What are the classics of the 21st century thus far?

I love AtD but I've got all sorts of daft stuff going on in my head when playing the masterpiece game, in order to try and make it a little more meaningful and AtD doesn't feel like "masterpiece" material (it's still great - I like it plenty more than a lot of masterpieces). It's a bit of a wodge - and feels more like people will say "TP was a great writer of the late 20th/early 20th C" and within that won't necessarily point to AtD as TP's masterpiece.

I'd like to say something like Remainder, say, which feels like it augurs stuff, packs the attention grabbing punch of a single idea well executed, and is memorable, has enough of a mid to late 20thC European theoretical sensibility to feel it might in someway be representative of the modern.

Think I'm probably with Scott tho - people will maybe point to the great US TV from the last decade and a bit. They certainly should - it seems to have the same grand ambitions and energy to achieve them of much that tends to be put in the masterpiece category. Easily outranks film in that respect.

I feel also the likely shift in economic power is going to mean masterpieces are likely to be found from material not in the Western cultural production market. That's maybe not in the scope of this particular question, but idk, maybe Sha Dingding (thanks _Rudipherous_) will produce something, or there'll be something Korean (I rate the Infernal Affairs trilogy very high, if not quite at masterpiece level).

there aren't enough things like remainder

true.

the trouble with judging the state of literature is that the stuff that gets hyped (Franzen) is already looking as stale as 20th century event novels like "Bonfire of the Vanities"

bonfire of the vanities is seen as 'stale'?

I feel like remainder could go either way, either a) canonically remembered as the most interesting novel of otherwise dim early C21 British literary world or b) drifting into semi-obscurity, enthused over by ageing bookish sorts (ie us) & occasionally rediscovered by young turks. Maybe I'm saying it's a 'minor classic'. Sort of depends where McCarthy goes, I guess. But it's certainly the first book that came into my head when thinking about this in relation to British novels.

Fizzles otm as per. Agree about Against The Day.

And general agreement with the TV line in this thread - it seems to me the medium most obviously going through a golden age (US TV, that is).

the new yes minister

oh god what's it like? I'd forgotten about that.

it is exactly

Think I'm probably with Scott tho - people will maybe point to the great US TV from the last decade and a bit. They certainly should - it seems to have the same grand ambitions and energy to achieve them of much that tends to be put in the masterpiece category. Easily outranks film in that respect.

Even if I like what I've seen I find that kind of talk insufferable really.

Don't know why it has to be compared to film at all. Apples and Oranges.

this sort of talk was maaaybe legitimized in a single instance by the extraordinary density and blackness of the sopranos but there is nothing else close to it

apples are shinier than oranges. oranges are less red than apples. you can compare anything to anything. saying that one art form or branch of the arts or one medium speaks to you more than another isn't really that unfair at all. television has inspired me in recent years! moreso than dance or painting or the musical theatre.or books. or rock records. or whatever. what's hard to understand about that?

x-post

and nobody has really come up with a looooong list of books or movies or recordings that are "epic" "masterpieces" from the 21st that they think will outlive us all. but people have said a lot of nice things about cable television. so its not just me...

agree that the sopranos is really the only tv show that warrants masterpiece talk (a masterpiece of television, it should be said).

mad men seems significant in the big scheme if only because it seems to buck the tendency for a constantly forward-moving dramatic arc. seen week to week it's almost like entering this slightly weird "otherness of the past" kind space.

Lots of people do that the TV > film as if wanting to bury film. Whereas all they do is show up an anxiety for TV to be accepted as film now is into some form of accpetability by I don't even who anymore. That's before getting to the notion that a lot of people who say this kind of thing (at least in this coutry) hate TV, and love that this stuff is available as box sets so they can switch it off and go on a fkn 10 hour marathon w/it.

So sorry should've said I'm not getting at you Scott, understand your angle. xxp

oh, doh, Cloud Atlas, I guess that is/will become the consensus British novel of last ten years.

feel like the tv drama boxset is a fairly new-ish form (or maybe that the proliferation of the form is now pushing it to the fore as something that can now be compared with movies etc etc). also feel that as a form it now draws more star power and better scripting than movies at present, which is surely a new and significant development.

Come Dine With Me is better than Franzen

you say like you don't mean it but its true!

I mean it!

also, here's the thing with me, i'm not even talking about entire series runs when i talk about t.v. i think one great hour or half hour of t.v. is comparable to a great poem/song/short story/novel/movie. they often take more work to make than a lot of poems and paintings too. they can be great art to me. but i really love t.v. so there is that.

good chief!

like, for instance, there are single episodes of trailer park boys that to me are better than some ken loach movies i've seen. or better than the work of some poverty-porn documentary photographers i've seen in recent years. (TPB also funny and also kinda effortlessly could get to the heart of a lot of questions/ideas about social status/ills/problems without even trying to.)

i'll stop about t.v. now though. got work to do. i still love movies. and books and all that. (got stoned and watched blade runner last night though so i can be kinda lazy...)

at the very least franzen would be improved by text having marginal comments intended to be spoken by CDWM voiceover guy.

Sort of off-topic but I feel like a lot of the people who are making looooong draggy hollywood movies should really be making tv instead. Like the last batman film was 4 hours long & half the characters were still really underdeveloped but they got away with it because ppl wanted to spend more time in that world (ditto the hobbit). Whereas a TV show can have 13hrs to unfold so they can spend whole episodes focusing on peripheral characters w/o fucking up the pacing of individual segments.

Anyway this has nothing to do with "classics" really except as a possible reason why the classics of the 21st century won't come from (mainstream US) cinema

LOL xp

I think plenty of things that are critically acclaimed right now will just be forgotten in the future. And plenty of stuff that flies under the radar now will be regarded as classic or at least ahead-of-its time.

did you guys ever read my classic post on the first paragraph of The Corrections:

every once in a while i pick up the corrections and every time i look at the first paragraph it stops me dead in my tracks. and stops me from ever reading the book.

"The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms. And the drone and hiccup of a clothes dryer, the nasal contention of a leaf blower, the ripening of local apples in a paper bag, the smell of gasoline with which Alfred Lambert had cleaned the paintbrush from his morning painting of the wicker love seat."

this paragraph drives me a little crazy and the whole northern religion of things comes to an end. firstly, i REALLY want to know how apples ripening in a bag add to the "madness" and "disorder" of an autumn prairie cold front. secondly, i ALWAYS imagine that the storm windows are actually IN the bedrooms. Like, they are all on the bed shuddering. Though, that at least does imply some sort of madness. Thirdly, is the "gust after gust of disorder"...wind? Do empty rooms and yards free of children somehow add to the "madness" of a cold front? if there are leaves and acorns and ripening apples it can't be THAT cold yet. Are leaf blowers and clothes dryers ominous symbols of mother nature's fury? And are the trees smoking a lot of cigarettes and pacing a lot? What exactly makes them "restless"?

― scott seward, Wednesday, April 11, 2012 7:28 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think we'll be alot more cool about videogames in the future, and some stuff will be regarded as classics that laid the ground for whatever futuristic entertainment we do end up with.

then Fizzles came along and knocked it out of the park:

I don't know, I feel the problem may be obscurely connected with wanting to do this:

The madness of the trees ripening in the mortgage of a minor light. You could feel it: gust after gust of disorder. The cold front restless in the sky: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low on the autumn prairie, termperatures falling, storm windows shuddering in empty bedrooms. No red oaks in the yard here. The children rained acorns on houses with no gasoline. The nasal contention of a clothes dryer, the drone of a leaf blower, paper apples in a local bag, the autumn prairie coming to an end. A cold front lengthened on yellowing zoysia. The smell of the whole northern religion of things with which Alfred Lambert had made morning love to the wicker seat after a paintbrush. HIccuping.

― Fizzles, Wednesday, April 11, 2012 8:24 PM (9 months ago)

this too. still drives me bonkers:

and even when i browse at random i find things like:

"It's the fate of most Ping-Pong tables in home basements eventually to serve the ends of other, more desperate games."

It's like one of those wise and pithy Tolstoy quotes...except....really? IS that the fate of most Ping-Pong tables in home basements? Maybe I hang out in the wrong prairie towns.

― scott seward, Wednesday, April 11, 2012 7:31 PM (9 months ago)

it'll all be in my book: Franzen Line By Line

right, now we just need CDWM voiceover dude to read that out

Freedom is even worse with that bullshit

http://www.nypost.com/rw/nypost/2012/08/23/news/web_photos/23.1N019.jesus3.C--300x300.jpg

_Think I'm probably with Scott tho - people will maybe point to the great US TV from the last decade and a bit. They certainly should - it seems to have the same grand ambitions and energy to achieve them of much that tends to be put in the masterpiece category. Easily outranks film in that respect._

Even if I like what I've seen I find that kind of talk insufferable really.

really? that surprises me slightly. wait, if I meant "film from the same period" (which is what I meant) is that any different?

I feel this period is a golden age for TV (bit strong maybe) comparable to the golden ages of film - popular, clever, imaginative, daring. Film during this period doesn't feel that strong to me. Mind you I did spend an awful lot of time since 2000 going to see films like Charlie's Angels II Full Throttle so maybe I get what I deserve.

Cloud Atlas- yes definitely.

Come Dine With Me is better than Franzen.

"The nasal contention of a clothes dryer" sounds like a clueless guy making fun of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

tbf Celebrity Love Island was probly better than Franzen

guys EVERYTHING EVER is better than franzen

there, we can move on now

the anal contention of strongo

i mean don't get me wrong i'm always in favor of franzen-bashing in any form

that whole opening graf from the corrections reads like what a broken computer might spit out if you fed it a cormac mccarthy novel and a nicholas sparks novel

It's a mild Saturday afternoon, I'm trying to avoid the Anita Brookner novel on my table scowling at me, and I'd like some antifranzenation on this thread.

i have like a stack of books to get through that's almost as tall as i am, and instead i am seriously thing self-abusing thoughts like going to the library and trying to read freedom again

wait, don't get confused, franzen's nasal thing was a leaf blower. fizzles made it into a clothes dryer.

fizzles reimagining of franzen so much better. i really wish he would do the whole book. the re-corrections according to fizzles.

man Scott that first graf is just dire. How did this book become famous? It was entirely due to Oprah, right?

_Think I'm probably with Scott tho - people will maybe point to the great US TV from the last decade and a bit. They certainly should - it seems to have the same grand ambitions and energy to achieve them of much that tends to be put in the masterpiece category. Easily outranks film in that respect._

Even if I like what I've seen I find that kind of talk insufferable really.

really? that surprises me slightly. wait, if I meant "film from the same period" (which is what I meant) is that any different?

Thought you meant film from the same period in the first place as you're talking about US TV "from the last decade and a bit".

I think I've had about a dozen or so really awesome experiences at the cinema, mostly foreign*. Its challenging not just in what it talks about, but the way it does in narrative terms. HBO or whatever still restricts that, it needs something seemingly comprehensible and immediate. Also because of censorship a lot is said about how cable shows can show whatever but they often revel in this to the extent of overdoing it.

For TV this is all great, but I don't know I still think the audience knowing who the killer is before Columbo gets to him...its all in that line as much as a break with the past into a more advanced future.

Know this doesn't equate to 60 hours but the quality is def there.

* Charlie's Angels (can't remember which exact one, been years) had so much energy and fun and excitement, record needs to be set straight on that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM

Iirc there was a lot of pre-publication hype about the Corrections because Franzen, an "experimental" writer, had written an essay in Harpers arguing for a return of the age of the big social canvas realistic novel. Turned out that tv did that kind of thing better than he could.