Rethinking the Classics

[catsittingstill]

_Pride and Prejudice_ got a mention in the comments a few months ago, and it occurred to me that I could probably get it from manybooks.net for free, and sure enough, I could.  Yesterday I finished _Lord Darcy Investigates_ and started reading _Pride and Prejudice_ in the car as Kip drove us back from Knoxville. 

I ended up staying up half the night reading it.

Way back when in 8th grade I had a class where we were required to read "classics."  I don't remember who set the book list, or what rationale they used, if indeed I ever knew.  All I remember is that we had to read a certain number of books from a particular set of shelves, and I, a voracious reader unintimidated by large books, dragged "The Count of Monte Cristo" off the shelf and opened it up.

All I can say is that it was a spectacularly bad match of book to reader.  I thought it was slow, it was boring, it took forever to get to the point, and when the poor beggar dug his way out of his cell with a spoon, only to wind up in another cell--well, that was just a cheat, was what it was, and I wasn't going to read another page of this garbage. 

I passed the class by reading Shakespeare plays.  They weren't great, but they were okay and they got the job done.

Again in 11th grade or so, I had another brush with the classics.  We were supposed to read several works by one author and then do some sort of report on the author's style and themes and such; I don't remember it very well.  My teacher, for some reason, told me he thought I would like Faulkner.  And rather than do the sensible thing and say, "well I'll read a book of his and see what I think, and if I don't like it, I'll read Shakespeare, okay?"  I just agreed.  Which left me stuck reading four Faulkner books, and boy--that was another spectacular mismatch of book to reader.  I do not read for a vicarious sense of disgust, and likable characters are an important part of my enjoyment of a book, so I wound up holding my nose and choking down four books set in a decaying society with decaying psyches, not to mention the occasional decaying body, and not one character in the set with whom one could contemplate spending an afternoon without wanting to run screaming in the opposite direction. 

So I had this deep, unexamined conviction that I didn't want to read the classics.  They were terrible books, which our ancestors read because they couldn't get anything better--the same way they used to eat grubs from under logs.  But now we have clean, fresh, wholesome food and science fiction and mysteries and fantasy books, and we don't have to eat grubs or read classics anymore.  Isn't it wonderful to live in the twenty-first century?

So _Pride and Prejudice_ was a bit of a surprise.  Apparently there are some strawberries under those logs too.  I'm not going to eat (uh, read) just *any* classic.  But I might read some more of Jane Austen.  Maybe.  If they smell okay.

Comments

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

How the books are presented to you can make a difference, too.

If you're looking for recommendations, I can't strongly enough praise Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird." Had a very profound effect on me in high school.

[mdlbear]

That one wasn't a classic when I read it...

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I surprised myself in a very similar way. Turns out I like a lot of 19th century British lit. You also might want to try Russian novels, though they're more of an acquired taste. A selection of short stories from the big names would be a good introduction instead of jumping right into some of the more infamously long works.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I think I'll start out slow and easy with some more Austen. Wouldn't want to eat a grub by mistake. Or even take a bite out of one.

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

I mostly agree with you regarding the school experience. Dickens and Hardy convinced me that their intent was to go beyond the portrayal of suffering and transmit an experience of the real thing.

I was much happier when I encountered books for study that could deal with "classical" subjects using a modern tone and style. Even if one of those was by Faulkner. :-)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I found Dickens more bearable than Faulkner. Maybe it's all in which books were chosen. Don't think I've read any Hardy; but I will keep your warning in mind.

[ndrosen.livejournal.com]

I could never get into Dickens. I've read Hardy's The Mayor of Castorbridge, and I figure that if I should ever be afflicted with excessive cheerfulness and optimism, I can read a Thomas Hardy novel as therapy. Hardy's poetry, OTOH, is often quite good, and if you don't like a particular poem, dip into the collection for a different one.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

I have examined my conviction that I don't like the classics, and it still tests out fairly solid. I not only don't like-them-because-they're-the-CLASSICS-boy as seems to be expected of one when young, I don't actually enjoy reading them. Sad but true.

when the poor beggar dug his way out of his cell with a spoon, only to wind up in another cell--

The Goons did that one better and quicker.

"It's good to be out of that filthy cell 25. Now then--where are we?"

"In filthy cell 26."

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) So it's still a cheat, but at least you haven't invested an hour and a half of reading time.

[mdlbear]

Most 19th-early 20th century novels leave me cold. Drama and poetry, on the other hand... That love extends back to the Greeks, and even high school lit classes couldn't kill it. Everything from Homer and Euripides to T. S. Elliot and Yeats.

Chaucer in the original Middle English, by the way, is perfectly comprehensible provided you ignore the look of it and read it out loud the way it's written.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Kip loves Chaucer in the original(it's his specialty, actually). Me, I favor the translations, because I can read them faster. But it's kind of a taste issue.

What *is* it about high school lit classes, anyway? Maybe I was just too young for that section of my brain to have matured properly? Maybe they can't go into sufficient detail to make things interesting because they can't leave anyone behind? I seriously don't get *why* I hated it so much then that I steered clear of any English-y class in college that I wasn't required to take, but now find some of it kind of cool.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Austen's one of my all-time favorite authors. Most people who treat her as a "classic" and assume that means dull don't realize how nasty, and how funny, she is.

I recommend _Emma_ next, if you liked P&P.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) Thanks for the recommendation! I'll give it a try.

[mdlbear]

I may eventually give her another try, though I suspect ones' opinion of Austen may be gender-related. The only novel of hers I've read, some 45 years ago, is Northanger Abbey; it probably would have been funny if I'd been in the right mood, but at the time I was much more interested in the gothic novels it was a parody of.

[allisona.livejournal.com]

I was the same way with Dickens. Really hated the Dickens I read in high school- I think I was just too young to appreciate it at the time and starting with "A Tale of Two Cities" was too complex for a Gr. 10 kid with no historical background to the work.

Discovered Dickens on my own in my later teens. Started with "Oliver Twist" and "A Christmas Carol" and worked myself into more complex works. Now I'm mad for Dickens and "David Copperfield" is one of my favorite novels, but it's no thanks to reading Dickens in high school.

As an English major, though, I've read more than my share of classics in school. Some I loved, some not so much, some were painful. My favorite authors are still pretty much all writers I discovered myself. Having said that, though, there is a huge lengthy list of classics I haven't read yet that I would very much like to read sometime in my life.

Must admit I can't really get into Jane Austin. I have tried more than once and no doubt will try again.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I didn't *like* Dickens (We read "Great Expectations" and "Oliver Twist" as I recall) but I didn't break out in hives (so to speak) like I did with Faulkner and _The Count of Monte Cristo_.

My favorite authors are still pretty much all writers I discovered myself.
That's true for me too. Though far and away most of my favorite authors are genre writers, and they weren't covered in school at all.

It might be cool to have high school lit classes that were introductions to various genres. They might explain what some of the conventions of the genre are, have the students read particularly well known examples, etc.

Have you ever Kipl'd?

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

I posted my reaction to Kipling's Captains Courageous a few weeks back in my own journal. I've been singing his stuff for years, but haven't really read that many of the stories, other than the Mowgli collections that my mom got for me when I was That Age.

Re: Have you ever Kipl'd?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I hadn't thought of him as a classical author, but I guess a case could be made. I've read his _Just So Stories_, which I really enjoyed and the _Jungle Book_ of course. I don't think I've read much of his adult fiction, though.

If you like P&P...

[madrona.livejournal.com]

Jane Eyre NOW. I reread the damn thing every six months, and the preface to the second edition (which is amazing) more often than that.

Fortunately for me, I ended up in classes where everyone was assigned the same book, and there were *lots* of them. So I have a fair idea of what kind of classic appeals to me. William Faulkner and Toni Morrison are not worth it (except for A Rose For Emily, but only when I'm in the mood for some slow-dawning horror) but Alice Walker and Joseph Adler are. (Though you have to have a strong stomach for The Color Purple and Catch 22, the emotional payoff and humor are worth it. There is no payoff in, for example, The Bluest Eye or Beloved or As I Lay Dying. I mean, unless you like bestiality, incest and gangrene for their own sake.)

I've not been able to get through another Austen novel (I tried Emma and Sense and Sensibility and couldn't get past the idiots in the first chapter. Later found out that Jane wasn't so sure about P&P because the language was so sparkling she was afraid that people would miss the social commentary. Pity.) and didn't really enjoy Wuthering Heights, by Charlotte Bronte's sister Emily.

Re: If you like P&P...

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'll have to try _Jane Eyre_ and have a look at _Wuthering Heights_ sometime.

I tried to read _Catch 22_ once, but was seriously put off. Now that I'm old enough to understand black humor better, maybe I should try again. :-)

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Ever since high school, I've thought that high school English classes requiring students to read Great Literature does a great disservice. Reading any book is a lot less pleasant when you have to do it on a deadline, have stupid class discussions about it, and write essays and take tests about it. Some of the books I had to read in high school were good, but experiencing them that way still made me less happy about them, and some of them were dreadful. I'm smart and a reader, but even so, the experience I had with required reading in high school, as a whole, makes me less likely to pick up a Great Book than I imagine I would be if I'd not had the experience. It's no wonder to me that average high school kids who aren't reading for fun, only the stuff they're forced to, grow up to be adults that never read at all.

Oh, and just have to mention my feeling of true horror at the thought of having to read FOUR Faulkner novels. I only had to read one (Light in August) and not only was it the worst book I've ever read, reading it is one of my most unpleasant memories of high school, and I don't look back on high school fondly.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

There must be people who don't mind reading a book to deadline and discussing it, since basically any book discussion group does that, and attendance is presumably optional. For that matter, we're frequently happy to discuss a particular book at a con, or something like that. Maybe it's the compulsoriness of it that put me off in high school.

Thank you for your sympathy regarding the Faulkner books. I'm pretty sure _Light In August_ was one of them, actually. Scarred me forever, but I'm mostly recovered now.

[thymidinekinase.livejournal.com]

Now I feel all guilty - I had quite good high-school lit classes, and did not develop this sad disdain for the classics ... once I got over my Dad making me read Don Quixote when I was 10 or so.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I started reading Don Quixote a couple of months ago. For some reason the version I had had an introduction half the length of the book itself. I got most of the way through the introduction and stalled, but I do intend to go back to it.

[lola-mccrary.livejournal.com]

After college I came to believe that a big part of the reason I didn't like classics was because the required texts were often in small print. Blech. Somehow reading them in larger print made it easier for me to focus on the language as a way of getting to the story. Having to read _Moby Dick_ (even severely edited by the teacher) over Christmas break one year was a total disaster--large print wouldn't have helped that. I think it was one of the few times I resorted to Cliff Notes.

I like P&P, but strongly prefer the Georgette Heyer regency novels. Start with _Friday's Child_, or with _Cotillion_ (again, libraries are your friend). Then read Wrede and Stevemer's _Sorcery and Cecelia_ and _The Grand Tour_, which are alternative histories where magic exists in the regency period.

The classics I picked up that surprised the heck out of me were those by Alexander Dumas. _The Three Musketeers_ was just as funny as the movies (a la Michael York in the 70's). _The Man in the Iron Mask_ was great as well.

But it isn't just the classics. I've had people recommend contemporary science fiction or alternative histories to me that were so ponderous they weren't fun. And since I'm a grad student right now, my fiction better be fun--textbooks are ponderous enough!

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I've already red _Sorcery and Cecelia_ and _The Grand Tour_ and _The Mislaid Magician_ :-)

I tried to read one Georgette Heyer novel but couldn't get into it. I'll check into the ones you recommend.

I remember _The Three Musketeers_ as being reasonably good, and I like the Steven Brust books (_The Phoenix Guard(s)_ and _Five Hundred Years After_) that were inspired by it.

Alert: English major rhapsodising

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

If you read more Austen, _Sense_and_Sensibility_ was my next favorite after _Pride_...and, yes, Marianne is painfully flighty, which is, of course the point of her being "sensibility" in the title. She reminds me a lot of Kitty from _P&P_.

The Bronte sisters wrote very typically for their times, a bit overwrought, but gripping. Just don't expect a typically happy ending, if that's important to you.

My personal preferences skew toward the Brits. Many of the American classics are brutal, reveling in the unhappy ending and are just mean to their characters to show they can be. (_Moby_Dick_, _Scarlet_Letter_, _Lord_of_the_Flies_,) although the Brits have their share (Brontes and Dickens being immediately to mind.) Remember that Dickens and Dumas were paid for *by the word*, and so it did, in fact, take them forever to get to the point, because it was more lucrative for them to do so. I agree that Kipling is also wonderful. _Kim_ is a lovely book set in India.

For good American, read Twain. Famed for _Tom_Sawyer_ and _Huckleberry_Finn_, I actually find _Prince_and_the_Pauper_ one of his best books. Collections of his short stories are generally *fantastic*, and are often overlooked. I was also fond of Dorothy Parker, who has a very sharp wit (maybe a bit caustic.)

If you like David Weber's Honor Harrington space navy series, try C.S. Lewis's Hornblower series, set in Napoleonic times.

Re: Alert: English major rhapsodising

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'm planning on checking out Austen's other books. I did find some of the characters in P&P bordering on the painful, but it looks to me like that was on purpose, and she was very clever in not taking it too far.

I'm very fond of Twain, actually. And I've read pretty much all Dorothy Parker's "Lord Peter Whimsey" books; I love those.