And I always have to wonder how many more adults would be reading if they hadn’t been taught that books suck in school. By shoving books at teenagers that teenagers are simply not able to read we lose whole generations. Luckily I was addicted to reading before the school got a chance to ruin it, so instead they only taught me some authors suck. But really if my first reading had been the stuff they push in school I wouldn’t be a reader today.
I doubt Dickens is read by more people today than anybody else. Maybe HAS been because you get the whole generational thing, but as for folks going to the store today to get books there’s a reason the best sellers are the best sellers and the best sellers are in the middle of the store and Dickens is over in the “classics literature” section which almost never has anybody in it. And as for the IMDB list, one of those is a British TV show, one is a short “inspired by” and also British, another is a full movie by BBC films, and finally a “characters” credit for a movie and the only distributor signed up is in the UAE. Like I said, if he was massively popular Hollywood would be ripping him off more.
I’m sure there’s some lit classes throwing Ulysses or FW at unsuspecting youths.
Kids can read junk on their own. They need to be exposed to first rate material in school. I was at a dinner recently where the host’s teenage daughter had recently read The Odyssey in school and kept telling me how boring it was. She would never have picked it up if not for school.
It’s the same reason an Art history class teaches about Michaelangelo and not the guy who draws Garfield cartoons or billboards. And music classes should teach Bach and Mozart and not Top 40 pop tunes.
FW is unreadable to some English Profs much less students. It’s not taught outside of specialty courses. And Ulysses is also way to big and complex too manage as part of something else.