Some of this depends on what you read. Much of early philosophy is astoundingly relevant, particularly when you read a modern English translation with good translation notes.

Hundreds or thousands of years may have passed, and yet the lessons are as valuable today as when they were written.

With philosophy in particular, I would argue the classics are worth reading to understand how their ideas have shaped history, and how their ideas continue to shape the present and future - because at their heart what they describe is human thought and behaviour, and those are surprisingly unchanged over the interceding years.

Have to say I completely disagree with this, especially with respect to 21st and late 20th centuries. We may be more concerned with design nowadays (although I'd argue mostly on a commercial level), but to extrapolate that to an improvement in the aesthetics of writing seems a gross error.

If we assume that reading great books and practicing writing is critical to becoming a great writer, we've never been in worse time for writing development. The average person grows up reading--if they read at all--Harry Potter, Twilight, etc., being inundated with inane advertising, steeped in piss-poor social media posts, etc. The most writing the average person does is work email. Contrast that to, e.g., Herman Melville, who grew up reading pretty much solely the King James Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and who probably corresponded with friends and family every day.

I even think the vast majority of 21st century writers would disagree with you.

What the average person is reading or writing is irrelevant to whether or not great writing is being produced.

There are vastly more people who have pursued educations and careers in literature and writing than any past point in history, including reading the classics you expect. We've gone from populations that weren't even literate, to university degrees being normal.

Plenty of people are putting out great writing. The problem has become finding it in a sea of publications.

I agree that "vastly more people who have pursued educations and careers in literature and writing than any past point in history." I don't think that necessarily means we're producing better writers than the best writers of the pre-18th century Earth, largely because exemplary writers are formed--like a Terence Tao in math--at an early age. Anecdotally Faulkner never graduated from college; Shakespeare never went to college.

Let's go back to the (overly) strong statement our parent post made:

>I think that writing just like everything else has improved with the 20th and 21st century's obsession with design. As such, not all but the best modern writing is much more expressive, concise and communicative.

Concision is more a modern trend than anything else and not an absolute good so we'll ignore it.

Name me a 21st century writer more expressive and communicative than Shakespeare. Or assuming he's too "long-tail," someone more expressive than Faulkner. And I agree this is completely subjective, so I'd think the best course of action is seeing if there is any academic consensus on the subject.

Just some quick googling, but here's an article [0] about a Stanford study showing that modern students are writing more than ever (mostly through text messages/social media). But one wonders whether text messages are (a) "prose" in the literary sense, (b) materially different enough on a mental level from just talking to someone to offer any additional benefit, (c) transferable in skills to writing a novel. The authors say that the students are good at "assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across," but their test subjects are a bunch of Stanford students who are great at jumping through hoops and conforming to expectations--as shown by the fact that they got into Stanford. Not to mention that they're not comparing the papers to a sample of pre-texting papers...

Anyway, not like that article is definitive or anything.

Not sure this kind of comparison is meaningful.

Many modern books when I read them, I'm immersed into the world that is created, sometimes not wanting them to end. Never felt like that with Shakespeare. Another book I think that highlights this difference is Voltaire's candide, such a fast paced fantastic story, but it doesn't draw you in. But a fast paced dan brown book tends to draw me in way more than Voltaire did. But Candide is a far far cleverer book I think with a lot of things to think about. Shakespeare seems similar, great storylines with fantastic prose but just doesn't draw you in the way modern book (or scripts) do, well at least not for me.

So expressiveness? the ability to convey meanings and feeling? Most any modern novelist can do this better than Shakespeare can (for me).

The 20th century is so rich in good lit. Even Faulkner (you in your latter comment) is in this time period. And getting closer to today you still have solid authors: Gene Wolfe, Jim Harrison, Cormac McCarthy, Marilynne, Robinson, Susanna Clarke, China Mieville, Dan Simmons, Ursula K. Le Guin. These aren't chumps.

The 21st century is just beginning. It will shake out over time. I suspect a part of it is a minor fetishization with language that differs from what we're used to. Like a British accent can sound delightful to me even if it's not any more literate than me. The same could hold with past writing styles. So what is "blandly" written now, might not sound bland to people 50 years from now. Just a thought.

I agree that we need to be very judicious in choosing the right books.

Somewhat related, I read Madame Bovary a while ago and the back of the book said something about it being one of the first modern novels (or something to that effect) and so I read it in that light, and it occurred to me several times throughout that if it were written today, it would be completely ignored. There were like 50-100 pages in the middle that I thought would have definitely been cut out by a modern editor. Maybe it just wasn't my thing.

It was exceptional in the time it was written and it's special for that reason, but if you want to read a romance involving a really moody lady, there's probably tens of newer better choices that are also considered "classics".

I largely agree, but there's a broadening from visiting other times as well as other countries. Since a book is less immersive than actual travel, you need to read quite a bit of older stuff to get much of that effect. At least, I had to.

Oh absolutely. And if you really want to appreciate modern literature you need some grounding in cannpnical works.

They establish our common tropes amd metaphors. You'll get a lot more out of most modern works having that background. Hell, you'll get more out of the Simpsons

I still have a reading list of cannonical works. It's just shorter and I pursue it less aggressively. One thing I'd say too is that college lit classes and our popular notion of "classical" works both over index on books. You can get a lot more bang for the buck imo out of essays.

> if you really want to appreciate modern literature you need some grounding in canonical works

Cultural literacy can be raised in lots of ways besides studying the musty canon. And why limit yourself to the slice of modern entertainment where the canon is prerequisite?

Deciding for yourself what art you value -- after questioning the canon, ignoring academics, critics and other authorities -- is the highest form of appreciation.

Each individual owns their experience. The author is not the authority.

Precisely that may be a good reason to read the classics, as time may a good judge of lasting literary merit. Some books are valued 200/300 years after their writing, while others were of more ephemeral relevance. For the books rolling out of press today, it is difficult to make an assessment, so I read mostly older ones.

> Having taken Carl Sagan's axiom to heart that we have a very limited number of books we can read in our lifetimes and should therefore hold them dearly, I read few books older than 200 years.

It's so strange how the same idea can affect people so differently.

Sagan's axiom actually made me read old books only. Bible, greek mythology, shakespeare, etc. I even learned latin to read Newton's Principia, vulgate and other latin texts. I don't think I have the patience to learn ancient greek.

Pretty much every modern literature is derivative of the bible, greek mythology, etc. So why not read the real deal?

> Pretty much every modern literature is derivative of the bible, greek mythology, etc. So why not read the real deal?

The same reason we use modern computers even though they're ultimately derivative of primitive tally sticks. “Derivative of” does not mean “worse than”.