Robert McCrum: “Literary classics cluster on the north face of Parnassus. For this vertiginous terrain there are different sherpas. Italo Calvino says that a classic is ‘a book that has never finished what it wants to say’. Ezra Pound identifies ‘a certain eternal and irresponsible freshness’ … Alan Bennett wryly notes: ‘Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.'” (includes lame reason for including drama, poetry, and religious scripture)