I've no particular desire to defend the classics but I do think the emerging dichotomy between toxic harmful classics and wholesome unproblematic diverse modern books is deeply reductive and unhelpful when it comes to understanding modern literature.

I understand that part of the dismissive "lol it's just all racism/sexism/incest/abuse/etc" takes on the classics is a response to the insistence that these books are paragons of morality.

It's a rebuttal to the idea that virtue can be instilled by this art.

But to me, the insistence that art be teaching morality and offering concrete, simple answers remains. The joke is predicated on that.

And if you carry that framework of critique to modern works, it's just not a useful metric.

If The Joy Luck Club, The Colour Purple and Beloved (all books I studied at school) can be dismissed with the same metric of "oh they depict racism and sexism and should not be taught", maybe this is not a good yardstick?

I stress how much I am neither arguing these books are beyond criticism nor do I think they are "the same" as the Canterbury Tales or Shakespeare. They abjectly aren't.

I'm just trying to highlight the inadequacy of the metric.

And I know most of this is just glib joke tweets taken out of context and strung together into a philosophy through viral repetition.

In case unclear, I am absolutely here for toppling the canon. There is no need to venerate them or inflict them onto children.

I just think we are arguing ourselves into a corner with the morality metric.