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I have a friend who’s read almost every classic piece of literature there is, on her own. A few of them we had to read in school, but all those others…yeah, she read them on her own time. For enjoyment.
I hear a lot of people do this sort of thing; pick up an old, thick book that’s been embedded in the literary canon for centuries and read it in a hammock or by the fire, soaking up the famous words for their own benefit. It sounds impressive. Especially to me – because almost every classic novel I’ve read has bored me into a coma.
It occurred to me that this was going to be an issue among my peers as soon as I hit high school. While all my other writing / book nerd buddies found Jane Austin to be a delightful romp, I had to virtually skim the chapters because it annoyed me too much to read slowly. And while they were all recieving A’s on their essays about The Awakening, I was busy getting the lowest essay grade of my life, because all I could stand to write about was how much I hated the protagonist and good lord why was she so selfish?! My teacher told me I missed the point of the story. Maybe I did. But whatever. That book pissed me off. Big time.
Later on, during one summer off from college, I tried to read The Sound and the Fury because I figured I couldn’t be a real writer unless I had Faulkner under my belt. I tried really, really hard to get through it. But not even with cliff notes bought with my own money could I push my way to the end. To this day, whenever someone talks about that book, I pretend I read it to join in on the conversation with a white-knuckled hope nobody ever asks me anything detailed.
I was still trying to become part of the literary elite in grad school. Still trying to read what everyone was telling me I should read. But since I was insanely busy, I decided a book on tape would be a great way to get in some healthy classic novel material while I road the subways and walked the New York City streets. I bought Wuthering Heights off of iTunes, loaded it onto my iPod, and got excited that I would finally get all the way through a classic.
Sadly, after only a few listens, Wuthering Heights and it’s rhythmic, soothing British author ended up being my surefire way to get to sleep at the end of a 13 hour day.
There’s been other half-hearted attempts at tapping into the Famous Author canon, but none of them have ever gone well. I think the only classic piece of literature I’ve actually enjoyed was The Little Princess. And I was 12. And probably read the abridged version.
Frankly, I’m not sure what this means. It may mean that I have lower-than-highbrow taste; which, if you knew how much reality television I watch, could definitely be the answer. It may also mean that I’m just not interested in something that doesn’t immediately help me forget about the world around me. Reading someone’s gripping memoir or a great coming of age novel always seems to transport my mind. Reading Ayn Rand…not so much.
Is there anyone else out there like me? Are you a writer who shudders at the thought of reading something with “classic” on the back cover too? Or am I like those mythic white hippos; so rare that it’s barely plausible I exist?
[Wait! Before you go, I thought of one classic that I actually half enjoyed: Jane Eyre. Why? I can't exactly remember, but probably because there was a Real Housewives-like twist of a crazy old ex-lover...]
So glad you wrote about this. I get excited over YA titles like The Hunger Games. Meanwhile, I managed to slog through Anna Karenina. Forget the literary lists and read what get you excited/thinking/awake.
Glad you agree, Annie. It’s time for more of us to proudly proclaim “I Am Spartacus” when it comes to boring stuff.
I held a similar view, though Wuthering Heights was an exception. I think it is because we are told we HAVE to read them like we HAVE to take the medicine.
Now I am older, and have studied literature, I read them because I want to. I have caught up on the classics of every nationality and discovered they are known as classics because they are either unique in their own right, ie Wuthering Heights, or because they opened up literature to new forms of structure, characterisation or expression, forms which we now take for granted.
My advice: if you feel you HAVE to read a book, don’t.
For most of the classic novels and things that I’ve read all the way through, I have a much better opinion of them today in retrospect than when I first read them.
I also think a large bit of it is which teachers you’ve had introduce you to different pieces of classical literature. I had a hilarious English professor who was OBSESSED with (Freud and) the psychoanalytical method of literary analysis. Really…anything is interesting to me now when I read it through this lens; it’s sooo fun for me to analyze all the f*cked up shite going on it characters’ heads.
I suppose, as an English major, I been forced to accept the enjoyment of *any* bit of literature as my duty. However, with that being said, I very, very, very rarely read things that I don’t enjoy outside of my major.
And even in my major, I only put up with a certain amount of WTFery in my reading. Faulker? How about Blake? Both can be interesting, but there comes a time where I fail to see the point of it all and just BS my way through.
Haha…terribly sorry about the typos. I type too fast
AMEN!
I got a B.A. in English Lit, and sadly, IMHO, too many of the great, awesome, revered, worshipped Classics are dreck.
I wanted to strangle Catherine and Heathcliff.
I wanted to smother Jane Austen’s girls with her voluminous gown.
I wanted to smack the characters of Gastby.
I wanted to burn “The Sound and the Fury” with a barbeque lighter, and I wanted to drown Madame Bovary with my bare hands.
That said, I can’t get enough Shakespeare.
I hang with bated breath reading “The Demon Lover.”
I tingle with morbid glee watching Frankenstein’s monster live.
I jump headlong into trouble with Mark Twain and his boys Tom and Huck.
I take Boo Radley’s hand along with Scout, and play music with the Phantom of the Opera.
I don’t think it’s a matter of having ‘highbrow’ or ‘lowbrow’ tastes; it’s just that everyone has DIFFERENT tastes.
Good thing there are so many books out there.
Best,
Heather S. Ingemar
http://ingemarwrites.wordpress.com/
It’s easy to get mired in the dense prose of pre-20th century fiction. I figure the reading landscape from then is much like now — millions of books, but only so many that appeal to any given person. I definitely enjoy classics that are written in what I consider more accessible language – Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Twain immediately spring to mind. But then there’s also Melville and Poe and Dumas.
Any time I have to sort through dense description or pages of polite society or chapters on whale anatomy (Melville does come at a cost sometimes), I usually move on.
Up to the part where you claim that you actually enjoyed Jane Eyre, this article made perfect sense. The only thing worse than having to read that novel is having to read its “sequel” – Wide Sargasso Sea.
It’s easy to get mired in the dense prose of pre-20th century fiction. I figure the reading landscape from then is much like now — millions of books, but only so many that appeal to any given person. I definitely enjoy classics that are written in what I consider more accessible language – Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Twain immediately spring to mind. But then there’s also Melville and Poe and Dumas.Any time I have to sort through dense description or pages of polite society or chapters on whale anatomy (Melville does come at a cost sometimes), I usually move on.
+1
I wouldn’t paint a broad brush over all the classics. Perhaps quit tv for a week and see if your attention span returns. Honestly, it is telling that the tv generations like ours are just not used to devoting time to rereading passages that we just don’t absorb the first time. It’s radically shifted the publishing industry-we now must all write commercial things-that don’t have a chance at becoming classic-because we are not spending the time to read. And sadly that translates to not taking the time to write stories that have layers of metaphors, original form, etc. There are too many classics out there to say that they are all boring or ‘dreck’- read those titles that appeal to you, keep looking you will find them-and pay your dues. No one that writes today ought to do so without having read those great books of the past. I’m sorry I can”t praise you like these others-for being a philistine.
It’s easy to get mired in the dense prose of pre-20th century fiction. I figure the reading landscape from then is much like now — millions of books, but only so many that appeal to any given person. I definitely enjoy classics that are written in what I consider more accessible language – Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Twain immediately spring to mind. But then there’s also Melville and Poe and Dumas.
Any time I have to sort through dense description or pages of polite society or chapters on whale anatomy (Melville does come at a cost sometimes), I usually move on.
There are too many good books to waste on the bad ones. I, too was an English Lit major, now MFA candidate. Although, I DID like Wuthering Heights, my big issue is hating Shakespeare. I’ve never been able to pick up his work and just read it for the pleasure of it. I have recently discovered some fascinating YA titles that are brilliantly done, books you may like. The author Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat is amazing. And then there is Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy which is a kind of Brave New World meets sci-fi. Anyway, they are both awesome. Happy reading!
PS–I once heard a writer when asked what are some of your favorite books respond “Every last one of them. If I don’t love it right from the start I find a new one.” A good philosophy, I think….
IMO – the article makes perfect sense. We all have different taste. I also believe that as time moves forward we, at least some us, find ourselves unable to be moved by the classics. I know, I know…who doesn’t like Huckleberry Finn? Well, I don’t. It doesn’t move me. Every two or three years I read Foundation Trilogy, by Asimov. I don’t ever plan to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn again. Why? It has nothing to do with the writing. It’s the story. I just don’t like it. Wanted to like it will not change the fact that I don’t. Time is limit, we never seem to have enough, so why waste it reading something you know you don’t like, just because someone else liked it and thought you should too?
It’s a whole different frame of mind.
sorry but i think this is a really ignorant and gross generalization. first of all lumping ayn rand into this group of “difficult classics” is just plain wrong – the fountainhead and atlas shrugged, though long, are pop novels with cult followings, sort of like gone with the wind. secondly, if you’re going to criticize an author, at least learn how to spell her name. it’s austen.
i don’t know why you’re so proud of not ‘getting’ classic literature. also isn’t it potentially more transporting to read something from an entirely different time and place than a memoir or YA novel set here and now?
You should go to England. I hated many of the classics, especially Dickens, and so I took English classes in college so that I HAD to read it instead of reading it “for pleasure,” which I would certainly never do in my spare time.
It wasn’t until this summer, when I went to England that I started to re-read some of the literature that people over there simply grew up with, that I really started to appreciate it. The American viewpoint of English Classics is really different, compared with the British viewpoint. With authors like Dickens and Orwell, and even Jane Austen (not Austin), we can easily be like blah blah blah the poor, blah blah romance…but when I rediscovered them with an eye towards English culture in general, their themes of the division of wealth between East and West London, the British childcare and education system (children dont grow up with their parents, really), British-French relations, British gender relations, the history of aristocracy, etc, made me grow to appreciate the classics. And not only appreciate but love it.
You should also check out BBC mini-serieses of those Austen books, they’re pretty good and true to the book. Check out the Johnny Lee Miller and Romola Garai Emma. It’s not just about a superficial girl who gossips and matchmakes people, promise. Austen was (hopefully) more astute than that…