Modern Art Or False Fiction By: Andy Hua

Today’s bestselling authors appear to flood the market with modern day masterpieces but are really soggy lamentations of classic writings

Ever wonder if today’s bestsellers are really bestsellers? I’m pretty sure you have. Today bestselling authors write books with plots that were literally copied off the great classics of the 20^th and even 18^th century authors and getting the credit for it. It’s simply disgusting. After all they are writers. Doesn’t it make you think whether bestselling authors deserve to be bestselling authors? I’m pretty sure it does

Jane Austen v/s Stephanie Meyer

Twilight, the bestselling book about vampires, is the one of the New York Times’ bestselling books. Yet if anyone knew anything about writing people would realize that Stephenie Meyer copied the plot of Twilight off of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The plot line of Pride and Prejudice is that the late Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet fall in love with each other. Yet the personality of the late Mr. Darcy do not work out with the Bennets nor does Elizabeth‘s personality work out with the Darcy’s. And the sisters of Mr. Bingley who have taken a liking to Mr. Darcy and work to get rid of Elizabeth Bennet in order to get Mr. Darcy for themselves.

In Twilight the plot is that Bella and Edward love each other but because Bella is a human and Edward is a vampire they cannot be together. Notice the similarity? The two stories both revolve around one basic plot. Two characters fall in love while and outside influence keeps them apart. In Pride and Prejudice the barrier between the two main characters is the difference between the different personalities. While in Twilight the barrier between the two character is the difference between the two with one being sort of a monster and the other a normal human(or so it seems).

Yet the only difference between these two books is one is a modern day bestseller and the other is simply titled a classic. It is awkward how the new version of Pride and Prejudice or Twilight as it is titled became more popular than the original. And plus what makes it even stranger is that the author Stephenie Meyer even said that she herself was a devoted Jane Austen fan. How could it be that a devoted fan got her version of Pride and Prejudice more popular than Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in the modern world? Could it be that teens are becoming more addicted to trendy books? Who knows!?! Or do we?

Holmes v/s Mitch Rapp

Vince Flynn, New York Times’ #1 bestselling author, created a character known as Mitch Rapp. Mitch Rapp is introduced into the story as the CIA’s most deadliest assassin or in other word the deadliest human weapon employable by the CIA. Yet once again if anyone knew anything about literature everyone would realize that Mitch Rapp’s supposed assassin instincts was simply a modernized version of Sherlock Holmes’ science of deduction. The science of deduction is basically observing things that an average person would overlook. For example skin color and the expression on ones face. In Conan Doyle’s story of the Greek interpreter the tan and expression on a man’s face helped Mr. Holmes and his brother Mycroft with identifying that the man was a soldier that was recently discharged from the ranks.

In Vince Flynn’s Act of Treason, Mitch Rapp uses what he knows and his own opinions to formulate his theories. And just like Mr.Holmes Mitch  Rapp put himself in the place of the criminal and thinks of what he would probably do. Yet in Vince Flynn’s novel he engages in a wild goose chase instead of Conan Doyle’s style of luring the suspect into his own arrest. Because Vince Flynn employs such a way of chasing the criminal the story sort of drags on and very often the only thing that holds the reader’s attention is the cursing and gun play. Yet compared to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes never is there a time where the reader is bored out of his mind or hanging on to the book by a thread. Looking at Vince Flynn’s writing style now shows that there is nothing special. Yet why people buy this sort of stuff? I really don’t know.

Modern Day Writing V/S Classic Literature

The Classic Literature of the 1800′s today are disappearing rapidly. Nowadays you can ask someone who Sherlock Holmes was and you’d probably get a response like this: “Isn’t he that famous detective or something?” Or something like this:”Wasn’t he in a movie or something?” This is purely insulting! Then you ask someone about Twilight and you’d probably get something like this: “OMG, that book is so GOOD! I can’t even put it down! I love vampires. And like Edward Cullen is like soo cool!” and so on and so forth. Geez does anyone in this world know a single thing about classics!?! I mean think about it. Today’s authors copyright, sue and write about topics that are simply horrible. Every book written by modern day authors with the exception of nonfiction books contains something about love, sex, war, and dying. Half the plot lines in today’s books are simply those of the past simply changed around to fit today’s society. Take Twilight for example, as you already know Stephenie Meyer simply took the plot of Pride and Prejudice and changed it around to fit something that today’s teens and young adults would like. From the 1800s to the late 1900s writing has changed and developed of course. That is understandable but is it changing for better or for worse? Bradbury copied lines from Shakespeare yet still wrote books worthy of recognition and came Stephenie Meyer who took from Austen.

She wrote a book that only gained popularity from the movie. Even J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter gained fame from the movie yet the difference in the book’s basic plot affected the quality of the work. Rowling’s writing even before the movie was a well-written work of art. Meyer’s writing was failed and emphasized on things like love and sex in order to keep the reader interested.Though my search to find the reason behind the rapid disappearance of classics has failed so far it has not been entirely completely inconclusive.

Though this may cause much anger, theoretically, today the average person knows little about the basic foundations of a good writer and the great writers of today are slowly disappearing as writers who care little about quality but more on money take over. Yet as a conclusion from interviews if people were told that many of the bestsellers that they loved were simply soggy knockoffs of old classics people may look back at them to search for the truth themselves. This probably could the new way to motivate people to read classics. If this works people obviously would begin reading more and more classics boosting popularity. But this is only a theoretical conclusion and prediction. No one knows what the future holds for classics. In conclusion, although classics are not popular today they still and always will hold their proper place in history and literature.