...that is the question according to this little article about books we don't read and sometimes claim we do:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/4944520/Why-bluffing-about-books-is-a-civilised-art.html. I linked to this because I've often thought in these last several years of the great books that I have not read and probably will never read and, because the author mentions Flashman, a series that I'm particularly fond. I'm familiar with the gist of a lot of stuff I haven't read, so like the author, I can bluff around a little if the subject comes up in idle conversation. Mostly though, I'm pretty honest about it and came to the realization some time ago that life is too short to dick around with Ulysses. I went on a "classics" kick last year with the intent on reading six or seven. It was on the second, Dickens' "David Copperfield" that I admitted that I just wasn't enjoying it that much. Oh, Dickens is a gifted writer and I marveled at many of his passages but his stories didn't grip me like a tale spun by G.M. Fraser, author of Flashman, or even C.S. Forrester. I think that these later authors profited a great deal from classics writers and really more fully perfected the art. Maybe in another hundred years they'll be the ones getting the nice leather bound treatment of their works for your Time/Life library. Anyway, it's a working theory of mine.
Reading the great works should really be something that begins in the middle school years through college--by the time you become a working stiff, you're too worn out and life gets in the way of wading through them. A pet peeve of many people is the substitution of the classics--mostly the works of the hated "dead white men" with more revisionist authors, the Toni Morrisons of the world. From what I've seen, much of this criticism is on target. This is especially true in high school where frustrated English department types who couldn't get a college gig want to stamp something they consider profound on young scholars, so you get a steady regimen of Plath and O'Connor and Marquez and absolutely nothing uplifting or in the least affirming of the human condition. It would be much more revolutionary to teach the classics, but that would require a little more in the way of imagination and innovation--something missing from the lockstep world of academia. It would also be cool to say that you actually read "War and Peace" during an interview--it would give you gravitas over everyone else within a thousand miles and just might get your young ass hired. Something to think about these days.
2 comments:
Interesting stuff. I daresay I've read over 500 novels, but most of them have titles many of you - the reader - have never heard of, i.e. -they were neither classics nor highly touted works of present day literature. Sure, I've read plenty of the "good" stuff, and probably enjoyed most of it. Still, when I'm tired and the wife ain't willin', my preferences fall somewhere between Hugh Hefner and Steven Hawking, with a little historical stuff thrown in for good measure.
For what it's worth, I once spent 2 weeks on a project in Lorain, OH (coldest weeks of the year, mind you), birthplace of Ms. Morrison.
Nice folks, as rust belt denizen go. But what a shithole.
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