Today I was talking with someone I’ve known for a while. I had always known him to be an intelligent person, interested in people and ideas.
I happened to mention that I was going to see a theater production of Jane Eyre. He gave me a blank look, because, it seems, he had never heard of Jane Eyre.
He said the name reminded him of the name of a character in Game of Thrones, and he went on for a bit about how many times he had binged Game of Thrones. In that moment I felt a yawning gulf between us.
And just last week I was talking to a young playwright — a very good one. He was telling me that he had an idea for a play that would be told successively from the varying points of view of different characters.
I said, “Oh, like Rashomon!” It turned out that he had never heard of Rashomon.
I found myself wondering whether the classics are simply fading from our collective consciousness. Perhaps they are now thought of as culturally irrelevant.
Yet the classics contain so many wonderful ideas, ways of thinking about and expressing things, and deep insights into the human condition. That’s why they are classics.
I found myself wondering what to say to the young playwright. Should I just let it go?
Reader, I harried him.