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Exceedingly Good Novels
In the wake of the BBC's Big Read bunfight, Duncan McLean offers some ideas for the confused on how to approach these lists of classics.
There’s been a lot of debate recently on The Classics. What makes a classic book? Are the old established classics still of any relevance? Which of the books being written today will be the classics of tomorrow? Trainspotting or Pet Sematary? Adrian Mole or Bridget Jones?
Most of the debate’s as tedious as most of the classics all of us were force-fed at school. (I still get a distinct choking sensation whenever I see a certain long-legged water bird lumbering past – symptoms of the post-traumatic stress brought on by having DK Broster’s tedious Jacobite epic The Flight of the Heron rammed down my throat at an impressionable age.) More than that, most of the debate’s a pretty transparent marketing exercise engineered by booksellers and publishers to boost sales of their particular products.
On top of that, most authors involved in the debate have taken the opportunity to assert their own hipness by denouncing the idea of The Classic, while not missing the opportunity to share their little list with the rest of us nonetheless: ‘I loathe the term, “classic”,’ writes Vanessa Feltz. ‘But since you ask…Portnoy’s Complaint, Mrs Dalloway, David Copperfield…’
It’s enough to make any sensible reader head for the cookbooks till the fuss dies down.
Having said that, there are worse things in the world than sharing your enthusiasms for a particular novel or book of poems. The hard and shiny exterior of every book‘n’coffee shop manager, every publishing King of the Wild Market-eer, no doubt conceals a deep-down and genuine love for words and the wonderful things they can do to us. That’s why I welcome the idea of the Underground Classic, the Alternative Classic, the Extraordinary Classic, the Downright Daft Classic, the Crap But Crazy Classic.
The more classics the better! The more lists of classics the better! The more books of lists of classics the better! And the more publishers’ catalogues and booksellers’ shelves of classics the better! Because the profusion of competing and contradictory lists will do two things: 1/ It will reveal the attempts to create such canons or mini-canons as entirely personal, completely non-objective, and often driven by hidden political or commercial agendas. 2/ It will get closer and closer to a genuine debate between readers: a democratic discussion about what different folk find they like, and why.
Don’t wait to be told by David Lodge, or Oxford University Press, or me for god’s sake, what this week’s approved classics are. Make up your own list of the books that mean most to you. And make another list tomorrow. And another the day after that. That’s what underground classics, alternative classics, any kind of classics should really be: the books that mean most to you.
BUT SINCE YOU ASK…
How do you define a classic?
First of all, I must say that the word classic makes me a little nauseous. I think the notion of universally, irreducible values, palatable and satisfying to all peoples at all times is basically culinary imperialism. I mean, it's well known that the Japanese metabolism is intolerant of milk products. Are they meant to appreciate that English 'classic', scones with jam and Devon clotted cream? Or its Scottish equivalent, the cream doughnut? (And any use of non-dairy cream in either case as a substitute surely removes the esteemed items straight out of the classics list.)
What are your essential classic baked confectioneries for the next 100 years?
Despite the above quibbles, I will venture to suggest a number of items that it seems to me any regular haunter of the world's baker's shops should be familiar with. My list is clearly eurocentric, and strongly biased in favour of wheat-based products. I merely note this, with regret at the limits of my own knowledge, and hope that fellow respondents from cultures rich in the products of rice, maize and quinoa will fill the gaps.
1. The Battenburg. For its simple, perfect geometric structure. I think Mondrian is a much undervalued influence on confectionery in general, and marzipan-related cakes in particular.
2. The French Fancy. It was either this or the Madeleine.
3. The Marlborough Tart. I'm sure the 21st century will see a renewed interest in frangipane.
4. The Doughnut. No cream, no jam, no chocolate. Just the straight forward, elemental sugar variety, almost Beckettian in its pared-to-the-bare-essentials perfection.
5. The Christmas Cake. You know.
6. The meringue. Delia's, of course. (Which reminds me, I remember Irvine Welsh saying to me once, 'That Delia's got it sussed, mate! Fucking way to go!'
7. Millionaire Shortbread. Some critics might label this choice elitist, but I feel that a desire to share the tastes of the super-wealthy is a democratic aspirational urge, and not necessarily based on an acceptance of their values vis a vis pastry chefs and other domestic employees.
8. Baked Alaska. Okay, it's probably a pudding rather than a true cake, but I can't resist slipping it in for its perfect marriage of a cold northern realist core, and a magical dream-like surface texture.
9. Jaffa Cakes. I don't think anyone could argue with the inclusion of these classics from the biscuit/cake borderlands - unless, that is, they were averse to the rather ear-waxy filling.
10. The Custard Pie. A triumph of Scottish cuisine, which I'm convinced will conquer the world in the next century - if Nick Nairn does his bit! To fill a Scotch Pie casing with confectioner's custard, then gently caramelise the top with fat dripping down from the sausage rolls on the oven shelf above - genius!
What are the cakes you believe should never have been called classics?
As a general rule I would rather celebrate the high points of modern sweet confectionery, rather than drawing attention to certain items that seem to me merely modish and ultimately meretricious. Having said that, I would be quite happy to see the whole of Mr Kipling's range reduced to crumbs and scattered around the bird tables of the nation. Exceedingly bad cakes!