The Butt Ugly Weblog

Why is a classic a classic?

A lot has been said about the current quality of Aku Ankka, the Finnish Disney Magazine, but they still run total classics. The current issue had a Carl Barks story from 1947, in which Donald gets hired as a fireman, and chaos ensues. This is a special story for me, as it is one of my first clear memories: I sat on my mother's lap, and she read the story to me. I was too young for the alphabet to mean anything yet, but the pictures and the story made me laugh, and it kindled my love for stories.

Yesterday, my son sat in my lap while I read the story to him. And today, he insisted on taking it to bed so that he could "read" it before his daily nap. He's too young to grasp the meanings, but now he knows that there is something special in this story.

This is why classics are called classics: They reach across generations and generations, and they become a shared experience - a thing that binds generations together.