There’s no accounting for taste. Or so the saying goes. But I think our tastes are formed when we are young, and depending on how well we were disciplined we will have lofty tastes or low tastes. That’s how I account for my tastes, anyway. I also think that if we have poor taste, we can train ourselves to appreciate healthy fare by feeding upon it even though it doesn’t please us at first.
We do this with foods. I love best the foods I grew up eating. Unfortunately for me, my dad owned a fast food joint, and I’m a junk food addict. For years fruits and vegetables were not to be found in my house. But in the last couple of years I’ve started eating fruits and veggies, and I’ve grown to love them. I don’t just tolerate them, as I did in the beginning. Now I actually love them (OK if they are slathered in cheese or ranch dressing or butter, they are more attractive than when they are naked, I’ll admit, but still…).
I think we can do this with our taste in literature, too. I think we can put into our libraries things we don’t naturally love, and we can learn to love them. My tastes in books are as poor as my tastes in food. (I love the Horatio Alger books for pity’s sakes.) It comes from never being disciplined as a child. If we are always left to satisfy our own literary hunger as we see fit, we will take the easiest road. And since I never went to school—well I went to public school in California through the tenth grade, but public school in California is pretty much like no school at all. At least my hipster high school was like no school. I remember getting drunk with my wood shop teacher and doing cocaine with my algebra teacher, but I didn’t learn a lot of actual, um, school kinds of things.
So I left school at the age of sixteen and set off to work for a living. Never went to college. Was never forced to read many of the books that I hear people are forced to read in school. (The few I did read, I hated.) A couple of years ago I remarked to a group of writers that my lack of education hindered my enjoyment of books. If I read a book where the author tips his hat to Homer or Shakespeare, I don’t get the inside jokes. I miss a whole layer that the author put in.
One of the writers I was speaking with said, “You’re self-educated, not uneducated.” Well, sure, I’m self-educated, but the thing about my teacher was that she was a pushover. She spoiled me. She never made me read books that I didn’t want to read. So I never read Moby-Dick. I see that I can buy it on Kindle now for 89 cents. Am I going to do that? Meh, probably not. I am fairly sure that I can die happily if I never read Moby-Dick.
Why have I traded my burgers and fries for fruits and veggies and home-cooked meals? Because I want to feel healthier. I’m old and fat and my body is paying a price for the years of abuse. I had a strong motivation to change my eating habits.
My reading diet? I’m not as motivated. I’m not feeling any pain, even though my tastes are not refined. In fact, because my tastes are unrefined I’m blissfully ignorant of what I’m missing.
But I wonder if my reading Packer’s book on the puritans rather than reading the puritans themselves isn’t something like eating fast food instead of cooking meals at home. Or, to put it in terms of children’s books, I wonder if The Hunger Games is fast food to the home cooked Theseus and the Minotaur.
And as a writer…if I’m taking my ideas from someone who took her ideas from someone who took her ideas from, oh, say Homer, then are my thoughts only pale, washed out versions of the powerful original? If I read Homer (and struggle to understand why his writings are important, because the truth is that I have read a decent-sized chunk of his stuff, and I didn’t like it at all) am I going to be a deeper thinker and will I write better books?
What do you think? Do we need to read the classics? Do we need to trudge through boring books to get to the meat they contain? (I’m not saying that all classics are boring, by any means, but not only could I not read Beowulf, the little bit I did chew on made me sure I never wanted to see the movie.) Is a slow, laborious story good for our brains? Does it help us think better? Or can there be a lot of meat packed into a book that moves with a quicker plot and that calls us to read it over and over and find more and more meat each time through? And if you think I should read one weighty book, which one would you suggest?
I’m stuck on books from the 17th and 18th centuries. They’re usually humorous or scandalous or adventurous, rather than weighty (think Gulliver’s Travels). I’m not sure what you would consider classic, though. Dry and boring, to me, is not worth reading unless it’s very important.
I went to crappy Oregon schools, but somehow managed to finish college later in life. Never studied Beowulf, though. Wasn’t interested. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. Read what you like!
I think reading the classics (or at least the Cliff Notes thereof) makes us more discerning, critical readers. And yeah, maybe it makes me a snob, but it bothers me that high schoolers can read “Tuesdays with Morrie” as part of their summer reading program. It’s a good enough book, but will it be read 20 years from now? Fifty years? The classics are classic because they have stood the test of time; the thinking, the ideas behind the books are timeless. We are better human beings for having read them, assuming we’ve given thought to what we’ve read.
I haven’t read every single book that’s considered a classic (Beowulf springs to mind) but I’ll go back and pick up a book that I neglected in my youth and most of the time, I enjoy it. More importantly, I appreciate it.
I’m not sure that when I was 16 I would have appreciated “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin. But if you’ve never read it, that’s what I’d recommend. “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand is also a thought-provoking read (and you can use the book as a door stop when you’re finished).
Now, I’m not sure whether reading classics has made me a better writer. But I’m pretty sure that I did NOT have as much fun as you did in high school. :-)
Well, Jill, I always have read what I liked, but I think I’m poorer for not having pushed myself a bit more. Some tastes are acquired and we have to get through a period of discomfort before we appreciate the beauty of the things. Some things I like are not good for me and some things I don’t like are probably very good for me.
Cathy, I agree that the classics have stood the test of time because they are universal and timeless. My problem is really that to wade through them now is painful because our language and style have changed so much. I need a translator. As I’ve grown older I’ve grown less patient. One of my favorite books from when I was a child was The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne. I loved that book. That book captured me so completely that I thought about it for months afterwards. It’s not a classic—that’s not where I’m going. It was a great story. It had adventure and mystery and the men were so resourceful. So about five years ago I decided to read it aloud to my children. I couldn’t even get through two chapters. The language is archaic, the descriptions go on and on. I remembered a book that opened with a bang, that drew me in right away and made me part of the lives of the men. But reading it over now, I see it as slow—completely bogged down in the details.
So I really want someone to take the classics and interpret them for me. Because wading through them is such hard work. And yet I hate to give in to being so dumbed down that I have to constantly tell people I loved the movie versions of The Count of Monte Cristo, and Nicholas Nickleby, but I never read the books. I loved the movie A Knight’s Tale, but I never read The Canterbury Tales.
Am I going to read these books? Not likely. I even have The Count of Monte Cristo on my kindle. I am completely uninterested. So there you go. I’ll probably be a junk food reader the rest of my life.
I will, however, look into The Awakening (I downloaded it on the kindle for 99 cents. I’m the biggest anti-feminist I know so I’m thinking The Awakening will not be a book I love—unbridled lust and affairs that cause a woman to abandon her family are not my usual fare. We shall see.) and Atlas Shrugged (Yikes, 19 dollars on kindle. I’ll have to get it from the library.).
Oh, I forgot. I know you were kidding, but just in case any teens wander in here looking for book reviews….partying with the teachers might sound like fun, but drugs never work out well. One of the reasons I never went to college was that I was too busy doing drugs and trying to escape from a world that was too difficult for me to navigate. I was addicted to drugs for seven years, but those seven years have taken a toll from every year that followed. They’ve had an effect on me, on my marriage, on my children, and they will have an effect on my children’s children.
Drugs aren’t harmless fun. The choices we make when we are young follow us all our days. I used to think I was just having fun and I wasn’t hurting anyone. What a lie that was.
One book. That’s tough. I’d say The Scarlet Pimpernel, but I don’t know if that’s actually a classic. Maybe Jane Eyre, but I think there are better. Lots of people would say To Kill A Mocking Bird, but I wonder if that will be a classic further down the line.
I thought of Chaucer, but Canterbury Tales isn’t rightly a novel. Nor are any of the Shakespeare plays I’d like to recommend.
So I dug out an old high school newspaper that had an article on what books a student should read before going to college according to a group of professors. Here’s an interesting line: “The Bible was an almost unanimous request as our whole culture and literature have been deeply affected by both the Old and New Testaments. They find that a student without a working knowledge of the Bible is lost.” I bet you wouldn’t find that paragraph in a high school newspaper today (do they still have high school newspapers?
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Anyway, back to the task at hand. Of the top ten, I’d suggest either The Scarlet Letter or Huckleberry Finn. (Interestingly I just read a disparaging commentary — writing wise — about the latter. All about how wrong the ending was. And that’s always been a source of debate).
In the next tier, the “highly recommended” list, I suggest The Good Earth. Second might be The House of Seven Gables.
Becky
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Thanks Becky. I have read several of those books already. I love The Scarlet Pimpernel and have read it more than once. I’ve read The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn. I’ve read The Good Earth. I can’t remember much about any of them. I remember that I liked them all, but can’t remember now what happened in any of them. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t shape me as a person, though.
I’ve seen movies of To Kill a Mockingbird, and Jane Eyre. Do movies count?
I was thinking about Canterbury Tales, because I loved the movie A Knight’s Tale. It’s one of my favorites. But I’ve never read Canterbury Tales. And I don’t think I will ever read them/it.
So that leaves The House of Seven Gables. I’ll check it out.
Great post! I say read what you love. Never struggle through anything you don’t enjoy reading. Reading should not be a discipline. My granny was an English and Latin teacher (with minors in French & German). In other words, highly educated. The woman had read just about every major work of literature known to the western world. You know what she read day in and day out for the last 30+ years of her life? Mystery novels. Miss Marple, Lord Whimsy and all that. Read what you love, not what other people tell you to love.
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Thanks for weighing in, Trisha. My mother was well educated and read widely, too, and she has spent the last thirty years reading mysteries, too. Curious. Mysteries are awfully fun to read.
Still, I think if I never struggled through anything I didn’t enjoy, I’d be the poorer today. I think some of the good things take a bit of struggle to master.
On the other hand, I sometimes get so bogged down refusing to read anything until I can finish the book I’m supposed to be reading, that I go for several weeks without reading anything at all. It’s horrible. I used to read three books a week, at least. Now I’m doing well if I read three books a month.
Hey, Sally. Sorry to hear about your shop teacher. And your algebra teachers. What jackasses. I’m still trying to think through what you said about reading those who borrowed from Homer rather than reading Homer–the “powerful original.” Do this: go to the liberry and get an audiobook of The Iliad. Listen to about one disc. If you want to listen to more, go ahead. But you might find that you’re ready to go back to those who were influenced by Homer, and I think that would be ok. For me, the most astonishing thing about the Iliad is that something so brutal and primitive (I mean those words in the most literal, neutral sense possible) could be a wellspring for so many other stories. You might be amazed at how un-high-falutin the Iliad is. It reminds you that story originates somewhere in the gut rather than in the cerebral regions.
As for the one classic you ought to read: Moby Dick. It’s true that you can die happy without reading it. Many people have. I’m going to die a little happier for having read it, and not simply because it gives one a sense of accomplishment to have finished it, which is a sophomore’s pleasure at best. Burrow in, take your time, and don’t insist on mastering the book. Just let it do its work on you. I’m going to give you the secret to enjoying Moby Dick: always remember that it’s a book about whaling. It’s not a book about Fate or Obsession or [fill in the Abstraction] that only pretends to be about whaling. It is a book about whaling that unpacks the subject so thoroughly that all the transcendence that inheres in all earthly pursuits doesn’t have anywhere to hide.
I think I’m starting to envision a couple of new blog posts. Thanks for asking good questions.
OK, Jonathan, I had to give you a thumbs down for telling me I should read the whale of a book, Moby Dick.
That was not what I wanted to hear.
And your contention that it’s a book about whaling does nothing to build excitement. It may just be me, but I don’t really care about whalers or whaling. Transcendence that inheres all earthly pursuits…? Slightly interesting.
My problem with Homer was that I didn’t like his characters. I seem to remember a manipulative, unfaithful woman and a stupid-selfish man who sacrificed many lives for no good reason. And no hero. At least there was no one in the story I could connect with and root for by the time I got tired of it and put it down. Maybe it was a bad translation.
But then I didn’t care for John Ames, either. I thought he was a poor excuse for a pastor and father and husband. His letters may have been full of gospel that I am not smart enough, or artistic enough, to find, but they weren’t clearly preaching Christ and him crucified. They felt powerless and hopeless to me. I know. Everyone else in the world thought they were so powerful and awesome, but I think if the gospel was there it was obfuscated. If there was scripture in his letters, I missed it, anyway. And a preacher who is leaving his family…I can’t love or respect him if his letters aren’t full of scripture.
I guess what I’m always looking for in books is a kindred spirit, as Anne Shirley would say it. We read so we’ll know we’re not alone. I put books down when I can’t find anyone to latch on to. They don’t have to be just like me. Horrors, no. The characters I love most are people I wish I could be.
So I will risk the 89 cents on Moby Dick and give it a go. But if there is no hero for me to love, I probably won’t finish it.
Sally, I don’t imagine Moby Dick will meet your criteria. You might better spend your 89 cents on some gum or something. Or add a dime to it and hit the 99-cent menu at Wendy’s. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.
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Well, of course, the 89 cents is nothing. It’s the hours we have to invest in a book that cost so much. But thanks for stopping me from spending the 89 cents all the same. If there is no hero to the story, I know I won’t read it. And for running quick interference, you have earned a big thumbs up.
P.S. Thanks for trying to help me, Dr. Rogers. I do appreciate the effort. And I hope you will still post about this on your blog. Feel free to use me as an example of someone who wouldn’t do her homework. I use myself as a negative example for my children all the time.
Hey Sally, Loved this post. Your discussion here of Moby Dick reminds me that because of YOU, I’m working my way through Margi Preus’ Heart of a Samurai. Oh, how I love this book! And since Manjiro is into whaling, I’m getting my fair share of whaler’s lingo. Yet, it’s much shorter than Moby Dick. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is also one of my favorite classics, and a pretty short read.
I wouldn’t worry about the classics you missed. I’m having a ball reading a bunch of classics now — even the ones I read in high school seem new to me. I just finished The Great Gatsby again, and I loved Fitzgerald’s breathlessly spare writing. I somehow worked up the courage to tackle Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel, and absolutely loved it — but I couldn’t get into You Can’t Go Home Again. I guess because I knew too much about how the story ended, whereas his first was all about growing up to age 18 and moving off to the great wide world to become a writer.
I love classics about girls who grow up to become writers. Can’t help it. Don’t you? I finally have worked my way through the whole Little Women series, wishing I had a writing community like the Alcotts did!
Thanks for the comment, Heather.
I remember liking The Old Man and the Sea when I read it, long ago, and I remember not liking The Great Gatsby. I can’t remember why I felt those ways about either book. I have never read anything by Wolfe. Maybe I’ll give him a try. Loved the Little Women books, but at a friend’s suggestion, I picked up Rose in Bloom at a library book sale and found it hysterical. I couldn’t get past the first chapter. The characters were soooo sweet.