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Question: Is literature like Dickens, Jane Austen, Victor Hugo, Tolstoy basically the period's equivalent of pop culture!?
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You can never say one is better than the other!. The reason being that you can't compare apples and oranges!. The sociocultural, economic, technical and other aspects of the society are different today from what it was yesterday!. I have not lived through the times of classic literature, but who knows, maybe those books were the "pop culture" of those days (though I doubt that but it is not impossible that some of that might be called so)!.

There is one factor though - that the classics have tested time and have overcome it!. The same can not be said about contemporary literature till the day that they qualify to become classics by age!. If they become classics by merit also at that time and people still read them then in terms of popular success those would have emulated classics in some sense!.

-- Fred (http://www!.webliterature!.net for classics)Www@QuestionHome@Com

"Pop culture of their era" is a fair assessment, particularly in Dickens' case, but comparing it to books written today isn't valid!. Our culture has changed so much from then that we're not in any position to render a normative (good/bad) judgement on books that were popular a hundred years ago, or even longer!.Www@QuestionHome@Com