Read a (Short) Classic!, or Five Reasons to Turn Off the Fucking Television

            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 18^th and 19^th 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)”:

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1819): From Boris Karloff to Mel Brooks, we all know the pop cultural incarnations of this tale, but the book is nothing like the pop cultural resurrections of the Monster. Mary Shelley first conceived of her “hideous progeny” in a dream she had during the stormy summer she spent in Switzerland in 1816. Back then, she was not Mary Shelley, but Mary Godwin, a mere 18-year-old girl who had eloped with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley…who was already married. In order to escape some of the social repercussions of their unconventional relationship, they opted to spend a summer near Geneva.
         The weather was awful. Luckily their neighbor was the second most famous man alive, the dashing poet Lord Byron. As her brilliant husband forged a deep friendship with Byron, Mary sat in on what must have been some of the most profound conversation of the age. And when they decided to have a ghost story contest, Mary gave life one of the greatest novels ever written from the material she assembled from those conversation, the natural beauty of the Alps, and in her own profound struggle with the problem of authority in a time of democratic revolution.
          The text itself is fascinating as the letters of an Arctic explorer encloses the narrative of Victor Frankenstain…which, in turn, contains the narrative of his Monster. And yet all three stories are the same story of alienation best articulated by the Monster himself.  No, Shelley’s monster doesn’t grunt; he is among the most reflective characters in fiction, poignantly giving voice to our ambivalence toward paternalistic authority…you know, how we hate “the government” but are quick to make use of government services, etc. Such ambivalence is thoroughly explored in numerous and varied embodiments of the Law: Victor’s family business is not science, but government, multiple characters are subject to miscarriages of justice, and Victor is saved at one point by the benevolent magistrate, Mr. Kirwin. The book is significant to literary history for umpteen reasons.  It is an astute expression—probably the best in novel form—of the Romantic literary mode (I don’t pretend I’ll convince you to read Wordsworth). The interpretations of Nature are truly profound. Along those lines, the book stands out as an example of the afterlife of Gothic fiction. And yet it is also probably the first example we have of a science fiction novel. The ways in which we represent the android, AI, and the (mad) scientist today in fiction and film are founded upon Shelley’s work. Without Frankenstein there is no Blade Runner. It is simply one of the most important books ever written in the English language…and it’s only about 150 pages long. This text should be at the very top of any reading list.

Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe by George Eliot (1861): “George Eliot? Never heard o him,” you say.  So I say, “It’s not a him; it’s a her. George Eliot was the penname of Mary Anne Evans, and she was one of the greatest novelist of the greatest age of the novel.” Eliot was a contemporary of Charles Dickens; although Dickens was waaayyy beyond having any rivals or competitors, Eliot was probably the next most esteemed weaver of tales of the Victorian era. Her later works—Romola, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda—are grand in scope, pitting the individual decision making process against the epic grandeur of “History.” Indeed, Middlemarch, in my humble opinion, is the greatest novel ever written.  But it’s a stylistically complex, thousand-page dissertation on the minutiae of morality in decision-making. It doesn’t even get really good until about page 250. And that’s why you haven’t heard of George Eliot. Still, no one should go into the ground without having engaged one of the best writers to walk the planet (I think she is the best, ahem).  So, I offer for your consideration Eliot’s 200-n-some-odd-page fable of alienation and redemption:

Silas Marner had once been a happy and involved member of his community. But after a treacherous friend frames him for a petty theft of church funds, Silas’ reputation is destroyed, his fiancée breaks their engagement, and he is ostracized from his community. Embittered, Marner finds his only solace in the hoard of gold he accumulates as a reclusive weaver in a new town. Over the years his hoard grows and grows as his eyesight becomes more and more myopic. When Marner discovers his hoard has been stolen, he is distraught and on the verge of giving in to an all-consuming grief. One night, a child wanders in his door. When the near-sighted Marner first looks upon her, he believes someone has returned his gold. But what he is actually looking at are the curls of the golden-haired little girl who has been left and orphan. I’ll stop there (as if that isn’t enough), but let’s just say that I cried like a frickin baby when I finished the book. Seriously. Like a baby. Read it.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890): Among my favorite of Wilde’s of witty turns of phrase is his affirmation that “a true friend stabs you in the front.” More than anything, Wilde, who was predominantly a playwright, dealt with the façade of public discourse in both his employment of humor in his satirical plays and the tragedy that was his biography. Victorian notions of propriety produced numerous social side effects—including a developed economy of opium abuse, prostitution, and pornography—all enjoyed via the rampant double lives of Victorian “gentlemen.”  And since everyone who was anyone seemed to be pretending they were something and someone they were not, Wilde—the first modern homosexual—was of course married. Along this theme of the divorce of image from so-called “reality,” Wilde constructs the tale of the young and handsome Dorian Gray, a man who seems to all the world an angel. What becomes a prime example of the Gothic revival of 1890s begins as a somewhat ordinary novel of manners in the studio of renowned artist, Basil Hallward, as he is placing the final touches on his masterpiece, a portrait of Dorian.  At the instigation (seduction?) of one of Hallward’s friends, an older dandy named Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian realizes for the first time that his angelic beauty will fade as time and the scars of life are written upon his face.  In a fit of despair he wishes that the picture should age in his place, that this object should bear, not just the mark of time, but also (and more significantly) the marks of his sinfully idolatrous life. Dorian’s wish comes true, and it’s at that point that so-called “reality” recedes as the more horrifying reality of double lives leads Dorian down the path of debauchery. The novel is beautifully written and an amazing achievement for a writer who’s noted for a different form. Dorian is himself one of the great villains of literature; his unbounded desire places him in the tradition of Milton’s Satan. And yet the story is thoroughly modern. This sense of modernity comes from not only its objectification of the image but also from the (barely) repressed homosexuality that pervades the text. And Wilde is far too complex a thinker to simply reject social performance as false: as a person who reifies art, Wilde actually prioritizes the creation, the symbol, the performance as the thing which has true value. But what to make of a character whose villainy results directly from reconceiving their life as an aesthetic, as a performance, as the very highest form of art?

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824): This text is easily the most obscure on this list.  In fact, you may have difficulty getting your mitts on Hogg’s novel without ordering it from Amazon. Anyhow, Hogg was a Scottish author that was connected to the literary greats of his age as an editor for the Edinburgh Review, a prominent literary magazine, in the early part of the 19^th century. (Remember, this is a highly textually culture. So that job was kinda a big deal). The text is challenging because it is steeped in some of the religious politics of Scotland the previous century. In addition, the book is not a straightforward novel but rather a “found text,” a confession exhumed with the body of a suicide, Robert Wringham.  This fictively found text is prefaced by a long introduction by the fictive editor. The two work together to tell the story, yet they are often inconsistent in ways that are puzzling to a degree that challenges the very nature of interpretation. Essentially, the story interrogates the Calvinist theory of predestination, that one was saved through grace rather than works. The novel centers on a religious zealot, the aforementioned Robert Wringham, who believes he is saved and fosters a venomous antipathy for his supposedly damned biological father and his older brother, both named George Colwan. Robert and George the Younger each see the other as a persecutor of sorts and the various versions of the story represent each of side of their sibling rivalry. Yet one day Robert meets a new friend, a man who identifies himself as a foreign prince and seems to subtly shift shapes, taking on the aspect of anyone he’s talking to or about…including Robert.  This “prince” convinces Robert that since he is saved, Robert is justified in taking any action necessary—no matter how unseemly—to promote his theology. God would of course expect him to as a defender of the faith…and that’s when the fun starts. Make no mistake, Hogg’s novel is a challenging read because it is so unusual, but I promise that you never have or ever will read anything quite like this profound and sinister little text.

Dubliners by James Joyce (1914): Dubliners was written and published much later than any of the other texts on this list, but I’m going to fudge the definition of classic a bit. And it’s not a novel but rather a collection of short stories that are thematically related. Of course, James Joyce is best known for impenetrable (post?) modernist epics the likes of Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake.  Now, I wrote my undergraduate honor’s thesis on Ulysses and I can’t really say that reading the book is a very enjoyable experience, unless you’re into figuring out puzzles.  Or maybe it’s better to put it this way: Joyceans are the Trekkies of the literary world. Anyhow, in the rearview mirror I came to view the book as so self-indulgent that I’ve never even cracked the cover of Wake.  But Dubliners is a different animal altogether. Joyce composed these stories when he was very young (between the ages of 18 and 22 if memory serves), and he chose to focus them all on exceedingly ordinary figures from the various strata of Dublin in the early part of the twentieth century. All told, the fifteen stories—fourteen of which are very short—seem to work together to generate a picture of a society in which money problems, alcohol abuse, and the Catholic Church play fundamental roles. Most of the stories seem to be about schoolboys and priests (it’s not what you’re thinking), but my favorite is “Eveline,” the story of a girl attempting to decide whether or not to elope with a sailor she’s fallen for. The story is only three of four pages long but it is delightfully complex and requires a few readings in order to see all of the symbolic connections and read between the lines. Often is seems that reading Joyce is less like reading a story and more like reading a poem, and while that may be too much to ask for a thousand-page novel it’s certainly appropriate to these beautifully crafted compositions. The final story, “The Dead,” is much longer than the rest and has been classified as a novella. As such, it is more demanding; however, if you enjoy the stories it is one of the best and truly a profound reading experience.  It concerns the visit of Gabriel Conroy and his wife to the annual Christmas party thrown by his aunts. Joyce uses the chaos of the party quite deftly to make the various plot lines reflect meaningfully on one and other. After the party, Gabriel has an epiphany regarding the relationship between the living and the dead, an epiphany that teaches him his life is not at all what he thought it was. But in the end, Joyce is a master of craft rather than plot.  And fortunately for you, his best work is not contained in his long and impenetrable novels, but in this collection of short, breathtakingly crafted tales.

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (1895): Most of you at least know of Wells as a result of Orson Welles’ (no relation) notorious performance of War of the Worlds in 1938. Wells is certainly a key figure of the development of the SciFi genre, and I’ve always been most interested Wells’ first novel. It is likely that this novel gave rise to the entire time travel subgenre of science fiction; so, if you like The Terminator or Back to the Future, you have Wells to thank (but, of course, you have Mary Shelley to thank for Doc Brown).  In fact, Wells coined the term “time machine” in this novel. It is the story of the unnamed Time Traveller, a steampunk long before there was steampunk.  He ventures into the future expecting to find what human hubris will expect to find: progress.  While at first this future seems to live up to the Time Traveller’s expectations, he finds that an unimaginable horror—the return of the oppressed Morlocks—undergirds this seeming utopia. Many of you know the tale, but it really is quite brilliant that Wells’ dystopia is posited first as a utopia. The novel becomes a deft and humbling commentary on the future of our species from a scientific rather than religious or otherwise idealistic perspective.  My favorite portion of the book involves the Time Traveller’s escape in which he travels further and further into the future millions of years (and what would actually take billions of years) to the near death of the sun as a swollen red giant. It’s a chilling vision. Yet the novel is more often viewed as a commentary upon psycho-social stratification in our own time. The Morlocks and Eloi represent the ultimate consequences of social stratification, a theme that remains relevant as our income gap continues to widen at the present historical moment. And then there’s the fact that common folk in our country won’t even think about the fact that their cheap phones and clothing and food is provided to them by virtual slave labor in our nation and others. The return of the oppressed anyone?

A few further suggestions: Persuasion by Jane Austen, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, The Awakening by Kate Chopin.