Classic Dilemma
I don’t know when it happened, but I was knee deep in classics and boy, was I in love. I’d discovered classics as books that had outlived their authors because of how beautiful they were and not because they were required reading for my English classes. I think it started when I read Tom Sawyer for a book review for school. It was on the summer homework list and considering my terrible experience with being too ambitious with Pride and Prejudice in sixth grade, I was scared to say the least.
The heavy ancient prose from Shakespeare pieces that clogged my textbooks always made me feel like I was running into a wall headfirst with no reason or comprehension. But it was Tom Sawyer that changed it for me. It was funny and relatable in a weird sort of way. I could relate to the need for adventure. I laughed when he buried those pills under floorboards and cried when he took the punishment for Becky Thatcher. That let me ease into classics and rediscover all these books that I knew the names of and pretended I’d read because I wanted to be known for being a bibliophile. People often don't take you seriously based on the number of Wattpad books you've read but will when you throw around names of authors who lived a hundred years ago.
Then came Heidi. The mountains, her relationship with her grandfather and Clara. As a kid, I doubt I understood if the prose was racist or portrayed characters in the wrong way. I just loved how adventurous their lives were. Gulliver’s travels became a struggle because it was a required school reading and we had questions to answer in the exam and I realized that the more I thought of it as schoolwork, the more I despised the text. I bluffed through those exams, pretending the characters that I made up existed in Gulliver's world hoping the teacher didn't know the text by heart, but ended up rereading the book over that summer. I still have the second-hand copy with all it’s amazing stick figure art etched by the previous owner which when you flip very fast animates it. Animation of a guy skateboarding off a cliff.
I bought the copy at this small bookstore where the employees know every book they own and will dig in their overflowing stacks until they find you the copy they promised you. They know the difference between Lady Audley and Lady Chatterley and are nice enough to not pick on you for your reading choices unlike the judgemental librarian from school who looks at you weird for picking A Tale of Two cities instead of Nancy Drew.
It wasn’t much later that I read Secret Garden and enjoyed it to the extent of dreaming of the secret garden,maybe the only good dreams I've had in the two decades worth of living. Around the World in eighty days was an adventure in its true right. The places and the snarky Phileas Fogg and Passepartout. I can’t remember the number of times I’ve misspelled Passepartout and butchered the pronunciation, pretty sure I do it wrong even now. But that book led me into discovering H.G Wells because the book I read had these pages in the back which talked about other books from similar authors and I was intrigued. As long as my English teacher didn't make me write a review for class, I was up for classics.
I had a mild obsession with H.G Wells because ‘The Time Machine’ and ‘War of the Worlds’ changed my perspective about science fiction from being about mechs and machines that take over the world to adventures and squishy Martians that needed metal bodies to survive. The more vulnerability they portrayed, the better I related and understood. It wasn’t until I read Invisible Man eight times was I annoyed with Wells about his writing.
Griffin is the stupidest character ever and I’ll fight anyone who wants to oppose my line of thought. I wanted to pull my hair out and slap him for making stupid decisions and his poor clothing choices above all the other idiotic shenanigans he gets involved in. But I kept going back and reading it, hoping to make it to the end and somehow have him be slightly more smarter or maybe understand him better. Instead each reread brought a new character into focus for me and I ended up understanding why the book was what it was.
It had been a book the teacher had to make us read but we weren't allowed to have discussions talking about the characters the way we wanted to. I think when I'm not allowed to criticize literature and break it down into pieces based on the emotions I feel when I read it, it doesn't allow me to make it my own. If a book is a classic, it often is discussed based on the author and his thoughts and his commentary of social issues and not about how flawed the characters are because they're humans. And how you like the characters though they're stupid and how you can admire them the way you want to. When a book becomes required reading, something you read to get that grade and end up answering questions where they force upon you a certain way of thinking about the characters, it makes the book untouchable and the characters two-dimensional caricatures on paper.
I wanted to be one of those cool people who read classics and were part of communities identifying themselves with Austen and Dickens. The only problem with that was that I couldn't stomach Dickens past Oliver Twist which had been depressing to read and Jane Austen meant reading the book I had shunned.
I read Pride and Prejudice in the most unconventional and probably in the most absurdly cliche way possible. I’d shoved the book into the dark recesses of my shelves after my first failed attempt at reading it but then, I watched the movie. It was then that the confession with Mr. Darcy became the most romantic thing I’d ever seen as a fourteen year old and I was smitten. It was then that I read the book until the very end.
But unlike Mr. Darcy who I liked despite his pompous character, I confess that I despised Jane Eyre more than I despised Griffin. She was and always will be the most imbecile of the characters I've read. There was no way that you would fall for your employer, especially if he kept his last wife caged in his mansion and pretended to be a gypsy to seduce you. But Jane Eyre is a saint. (*cough* blind bat *cough*)
Then came Heidi. The mountains, her relationship with her grandfather and Clara. As a kid, I doubt I understood if the prose was racist or portrayed characters in the wrong way. I just loved how adventurous their lives were. Gulliver’s travels became a struggle because it was a required school reading and we had questions to answer in the exam and I realized that the more I thought of it as schoolwork, the more I despised the text. I bluffed through those exams, pretending the characters that I made up existed in Gulliver's world hoping the teacher didn't know the text by heart, but ended up rereading the book over that summer. I still have the second-hand copy with all it’s amazing stick figure art etched by the previous owner which when you flip very fast animates it. Animation of a guy skateboarding off a cliff.
I bought the copy at this small bookstore where the employees know every book they own and will dig in their overflowing stacks until they find you the copy they promised you. They know the difference between Lady Audley and Lady Chatterley and are nice enough to not pick on you for your reading choices unlike the judgemental librarian from school who looks at you weird for picking A Tale of Two cities instead of Nancy Drew.
It wasn’t much later that I read Secret Garden and enjoyed it to the extent of dreaming of the secret garden,maybe the only good dreams I've had in the two decades worth of living. Around the World in eighty days was an adventure in its true right. The places and the snarky Phileas Fogg and Passepartout. I can’t remember the number of times I’ve misspelled Passepartout and butchered the pronunciation, pretty sure I do it wrong even now. But that book led me into discovering H.G Wells because the book I read had these pages in the back which talked about other books from similar authors and I was intrigued. As long as my English teacher didn't make me write a review for class, I was up for classics.
I had a mild obsession with H.G Wells because ‘The Time Machine’ and ‘War of the Worlds’ changed my perspective about science fiction from being about mechs and machines that take over the world to adventures and squishy Martians that needed metal bodies to survive. The more vulnerability they portrayed, the better I related and understood. It wasn’t until I read Invisible Man eight times was I annoyed with Wells about his writing.
Griffin is the stupidest character ever and I’ll fight anyone who wants to oppose my line of thought. I wanted to pull my hair out and slap him for making stupid decisions and his poor clothing choices above all the other idiotic shenanigans he gets involved in. But I kept going back and reading it, hoping to make it to the end and somehow have him be slightly more smarter or maybe understand him better. Instead each reread brought a new character into focus for me and I ended up understanding why the book was what it was.
It had been a book the teacher had to make us read but we weren't allowed to have discussions talking about the characters the way we wanted to. I think when I'm not allowed to criticize literature and break it down into pieces based on the emotions I feel when I read it, it doesn't allow me to make it my own. If a book is a classic, it often is discussed based on the author and his thoughts and his commentary of social issues and not about how flawed the characters are because they're humans. And how you like the characters though they're stupid and how you can admire them the way you want to. When a book becomes required reading, something you read to get that grade and end up answering questions where they force upon you a certain way of thinking about the characters, it makes the book untouchable and the characters two-dimensional caricatures on paper.
I wanted to be one of those cool people who read classics and were part of communities identifying themselves with Austen and Dickens. The only problem with that was that I couldn't stomach Dickens past Oliver Twist which had been depressing to read and Jane Austen meant reading the book I had shunned.
I read Pride and Prejudice in the most unconventional and probably in the most absurdly cliche way possible. I’d shoved the book into the dark recesses of my shelves after my first failed attempt at reading it but then, I watched the movie. It was then that the confession with Mr. Darcy became the most romantic thing I’d ever seen as a fourteen year old and I was smitten. It was then that I read the book until the very end.
But unlike Mr. Darcy who I liked despite his pompous character, I confess that I despised Jane Eyre more than I despised Griffin. She was and always will be the most imbecile of the characters I've read. There was no way that you would fall for your employer, especially if he kept his last wife caged in his mansion and pretended to be a gypsy to seduce you. But Jane Eyre is a saint. (*cough* blind bat *cough*)
The fact that Mr. Rochester was even a potential love interest and was allowed to be the victim enraged me more than the Invisible Man, who'd run around naked for the better part of the book despite knowing how to turn clothes invisible (that invisible wool scene?).
Deciding to not give up too soon, I ended up giving the other Brontë sister a shot but missed the whole story of Wuthering Heights by a planet and a half and I still haven’t completed the book. I realized that Gothic romance or whatever it was called by English scholars, was just not a thing that I'd like no matter how popular and esteemed the authors were considered to be.
On the other hand, I adored Eight Cousins and Anne of Green Gables more than I’d care to admit. I cried over Little Women like a baby and never finished reading the book because that one FRIENDS episode spoiled it for me which completely justifies why I started hating Rachel Green though I harboured a crush on Jennifer Aniston.
The thing I don’t understand about classics is that nearly all the ones I‘ve read have these children navigating life as orphans and with endings where they have a really successful life because they stumble upon relatives with great fortune. Or women who defied society for treating them as beings meant only for domestic duties and love but end up with endings where they do fall in love and get married. I don't know if it says something about my taste in books or about the kind of fiction that we consider to be treasured and worshipped.
Were these books only popular because they were these perfect stories where a happy ending was coming upon fortune either through a long-lost family member or by marriage? I realize some books are considered to be a commentary on the society but I’m too dumb to understand satire, hence the layered implications of prose are often lost on me.
I always wonder why people look at these books with such reverence and never talk about them with anything but respect. Like, yeah I respect the author but man, was that character a total idiot.
Deciding to not give up too soon, I ended up giving the other Brontë sister a shot but missed the whole story of Wuthering Heights by a planet and a half and I still haven’t completed the book. I realized that Gothic romance or whatever it was called by English scholars, was just not a thing that I'd like no matter how popular and esteemed the authors were considered to be.
On the other hand, I adored Eight Cousins and Anne of Green Gables more than I’d care to admit. I cried over Little Women like a baby and never finished reading the book because that one FRIENDS episode spoiled it for me which completely justifies why I started hating Rachel Green though I harboured a crush on Jennifer Aniston.
The thing I don’t understand about classics is that nearly all the ones I‘ve read have these children navigating life as orphans and with endings where they have a really successful life because they stumble upon relatives with great fortune. Or women who defied society for treating them as beings meant only for domestic duties and love but end up with endings where they do fall in love and get married. I don't know if it says something about my taste in books or about the kind of fiction that we consider to be treasured and worshipped.
Were these books only popular because they were these perfect stories where a happy ending was coming upon fortune either through a long-lost family member or by marriage? I realize some books are considered to be a commentary on the society but I’m too dumb to understand satire, hence the layered implications of prose are often lost on me.
I always wonder why people look at these books with such reverence and never talk about them with anything but respect. Like, yeah I respect the author but man, was that character a total idiot.
Have I been reading the wrong reviews or is it just the voices of all my English teachers echoing through my brain each time I pick up a Classic is something I'll never know.
I think that is the problem with our approach of reading all these old books. Maybe we shouldn’t start with a high place of worship because it’s daunting for a person to give something described as a ‘revolutionary piece of commentary on French Revolution’ a read.
I just wish they'd bring these books down from the literary pedestals they stand on and allow them to be read as just books. That makes it less intimidating for a reader to read them and form their own opinions instead of labelling them as unreachable pieces meant for bespectacled scholars of the past.
I think that is the problem with our approach of reading all these old books. Maybe we shouldn’t start with a high place of worship because it’s daunting for a person to give something described as a ‘revolutionary piece of commentary on French Revolution’ a read.
I just wish they'd bring these books down from the literary pedestals they stand on and allow them to be read as just books. That makes it less intimidating for a reader to read them and form their own opinions instead of labelling them as unreachable pieces meant for bespectacled scholars of the past.
(A/N: No literary characters were meant to be harmed in the writing of this narcissistic piece. Except Griffin who really needs to put some clothes on and Jane Eyre. Girl, you can do so much better.)
copyright©️2020Mnemoyne
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels
Comments
Post a Comment
I would love to hear from you!