Now,
I consider myself a generally well-read person. Sure, my yet-to-read-list is
still quite long, and in actuality it’s a list that I find growing longer
rather than shorter. It’s kinda like that old truism: the more you read the
less you’ve read...or something like that. Now, being educated in the liberal
arts is it’s own sort of class issue; it’s not like being rich or born into
family (though those class attributes
tend to lead to access to education). I'll even admit I’m predisposed to dislike people who are wealthy or are born into
culturally elite families. Yes, I guess I’m prejudiced against people who won
the lottery the day they were born. And, sometimes, with my education, I end up
on the receiving end of similar resentment. (That'll teach me). Maybe they think I was born rich or
something. Or maybe they just buy into the ideology of education that
undergirds the assumptions of corporate America and politician’s obsession with
“productivity.” They tout the value of
“useful” degrees—like engineering or computer science or business—usually at
the expense of psychology and philosophy and history and, of course, English.
You know, the study of all the stuff that
makes us human.
Yet, sometimes I
end up in conversation with someone who seems not so much resentful as envious.
Some covet the opportunities I’ve been lucky enough to take advantage of.
They’re like these modern day Jude Fawleys that just never got into the
hallowed walls...yet. I love these sorts of people, and these days we give them a
better shot at learning. I should know: I’m one of them. They’re my favorite
students because when they discover that my classes ain’t no bullshit classes,
they take all of them. I teach to the top of the class and find that more
students decide to meet me there than I had ever expected when I got into this
game. And sometimes—more often that you’d expect—these people confess to me a
desire to read “the classics.” They too want to be “well read.”
And good for them.
But what are these classics? And where should they start? Well, that is certainly up for debate. They’re
probably old, like before the advent of television or even radio or film. They
probably use a vocabulary that is broader but also a bit antiquated. But they
are by no means some monolithic thing: if you read a “classic” and
decide that you don’t like it, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some other "classic" that you might. And I really do feel that reading older texts is a
powerful experience. Older texts have certainly broadened my vocabulary as well
my overall sense of language. But my favorite part of reading older texts is
learning how people used to live. The 18th and 19th
centuries are quite modern by historical standards, but unless we read their
novels, we probably have no sense of their day-to-day lives. I like having a
sense of how life in the 1720s or 1790s or 1860s or 1890s went on…and those
would indeed be four very different lives.
Moreover, authors represented life very differently with the techniques
of their various ages, and there is something really special about text that
predates the visual culture that dominates our lives today.
Okay. I’m off my soapbox.
You get it: I want you to read a classic or three. Since classics are
inherently challenging due to the use of a broader and antiquated vocabulary,
generally longer sentence structures, and less frequent paragraph breaks, I am
going to focus on suggesting some shorter texts. If you don’t like one, try
another. So-called classics are usually cheaper to buy since they’re not under
copyright and readily available at libraries. And while many classics are quite
long (reading was what people used to call watching TV), some of the best are
very short and should make any reader’s bucket list. Finally, even if you were
“forced” to read one of these way back in high school or college, I might
suggest trying them again in adulthood. Among the most amazing aspects of
reading is that books change as the reader changes: as I grow further into
adulthood, I find that my reading experiences become more…meaningful. And there
is just something quite different about the experience of elective reading. So,
here goes. We’ll call this list “Aaron’s Favorite Short Classics (Whatever That
Means)”:
