What makes a classic?

I am reading East of Eden, by John Steinbeck, and it's depressing as heck. It's making me think, though: what makes a classic a classic? And is that enough to make it worth reading? When I'm done reading this tragic story, will I be able to say "I'm glad I've read it"?

After some googling around, the verdict I distilled out of the internet's always-plentiful and often useless sea of opinions was that timelessness and universality are two major criteria for a classic. With having NEVER been out of print, it seems that East of Eden has proven itself timeless. And its heavy drawing on biblical themes may seem to be evidence that it has a universal tale of morality to tell. I'm only half way through so I'm far from drawing any useful conclusions on that front. I'm not sure it's worth blogging about a book half way through the reading process, except that I'm finding it so dark that I just want to throw this out there and get a few opinions.

I mentioned my thoughts to Kerry, who asked me why I just don't quit reading it if I don't like it. I don't know how serious she was about not finishing it (she strikes me as a book-finisher), but all I could say was that I was reading it because it is a classic and I feel like that means I should read it. And if I don't like it at the end then at least I will be able to explain why, having read from cover to cover.

But trying to explain why I will probably finish reading it even though it's an awful, awful story reminded me of a question that my first year university English professor posed to our class. She asked us: why do we read?. It was a truly awkward moment. All of us first years unwilling to speak, afraid to answer incorrectly, and dreading being called on in front of a class full of strangers. She eventually answered the question with her own answer, which was that we read to know that we are not alone. We read to know that we are not alone.

Frankly, I would rather feel alone than know any of the characters that have been introduced to me in East of Eden. In my further googling (c'mon, this is a blog for fun, I can google for sources, right?), the thing I found that seems to fit this situation the best is Italo Calvino's thoughts on what makes a classic. Apparently he wrote an essay called "Why read the classics?" in the 1980s that says "a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say". And then he personalizes it, saying that "YOUR classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you define yourself in relation to him, even in dispute with him."

Well Mr. Steinbeck, I think we are officially in dispute.

August was august

Did you know that "august" is a word outside of being a month? I like that about it. Especially since August does in fact tend to be august. Basically it means: inspiring admiration, majestic. Among other things.

Anyways, back to the grand recap of our crazy summer. I’m once again behind on this but you know we’ve been busy doin' stuff. So, AUGUST. Or what I can remember of it...

We rode into August on a wedding high, but first took a mini-break to go to folk fest.  We just bought a day pass and had a pretty awesome time hanging out with some favourite people: Scott, Geneva, Francis, Kaeli, and my dad. Those kids are the cutest. But those kids outside are even cuter. Every time I hang out with F&G I think my head might explode from all the love and cuteness. The next day I got in touch with the lovely Kerry, who was also in town for folk fest. She was in her usual mid-summer state of pure exhaustion, so I forced her to come take a nap on our new inflatable guest bed that we were testing out for Vancouver. Then I dropped her off at folk fest and she tried to sneak attack me with an extremely final goodbye as she got out of the car. I believe it was something like "I'm never going to see you again". Nerd.

After the ‘fest, we continued the wedding trend all the way down to Southern Alberta for Bri and Patrick’s first instalment of their wedding, which was basically a full wedding sans rings, which were later exchanged at another ceremony in Ontario. It was a beautiful weekend and fun to get down south and see a real life “rattlesnake protection area”. The farm was a beautiful place for a wedding and the party was full of familiar friendly faces. Joel and I had the privilege of driving down and camping with Lisa, which was a TREAT. I always forget that she totally loves rap music and club music. It’s hilarious. But I never forget that she is fun to hang out with. 

A highlight of the weekend was when Lisa looked at me and said “you and I are going to dance to the next song together, no matter what it is”. And can you guess what it was? It was totally the Macarena. UGH. Also, DID YOU KNOW THAT MICROSOFT WORD AUTOCORRECTS “MACARENA” TO BE CAPITALIZED? Ha! Awesome.

Returning to Edmonton meant that we had to start facing our reality. You know, the reality where we had to pack up and move our lives to Vancouver? Let me just say that it was a luxury to have extra time to do this, but that consolidating two households plus downsizing them to fit into a one bedroom apartment is a big job. Joel had a three bedroom house that was basically full of stuff that he owned, and I had a one bedroom plus den’s worth of stuff. So that was a heck of a lot of consolidating. Thank you to the kind and generous Lewis, who lived with us all summer and was gracious enough to overlook the chaos. 

After a summer of slow goodbyes, we capped it off with an official goodbye party, at the always-stylish and always welcoming home of Dawn and Rick. They saved our butts from major house embarrassment if we had tried to have people over to our place. It was a beautiful summer night and a great way to say goodbye to Edmonton and our friends here.

Then, the last thing we did in August was leave our home of 27ish years each, and drive a van full of our stuff to a new life in Vancouver. I can’t say enough good things about life in Vancouver so far, but I’ll save those for later, because really, right now, I am just feeling a little sad about leaving Edmonton.