Is it true that books nowadays do not rise to the highest levels of literature e.g. Odyssey as they used to?

title says it.Is it true that books nowadays do not rise to the highest levels of literature e.g. Odyssey as they used to?
No.





Basically, you have to ask what ';highest levels of literature'; means. There are plenty of modern books that are considered High Art; Cormac McCarthy's work, for example.





Will they still be read 2,000 years from now? Who knows. But then, very little of *anything* is read 2,000 years later.





Also, we've got a much larger pool of artists now, which distorts the lens. Writing was *rare* 2,000 or 1,000 years ago. It was very expensive. Very few people could do it. So only those with extremely high passion got published.





Today, we may have about the same *number* of great books being written, but we have far more books total.





So, when you consider that in the ';annals of great literature'; there can be decades-long gaps between great works of literature, I think we're doing fine. :-)Is it true that books nowadays do not rise to the highest levels of literature e.g. Odyssey as they used to?
Every century you have a few books that rise to that level, over the centuries that accumulates to a lot.


So no, it is not true.





but there is much more output (number of books written and published) then there used to be because society has become richer and more mass market books are published. So the gems are hidden in the mountain of books.
I think it's impossible to tell. Tastes change, as do standards of what is ';great literature';. Shakespeare, as an example, was certainly a well-respected playwright in his own time, but it wasn't until the 18th century that he became the icon of English Literature that he still is.





As others have said, you also have to consider that there is so much more out there than even 50 years ago, so there's a lot more dreck to wade through.
Yes and no. The books like the oddesy did usualy have morals at the end of each book, as many books did back then. Books today however, are a lot more modernized than back then and we can produce books faster, have the freedom to write almost anything we want, and a really really lot has changed since those times. It also depends on what genre you are talking about and which aurthor is writing the books. Yes their are many books out their with very few meaning and little imagination( I wont give names) but many many books are worth reading that are meaningful, imaginative, and well written that are deffinatly worth reading. Hope this helped =D
Absolutely untrue. There is still great literature being published. Alas, it doesn't sell like popular literature, which will be all but forgotten in fifty years, replaced by new pop lit.





But there are brilliant, insightful stories masterfully written. Maybe you're not buying/reading the right stuff.





Consider ';The Crimson Petal and the White,'; or ';The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.';
Yep, nowadays there are no Dantes, Shakespears, Miltons- real geniuses of literature. Now everyone are concerned to earn more monay, to satisfy the tastes of masses. Though after WW 2 there appeared some good writes, good modernists. Very few left though
Yes and no. The difference is there are thousands of authors nowadays so of course there is going to be a good amount of crap. On rare occasion books rise to that level. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy comes to mind as a recent example.
To be commercial, they shouldn't even rise to the level of Steinbeck or Hemingway. The Odyssey -- forget it!!