I know predicting the future is always a challenge and full of uncertainties, but I’m still curious to see if you have any predictions of any modern books that might one day be regarded as a classic.
I personally haven’t read any that falls under this category. When I think of classics like To Kill A Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Animal Farm, or even childrens classics like The Velveteen Rabbit, it’s difficult for me to see exactly what actually made them classics. But maybe you’re better at this than I am. And I would love to hear your guesses on which you think will be a classic one day.
If I had to choose one, I’d hesitantly say The Hunger Games, as it’s easy to read but also has a lot to say about challenging a Communist regime. It was assigned in high school back in 2010. So at least one English teacher saw some literary value in it.
There’s always been too much noise.
What will eventually become “The Classics” are the books that English students fall in love with because they’re the people that are going to be teaching it in 50 years.
Maybe at the college level, otherwise they get handed an “approved” list which are usually older than the 1940’s when there were far fewer books being written, i.e. much less noise.
The newest thing we read in High School was Ordinary People, but the next newest after that was Grapes of Wrath.