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Failed Writer's Journey: Classics are Popular [1]

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Date: 2025-07-25

The Mona Lisa is a shit painting.

I know, I know: what click bait! It is the greatest painting ever! Those brush strokes! That smile! That smile is boring, the composition is uninspired, and the overall effect is bored person at a Sears Studio photo sitting. The painting sucks. And so does Ernest Hemingway while we are at it. So do the Bronte Sisters, almost all the Romantics, Led Zeplin, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Moby Dick is still good, though.

Okay, so other childish rage bait, what’s the point. The point is that there is a kerfuffle (still undefeated world champion of words) going around about how nothing popular can be classic; or at least nothing that is popular now will ever be classic. It strikes me as silly in two ways.

First, everything that we consider classic had some measure of popularity. The works had to be made, and they had to survive long enough for a reconsideration to happen. Yes, Moby Dick was a flop in its day. But someone published it in numbers that ensured its survival in the public consciousness until it could be appreciated. I promise you, there were many, many more flops that never survived that long, even from Melville’s day.

Second, someone liked these stories enough to push them as classics. Now, set aside for a moment works that are studied for their influence. Something could be a classic based on how it shaped what came after it. However, for most classics some group of scholars, educators and taster-makers decided “Yes, this is great! This speaks to us!” It may not have had mass appeal, but it had appeal with at least some people, and those people happened to be influential enough to press their tastes. That is why as academia and media have gotten more diverse; more voices have come to the fore. Not because there is some woke conspiracy to cancel poor Ernest Hemingway. But because different things speak to different people at different times.

Classic merely means something that was popular enough to get printed and survive long enough for taste setters, whether be popular or academic, to find it and realize it speaks to their collective desires and experiences. The Mona Lisa was not considered a great painting until the 20th century, for example. Tastes change with circumstances. What speaks to one generation in their time and place does not speak to the next. One day, Shakespeare will probably be regarded as overhyped, because the circumstances of the world change to the point where what we value in him is not apparent or needed or respected. Every classic you have ever read was in your syllabus because it was popular with some group of taste makers. What is an is not a classic change over time because what is popular among taste makers, and who taste makers are, changes over time. In the end, everything that survives survives because it is popular with some influential group.

Except Thoreau. He’s always sucked.

Weekly Word Count

About 3 grand, but it is all planning/plotting/etc., not a real story. I made a joke about Brick meets Encyclopedia Brown and someone suggested her boys would love that and I should take a stab at it, so I am. Otherwise, waiting for feedback on the tech abortion thriller. So many things to fail at …

Have a great weekend everyone.

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