beloved
• Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex
• Phillip Roth - American Pastoral
• Tony Kushner - Angels in America
• Halldor Laxness - Iceland's Bell
• Don Delillo White Noise
• Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children
• Orhan Pamuk - Snow
• Fred d'Aguiar - Feeding the Ghosts
• Zadie Smith - On Beauty

Davis - is it possible for you to share with us your references of where you found the Western Canon across decades as I would be very interested to check it out? If you are implying that previous decades have already been determined, does that mean that you are really considering works from the last decade?