Berlioz and the Orchestra of the 21st Century

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) is one of the most colorful characters in all of Western music—no small feat in a room crowded with Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, and so many others who led noteworthy, and often scandalous, lives.  Yet Berlioz holds his own with any of them musically as well as biographically, as he was an eccentric in an age of eccentrics. A virtually self-taught composer, Berlioz took the orchestra that he inherited from Beethoven and launched it head first into the 21^st century. Yes, the 21^st century, as his ideas were so radical that only recently are we able to appreciate them, much less try to emulate them. Among his many achievements are the still wildly Romantic Symphonie Fantastique, a symphony with an autobiographical program inspired by an opium dream (emulating Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, though sounding even more like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner); a Requiem for such immense forces that it seems like it would implode under its own weight; and the exotic picture postcard symphony, Harold in Italie, which sort of follows the narrative of Byron’s poem, but in reality follows Berlioz’s own adventures in Italy.

“Neither for me honey nor the honey bee”: Reading Sappho’s Fragments

Imagine if the majority of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry had disappeared long ago.  It’s not a far-fetched proposition, when you think about it; all of Shakespeare’s personal writing and manuscripts are missing, and several of the plays are missing (Cardenio, Love’s Labors Found, etc).  However, a few scraps would inevitably survive as references in noblemen’s letters, maybe a page or two of Hamlet on a quarto used for wrapping paper, or the odd actor’s prompt.  Imagine that all we had of the famous Sonnet 18 were the following lines:

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 
Thou art more lovely
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

too short a date: 
 every fair from fair
 summer shall not fade
fair thou ow'st;
  or eyes can see,
So long lives this

Science Fiction as Metaphor: Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go

All fiction is metaphor.  Science fiction is metaphor.  What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors…science, all the sciences, and technology….The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.  –Ursula K. LeGuin

Despite being a subtle, ‘literary’ work from the Booker Prize-Winning author, Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go is a book for young people.  Even, dare I say, Young Adults (though I define Young Adults as literally just that—young adults, teenagers, those about to be adults, not 8-12 year olds, as some dumbass agent once claimed). Young adults should read this book, even if they don’t quite understand it, for three important reasons:

• It shows the relevance of science fiction as a metaphor for modern life (instead of mindless escapism)
• It shows that prose can be as supple and transformative as poetry
• It discusses the most powerful theme in all literature: what makes us human, and what the purpose of a human life truly is

Forgotten Composers, Part 4: Arnold Bax

Conventional wisdom tells us that we stop listening to a work when it no longer has anything to say.  Though Ludwig Spohr once rivaled Beethoven in popularity, his works are seldom—if ever—encountered today (though they should be).  The answer for this is simple on the surface: Beethoven aggressively reshaped the modern orchestra into a form the Romantics could play around with, but never entirely rival, whereas Spohr merely composed in the shadow of Mozart and Weber, without doing anything entirely new or striking.  So we go on playing the same few Beethoven symphonies in concert and never think about poor old Spohr, who composed a curious symphony (No.6) where each movement is in the style of a different musical era—Handel/Bach, Mozart/Haydn, a Beethoven scherzo, and a finale that mocks Italian opera conventions.  Worth a revival, eh?  In general, certain works stick with the public while others fall into oblivion.  Yet worth alone cannot account for this, since you could fill every concert hall in the world (and thousands of cds) with forgotten masterpieces.  Sometimes it’s as simple as a distinctive name, like the “Surprise Symphony” of Haydn (one of the few of his 104 symphonies that is regularly played), or some extra-musical hook that holds our attention like Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and its Gothic-inspired, Goyaseque program.  In the 20^th century, without marketing, you simply don’t have a product.  Yet I have to side with Stravinsky that music is music, and no matter how many Shakespearean heroes or heroines you describe in the music, it lives or dies by the music alone.  This is all preface to a great composer who is often omitted from musical histories entirely—especially here in the States.  He’s a composer who doesn’t sell himself well, doesn’t try to ingratiate himself with the audience—and yet, composes vibrant, melodic early 20^th century Romantic music that anyone with a fondness for Tchaikovsky, Mahler, or Vaughan-Williams could enjoy. 

“To paint, without knowing what the thing one saw actually was”: Cristoph Heinrich’s Monet

I recently taught this book on Monet by Christoph Heinrich to my Humanities II class as way to introduce Monet's life and philosophy into his paintings.  Now I can't say the students unanimously loved it--or hell, even read it!--but the book charmed me right to the core.  What makes this book so wonderful is the author's ability to paint Monet's life and culture within the context of his works, since the paintings are why we read the book.  However, unlike many an art historian, the text helps us appreciate what he painted, why he painted it, and the cultural forces that led to the birth of Impressionism.  Heinrich is very skilfully in analyzing art with an expert's eye, yet without drowning us in jargon or specialized wisdom.  My students were able to follow the text quite well, and it challenged my own ideas about Monet's accomplishments.  Here are a few great passages that made this book 'sing' for me:

"What Monet was to call l'instantaneite became his life's work, and time and again reduced him to despair, for there is an intrinsic and irresolvable contradiction in the aim to preserve in permanent form the passing moment" (32).

[On Monet's decision to paint at the Gare Saint-Lazare station when he was still relatively unknown]: "I am the painter Claude Monet...I have decided to paint your station.  For a long time I was undecided whether to take the Gare du Nord of yours, but I now feel yours has more character."  Monet got his way in everything.  Trains were stopped, platforms closed off, the locomotives fired full of coal so they belched out steam in the way Monet loved.  Tyrannically he set himself up in the station and for days, amidst universal awe, he painted, then left again with half a dozen pictures done" (40-41).

[On the painting Vetheuil in the Mist]: "Jean-Baptiste Faure, a celebrated baritone at the Paris opera and one of the first collectors of Impressionist art, bought it from Monet but quickly returned it, saying that although he himself liked it his friends never tired of poking fun at him for buying a painting with nothing on it.  Monet kept the painting till he died, and would not have resold it for the world" (47).

[On the death of his wife]: "I found myself at daybreak at the beside of a dead woman who had been and always will be dear to me.  My gaze was fixed on her tragic temples, and I caught myself observing the shades and nuances of colour Death brought to her countenance.  Blues, yellows, greys, I don't know what.  That is the state I was in.  The wish come upon me, quite naturally, to record the image of her who was departing from us forever.  But before it occurred to me to draw those features I knew and loved so well, I was first and foremost devastated, organically, automatically, by the colours.  Against my will, my reflexes took possession of me in an unconscious process, as the everyday course of my life took over.  Like a draught animal working at the millstone.  Pity me, my friend" (48).

"At times, Monet imagined what it would have been like to be born blind and then suddenly be able to see, and to paint, without knowing what the thing one saw actually was.  He felt that one's first clear look at a subject was the most honest, because least sullied by preconceptions and prejudices" (55).

"For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject" (57).  

"Monet was never an artist meticulous in his botanical detail.  What he was after was the harmony of the whole, the overall impression.  For Monet, flowers were bearers of light, and a feast for the eyes" (73).  

[On his waterlilly paintings]: "The sky was only a reflection now and no longer appeared at the top of Monet's paintings.  His water pictures were landscapes shorn of horizons.  However small the section viewed, it might still include the countryside, trees, the sky, or clouds--but of course these were not landscape paintings in the usual sense; Monet himself called them reflected landscapes" (83).  

"It was as if Monet's broad, chalky stroke were itself becoming an alga or waterplant.  His brushstrokes no longer ran horizontally or vertically, but coiled like mysterious tendrils, and began to dance.  It was this freedom and daring in Monet's technique, together with the distance his colours moved from faithful representation, and his audacious use of outsize formats, that made his waterlily paintings so important for future artists" (84).  

These are just highlights, of course, but they suggest the luminous perspectives that Heinrich gives to this famous--and to some, overexposed--artist.  Reading this book is seeing Monet with new eyes as if one were blind and had never seen a Monet before.  It makes Impressionism new and daring once more, and certainly helps underpin the debt that later symbolist and abstract painters such as Kandinsky, Pollock, etc., owed to his example.  The beautiful writing is coupled with so many gorgeous, full-color images, some I've never even seen before.  A wonderful introduction or re-appreciation of Monet's work and well worth reading--or teaching in class!  

Shakespeare as Music: Adaptation or Expansion (or something else)?

I ran across an interesting NY Times article about why Shakespeare is so suited for dance: more ballets have been based on Shakespeare than probably any other writer in history.  On the one hand, this suggests that Shakespeare can be translated visually--either in visual metaphors, or in the spectacle that his theatre naturally lends itself to.  However, since ballet is movement and music, we lose all language--everything must be spoken in dance.  What do we lose and gain in this approach?  Is it acceptable as Shakespeare, or is it simply something based on Shakespeare, the same way Tchaikovsky's famous overture to Romeo and Juliet suggests, rather than performs, Shakespeare's text?  You can read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/arts/dance/shakespeares-plays-are-a-natural-fit-with-dance.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=nytimesarts&_r=0

However, this reminded me of all the great music I listen to inspired by Shakespeare.  Shakespeare is a natural draw for classical composers, who have created ballets, operas, and orchestral works based on his plays.  Here are a few of the most significant ones that have become almost as popular as the plays themselves:

Mendelssohn, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Overture and Incidental Music (he wrote the overture to evoke the piece at age 16; decades later, he was commissioned to write incidental music to accompany the play, and used his overture as a basis: the famous "wedding march" that we hear at most weddings comes from this music)

Berlioz, Beatrice et Benedict, Overture: this is an overture to Berlioz's opera based on Much Ado About Nothing.  It captures the high spirits and romance of this wonderful comedy, and the adventurous can go on and listen to the entire opera.  (Note: There are many operas based on Shakespeare, notably those by Verdi, who wrote one for Macbeth, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Othello). 

Berlioz, Romeo and Juliet, symphony: one of Berlioz’s most unusual scores, it is a vocal symphony (not an opera, cantata, or oratorio) which tells this famous story in a mixture of long, orchestral rhapsodies and evocative arias.  The highlights are the Mendelssohnian Queen Mab Scherzo (which does a great impression of Mercutio’s speech) and the Balcony Scene, which certainly inspired Tchaikovsky’s later effort (see below). 

Dvorak, Othello, Overture: unusual for the rather bright-spirited Dvorak, he wrote an overture to Shakespeare’s grim tragedy—and rather effectively, too.  To be fair, it’s part of a three-part work he originally titled “Nature, Life, and Love,” which he later broke up into the overtures “In Nature’s Realm,” “Carnival,” and “Othello.”  It opens with a bleak theme which gains in passion (jeaousy?) until it explodes, trumpeted out by the entire orchestra.  Though short, it is one of Dvorak’s masterpieces and is one of the only successful pieces of music I’ve heard that captures Othello’s haunting music. 

Tchaikovsky, Romeo and Juliet Overture, a highly successful 'adaptation' of Shakespeare musically, opening with a solemn theme that represents Friar Lawrence, which soon explodes into the fighting of both houses, and before long, the super famous love theme emerges that has been parodied in everything from soap commercials to Spongebob.  If you can listen with fresh ears, it's an amazing piece.

Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet, ballet: Prokofiev wrote not the first, but the greatest ballet based on the entire play.  It is an extremely moving experience to watch the entire thing, and musically, it evokes much of Shakespeare's language and power.  Especially powerful is the Final Act, where Romeo tries to make a sleeping Juliet dance with him--but she merely slumps over lifelessly.  This scene makes sense like never before.

Sibelius, The Tempest, Incidental Music: Sibelius was an extremely famous Finnish composer in the early 20th century, and he was asked to create music that could suit this very musical play--including the many songs sung by Ariel, Caliban, and others.  He succeeded marvelously with dark, mystical sounding music which occasionally evokes the music of Shakespeare's time.  One of the most powerful pieces is Ariel's song in Act One, "Full fathom five thy father lies" (great alliteration!), which is full of haunting doom, and helps us understand Ferdinand's desolation.  Also listen to the powerful Overture evoking the storm (which borrows the mood and ferocity of Sibelius’ final tone poem, Tapiola)  and the creepy “The Oak Tree,” also seemingly drawn from Tapiola.  Fittingly, this is the among the last orchestral music Sibelius wrote, just as The Tempest was Shakespeare’s final bow (minus some shoddy collaborations with Fletcher) from the stage.   

Tchaikovsky, The Tempest, Tone Poem: A "tone poem" is an impression of a poem or story set to music, and Tchaikovsky excelled at these.  Here he took on Shakespeare's last play, opening with a eerie, ferocious storm scene before relaxing into a theme for Miranda and Ferdinand.  It's a lot like the Romeo and Juliet overture, and takes about as long to play out.  (Note: Tchaikovsky also wrote a wonderful overture for Hamlet, as well as incidental music for a production, which is equally good--a dark, exciting score). 

Strauss, Macbeth, Tone Poem: One of Richard Strauss' earliest tone poems evoked the sinister world of Macbeth.  This 20-minute piece is full of all the characteristics we would later find in his more famous pieces such as Don Juan or Don Quixote, though it's a little less cohesive here.  Yet high drama is everywhere, and it would make a great curtain raiser to any production of the play (clipped a bit shorter, perhaps).  

Vaughan-Williams, Serenade to Music (Merchant of Venice): Not many composers have been drawn to The Merchant of Venice, but Vaughan-Willliams, a 20th century English composer, famously set part of the Final Act of the play (where Lorenzo and Jessica speak of music) to music in a draw-joppingly beautiful piece with soloists, chorus and orchestra.  It belies the darkness and unsettled nature of the final act, but it does capture the essential 'music' of Shakespeare's play. 

Elgar, Falstaff, Symphonic Poem: Elgar, a master of pictoral music, created this symphonic portrait of Shakespeare's famous 'hero,' capturing him at various times in his career: in Henry IV 1 and 2, as well as The Merry Wives of Winsdor.  It's a dramatic, comic piece written in Elgar's expansive late style.  

Walton, Henry V film score: one of the most famous Shakespearean film scores, this was written for Sir Lawrence Olivier's war-time film of Henry V, and contains some of William Walton's most rousing, touching music.  (Note: Patrick Doyle wrote another famous Henry score for Branagh's 1989 version). 

Shostakovich, Hamlet, film score: written by a 20th century Russian master, this score is both chilling, humorous, and exciting by turns.  His greatest film score set the standard for all Shakespearean film scores to come, and makes amazing listening in its own right.  Written for a 1960's Russian version which remains an exciting adaptation of this very long and tricky play (Note: Shostakovich also wrote the score for the famous Russian version of King Lear, which is more spare but no less evocative than Hamlet).  

Get a Free Book Just for Visiting the Virtual Astrolabe!

As long as you don't mind that it's my book! :)

My last post discusses my frustration with how some publishers/agents are defining--and limiting--YA literature, whether fantasy or mainstream.  Here is my creative response to the problem: my YA fantasy novel is free this weekend and Monday at Amazon.  But be warned!  Several characters are over 19 years old! (a no-no, I've been told); it's not in first person (teenagers of the "me" generation can't relate, I was warned); and it writes to them, not down at them (these kids aren't readers, make it read like a movie, they insisted).  The result, for all its flaws, is an attempt to write a funny, interesting YA novel that connects to much classic literature and fairy tales/folklore.  Download and read if you get a chance!

Find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Count-Living-Chronicles-Hildigrim-Blackbeard-ebook/dp/B00FQ6711Y/ref=pd_rhf_gw_s_t_1

What the$#$#!@!@!! Is Young Adult Literature, Anyway?

The following is an excerpt from a rejection letter a literary agent recently sent me.  Most rejection letters annoy me, or at least frustrate me, but this one hit me below the belt.  The reason for this is because it has almost nothing to do with my novel, but espouses a philosophy of literature—and YA novels in particular—that is the very antithesis of my own.  In rejecting my novel, the agent explained,

“the characters are too old for this work to be considered for 8-12 year olds. The characters are almost too old to be considered for YA novels, as it seems the Count is 19 and most YA protagonists' ages cap at 18.”

I had to take a long walk outside to recover my equilibrium; then I wrote, deleted, and re-wrote my response to this nonsense.  What bothered me the most about this rejection is the agent’s dogmatic belief that ‘Young Adult’ readers were literally incapable of accepting a protagonist beyond 18—the cap, so to speak.  Reading between the lines, the agent is basically saying, “these readers are so self-absorbed that they can’t relate to anything old, meaning anything beyond their immediate interests, and the greatest imaginative leap they can possibly make is to imagine an eighteen year-old hero or heroine.  Beyond that, they’re fit for the grave, so why bother to write a novel about them?”

Of course, I am a reader of Young Adult literature, so I found the agent’s response offensive both as a reader and a writer.  Is ‘Young Adult’ literature such a fixed, tradition-bound genre?  And how can something written for ‘young adults’ follow tried-and-true laws, when teenagers are, by their very definition, changing the rules and constantly adapting—or dismissing—the past?  Of course, this brings me to my greatest frustration with the rejection letter, and with the genre itself: “the characters are too old for this work to be considered for 8-12 year olds.”  In the publishing world, everyone seems to have an idea of what ‘Young Adult’ is, and few of these definitions agree or fail to cancel each other out.  Is Young Adult even a genre?  I mean, when I think of genres, I think of science fiction (which itself has several subcategories and genres), romance, horror, mystery, travel writing, etc.  But Young Adult?  This is an audience, is it not?  Who the hell are Young Adults?  By definition, they are teenagers—young adults, not 8-12 year olds.  I’ve never heard the YA genre as something marketed to pre-teens, since they have other genres for that—Middle Grade Readers, etc.  But no matter which audience we decide to rest on, it remains exactly that, an audience. 

So the question is, what do teenagers like to read?  What are they interested in?  And perhaps most tellingly, what kind of books do they buy?  For agents and publishers, the answer is easy: they buy YA books.  And YA books, as best as I can tell from my copious rejection letters and reading the self-important babble of agents and editors on websites and in The Writer’s Market, consist of the following elements:

• Characters that “leap off the page” and are instantly relatable (i.e., they remind the readers of themselves)
• Language that is similar to what the readers, themselves, use
• Romance, romance, romance
• Zombies, vampires, and apocalypse
• Should be told in first person from a variety of perspectives; that’s the only way to make it “immediate” and “exciting” for the reader
• Should be a “page turner”: if the first page doesn’t grab them they give up immediately

Agents always talk down to writers as if they’ve never been teenagers themselves (or consider that we, too, read the very books that we aim to write).  Of course, I was a teenager and the kind of books I read ranged from Jane Austen to Splatterpunk to Joseph Campbell.  Sure, I enjoyed reading works whose characters resembled me in some aspect, and who I could personally identify with.  But every book?  I fell in love with Pride and Prejudice because this was a world I didn’t know, full of people who had tremendous wit, life, and character, even though none of it resembled what I could find outside my window—much less what I found staring back at me through a mirror.  And as for page-turners, I often plodded through dense works of history and philosophy that I could scarcely understand for the sheer joy of finally “getting it.”  I read widely, even recklessly, in as many genres and fields as I could since everything interested me.  And I rarely threw down a novel even after the first 50 pages, no matter how obscure or baffling.  I think you’ll find most true readers have a code of reading to the end, a code they break only in the most extreme circumstances (gratuitous violence, objectionable characters, etc.). 

My problem with this agent’s response is how it stereotypes an entire field of literature and those who read it.  Bottom line, publishers and agents want to make money.  Few of them believe in YA literature or those who read/write it; they simply want to understand why it works so they can crank out one bestseller after another.  And while some ‘truths’ might connect one work to another, it can never be universal and unshakeable.  Otherwise we wouldn’t read books or need to be young again.  Isn’t the whole point of being a teenager (in reality or spirit) to challenge the status quo and remake the world in your own image?  And yet this agent said, “oh, we know what’s best for them, we know what they like, and it’s only X, Y, and Z.”  Of course, time and again, some book comes out of nowhere and surprises the hell out of everyone, since it breaks the rules or defies some eternal truth of a publisher’s existence.  Before Harry Potter, it was chapter and verse that teenagers would never read a book over 200 pages.  So much for that!  Now it’s “teenagers only want to read about themselves and their Facebook, Twitter, Instragram generation.”  Never mind the continuing popularity of Lord of the Rings, which has characters that do not “leap off the page,” many of whom are mere archetypes, speaking stilted (yet inspiring) language, all from the mind and imagination of a man who didn’t give a damn what teenagers wanted to read. 

And here the two loves of my life—reading and education—come violently crashing together.  Publishers/agents want young people to tell us how to write, what to read, how to think about things.  True, it’s a double standard: they tell us what teenagers want to read but back it up with studies and market research: the readers have spoken!  We see the exact same thing in higher education, where universities terrified about losing students are kowtowing slavishly to student expectations.  Being “student centered” is now the norm, which translates to de-emphasizing the classroom experience for the “outside” experience: field trips, study abroad, community activities, intermural sports, on-line classrooms, etc, etc.  In essence, many in higher education are asking students “how should we teach you?  What do you want in a university?  How can we do our jobs better?”  If someone had asked me that as a teenager (and remember, I was one once) I would have responded, somewhat abashed, “how the hell should I know?  I came here for you to teach me!”  This was the very response I got in one of my recent student evaluations, where one of the last questions asks, “list ways that the teacher could improve his/her performance in the classroom.”  An anonymous student responded, “wouldn’t know, I’m not a teacher.” 

Lest I sound arrogant here, my point is simply this: the job of teachers is to educate since they spent 10+ years specializing in their chosen fields.  The same is true of writers; let them write the stories that they, themselves, find inspiring and interesting.  If readers don’t like them, so be it.  But to slavishly decide what readers want—and writers should deliver—is a sure recipe for mediocre claptrap.  It’s the very reason why the shelves of so-called Young Adult literature are clotted with endless variations on the apocalyptic theme.  Many of these works are exciting and new—but they will quickly cease to be so if that’s all we find on the bookshelves.  Just because one story—and one approach to a specific story—is successful doesn’t mean the alchemic blueprint has been discovered.  Let writers write and find themselves in writing.  Don’t tell us what sells or what ages or characters need to be.  Have more faith in your readers and in the power of literature itself, which is designed to go beyond the limitations of our limited ego and connect to something much more profound and universal.  As a reader, I found myself by reading works that were often over my head from wildly different cultures and languages.  Far from turning me off reading, it made me a better reader—and a more intelligent person to boot.  Should we deny that to our children in the interest of making a buck? 

I’ll close with the observation—obvious to anyone who reads YA literature—that the audience of this literature is as diverse as its content. Most people I know who read YA literature are not teenagers (hell, I’m 39).  And most of these people don’t just read YA literature.  I don’t even regard it as such myself; to me, literature is literature, no matter what form it takes or who reads it.  In the end, it either makes you think or it doesn’t; it either makes you dream or it doesn’t; it either makes you want to take up a pen (or a word processor) and write your own story or it doesn’t.  We can divvy up the readers or the genres as much as we like, but what really matters is the story and everything that goes into it.  Even if the characters are (gasp!) 89.  When I was a child the character I most idolized was Obi Wan Kenobi.  The man did not speak like me or share anything I could remotely relate to.  On the contrary, I wanted to be like him—not make him in my image.  And isn’t that the power of literature, to remake ourselves in someone else’s life and thoughts?  When literature is reduced to one endlessly FB selfie, then perhaps the publishers and agents will finally crack the philosopher’s stone.  But until then, they need to throw up their hands and admit that art can’t be predicted or prescribed; teenagers will read whatever interests them, and writers should be encouraged to remember the dreams they had when they were young.  No easy task, when piles of rejection letters make one feel very old indeed...

On Sitting Down to Read Pride and Prejudice Once More...

In John Keats’ famous short poem, “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again,” he remarks that “When through the old oak forest I am gone,/Let me not wander in a barren dream,/But, when I am consumed in the fire/Give me phoenix wings to fly at my desire.”  Obviously art is not life, so in some respect we look to books (among other things) as a kind of escape.  Not, I hope, merely to bury our heads in the sand or even to indulge in voyeuristic fantasies; instead, it is a kind of leave-taking of the earth by trying on new forms—an entirely new identity.  Thus it is not a “barren dream,” but a way to kindle our fiery passions into new life, rising on the “phoenix wings” of an author’s thoughts.  The best works of art, such as King Lear seduce us out of our workaday world and offer us visions of new worlds which seem tantalizingly close to home.  Many a book lover would jump at the chance to live in his or her favorite book, even as a minor character; these worlds are not necessarily ‘better’ than our own, but the presence of the author assures us they are observed and shaped by a loving hand (even if Gloucester’s eyes are gouged out and Cordelia is hanged!).  Ultimately I think we identify with the creator, and want him/her to guide our own lives, welcoming us home from exile and marrying us off to our Fitzwilliam Darcy or Elizabeth Bennet.  Which brings me to reason for writing this post, as I recently sat down to read Pride and Prejudice once again—so many times now I’ve frankly lost count. 

In a certain sense, this is a difficult book to re-read.  After all, there are two very famous adaptations based on the book that imagine every particular, and the plot has been so much discussed and appropriated that there are no longer any surprises.  Even Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey have moments where you forget a certain detail or conversation and nearly fall over backwards in surprise.  Not so Pride and Prejudice, where one conversations leads seamlessly, but predictably, to another, and the inevitable union of Elizabeth and Darcy is nowhere to be contradicted, much less by Elizabeth’s doubting—and often clueless—narration.  In some sense, it reminds me of Jerry Seinfeld’s quip against people who keep books at home—roughly, “why keep them around, are you really going to read them again?”  Indeed, why read Pride and Prejudice again when you know everything about Darcy, about Wickham, about the contents of that fateful letter which unmasks them both?  Is it merely to relive familiar haunts, or indulge in the sheer romance of a well-told love story? 

Ironically, Keats never really tells us anything about King Lear—what brought him back to it, what his favorite scenes are, his favorite characters, his favorite lines.  What emerges from his poem is the sense of beholding a sublime moment in art, like watching an advancing thunderstorm roar in the distance.   We’ve seen thunder, rain, lightning, even hail dozens—perhaps hundreds of times.  Why see it again?  Because it’s a powerful, visceral experience: it lives and breathes, and seems quite capable of flicking us out of existence.  True, the experience of reading King Lear is quite different from Pride and Prejudice, but in the end both are sublime in exactly this way.  I never get the feeling I’m reading a work of ‘art’ fashioned by a writer consciously shaping characters and situations to conform to an overall theme.  No, this is as natural as the wind and as musical as the ocean.  While in the presence of such works you are at once awed by the power that dared to conceived it, yet consoled by the reality that it does exist and that you can be part of it, even if only for as long as it takes to read the book.  And the book is never quite the same book you picked up before, even if you know the plot and can recite all the dialogue verbatim.  You are older; you are wiser; you are sadder; you are more content; you are looking for solace; you are looking for inspiration; you are reveling in Austen’s syntax the way you sit back and bask in the melodies of a Mozart piano concerto.  In short, it’s not the story or the characters—however divine these are—but the sheer pleasure of being swept away by something larger than anything we can dream into existence.  Even if she could. 

And yet, there are many surprises when you re-read Pride and Prejudice.  The most obvious one for me is the sheer audacity of Austen’s prose.  By audacity I mean her fearless ability to be witty at everyone’s expense—no small task for an unmarried spinster!  Not that wit was something new (Congreve and Fielding had that market cornered several generations earlier), but to see a woman doing it—and doing it so artfully—is a marvel to behold.  Take, for example, the hilarious (in a darkly comic sense) letter Mr. Collins writes to the Bennet family upon learning of Lydia’s elopement:

“I feel myself called upon, by our relationship, and my situation in life, to condole you on the grevious affliction you are now suffering under…No arguments shall be wanting on my part, that can alleviate so severe a misfortune; or that may comfort you, under a circumstance that must be of all others most afflicting to a parent’s mind.  The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this…[Lady Catherine and her daughter] agree with me in apprehending that this false step in one daughter, will be injurious to the fortunes of all others, for who, as Lady Catherine herself condescendingly says, will connect themselves with such a family.  And this consideration leads me moreover to reflect with augmented satisfaction on a certain event of last November, for had it been otherwise, I must have been involved in all your sorrow and disgrace.”

In his usual tone-deaf way, Collins says exactly the wrong things in a letter meant to console.  Yet he goes much further by his sheer stupidity in claiming to know what a parent would feel—and then suggesting that it would be better if Lydia had died!  What parent would think or feel so?  In classic satirical fashion, Mr. Collins invokes his duty rather than his love, and then goes on to thank himself, more or less, for not marrying Elizabeth; otherwise, “I must have been involved in all your sorrow and disgrace.”  That Austen could even devise this speech is a testament to her genius.  This idiot of a clergyman is too concerned with his own position and prosperity to ever think of another’s feelings, even for the few minutes it must have taken to write this letter.  Invoking Lady Catherine as his unimpeachable authority, he reminds the family that they are ruined socially and that this may well be the last letter he writes them (unless he really takes pity on them!).  What kind of response did he imagine from such a letter?  Hilariously, I’m sure he expected them to be deeply moved and appreciative of his “condescension.” 

Now imagine Austen writing this: an unmarried woman, the daughter of a clergyman herself, who dared to write saucy novels lampooning the pretensions of her wayward society.  It was not for nothing that her nieces and nephews took great pains to excuse her conduct posthumously, reminding readers that “She did not rank any work of Fielding quite so high.  Without the slightest affectation she recoiled from everything gross.  Neither nature, wit, nor humour, could make her amends for so very low a scale of morals” (Henry Austen, Biographical Notice).  Certainly, too, such a deadly satirical portrait was never drawn for life—goodness no!  And we know this for a fact, since Henry Austen also reminds us, “She drew from nature; but, whatever may have been surmised to the contrary, never from individuals.”  Of course not! 

The satirical humor in this novel is so extensive and varied that an entire encyclopedia could scarcely do it justice.  It ranges from the dark humor above to a more gleeful, self-satisfied mockery, as in the case of Caroline Bingley’s attempts to mock Darcy out of love with Elizabeth:

“I particularly recollect your saying one night, after they had been dining at Netherfield, ‘She a beauty!—I should as soon call her mother a wit.’  But afterwards she seemed to improve upon you, and I believe you thought her rather pretty at one time.”

“Yes,” replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, “but that was only when I first knew her, for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.”

He then went away, and Miss Bingley was felt to all the satisfaction of having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but herself.” 

Like Fielding (who we know she did read, as her letters mention her reading Tom Jones with Tom Lefroy, her one-time beau), Austen is able to dissect society to its mean artifices and petty triumphs.  Yet what makes this novel more than an exercise in 18^th century wit is her deep compassion for all her characters, even the ones who seem on first glance to be trivial buffoons.  Mrs. Bennet comes in for great mockery in the novel, and yet once Elizabeth is made to realize her own prejudices against Darcy, she also realizes how rashly she has judged her own mother.  On the same hand, she has given her father all too much license to be wise and discerning.  As Austen writes,

“Her father, captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humour, which you and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind, had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her.  Respect, esteem, and confidence, had vanished for ever; and all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown…She had always seen it with pain; but respecting his abilities, and grateful for his affectionate treatment of herself, she endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which, in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so highly reprehensible.” 

This is a sober moment in the book, when the satirical ribbing of Mr. Bennet becomes more sinister than the obsequiousness of Mr. Collins and his like.  No wonder Elizabeth is Mrs. Bennet’s least favorite daughter (as she, herself, reflects before trying to marry her off to Mr. Collins); Elizabeth had grown up largely despising her small-minded obsession with getting husbands.  However, one could just as easily argue Mrs. Bennet was being more of a realist than her husband, who seems to have washed his hands of all five daughters long ago.  That she cared to provide for them—even in her crass, misguided way—says a lot about her character, as well as Elizabeth’s inability to read parental affection. 

Elizabeth’s character, too, moves remarkably and believably from an eager, satirical ‘wit’ to a more cautious woman of feeling, suddenly aware of having to read people as people—not as characters in this or that romantic novel.  As a great reader, she naturally sees the world in novelistic terms—all the more so when characters take their cue from fiction (Wickham, Collins, and in some aspects, even Darcy).  But no romantic hero is spun from whole cloth, and we only discern character by re-reading, much as Pride and Prejudice itself is better appreciated once the plot is known and we can read for character, rather than plot.  Ironically, it is Darcy’s letter that teaches her to stop ‘reading’ and truly look.  It is a lesson learned previously by Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, who imagines herself in a Gothic novel, and Marianne Dashwood, whose beau seems to have skipped right out of a Walter Scott novel.  Yet Elizabeth is a step removed since we see how she changes much more gradually and artfully.  Catherine is thrown out of the Abbey and Marianne takes to her sick bed—all very convenient, in some ways, to affect a grand transformation.  Nothing actually happens to Elizabeth other than a proposal which she refuses.  What makes her change is not the plot; it is herself.  She decides to change based on emotion and reason (or sense and sensibility, perhaps). 

The same, of course, is true for Darcy; he teaches her to read just as he, himself, learns the importance of being read.  As he remarks after his second proposal,

“I cannot be so easily reconciled to myself.  The recollection of what I then said, of my conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of it, is now, and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me.  Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: ‘had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.’  Those were your words.  You know not, you can scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me;--though it was some time, I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice.”

As a proud and dignified man, he had no interesting in what ‘those people’ thought of him.  He ruled himself—quite well, if he dared say so himself—so the opinions of a Mrs. Bennet or even an Elizabeth Bennet reflected more on their own meager abilities.  For Elizabeth, however, he realizes the pain that a single glance, a single misplaced word can bestow.  Few people want to consciously cause pain, yet few realize how easily pain is dispensed upon the ‘underlings’ of the world.  Not surprisingly, Darcy changes the way most of us change: we fall in love with one person, and through that person we begin to see the world.  Initially he wants to be kind to her, to protect her, be civil to her aunt and uncle, and then to her wayward sister, and then…well, he’s become something of a decent human being.  This is one of the few novels I can think of where education is the means of romance.  They learn to be people before they fall in love, which is the polar opposite of almost any other novel or movie that even flirts with romance.  Is education sexy?  Not surprisingly, Jane Austen can make anything sexy. 

I could go on and on, obviously, but I’ll end here with the observation that Pride and Prejudice should be revisited, and often.  When Austen initially wrote the book it was an epistolary novel entitled “First Impressions.”  She drastically re-wrote the book to reflect more Romantic tastes (I imagine the first version might have sounded a bit more like Lady Susan or her unfinished novel, Catherine), though this central idea, how we read and misread the world, remained intact.  All reading is a mixture of pride (I’m too good to read those sorts of books!) and prejudice (oh, I know where this is headed!) yet this invites all sorts of confusion and misdirection.  To be truly educated, the novel suggests, is to read yourself before you read others.  To listen before you pronounce.  And to fall in love with the person who most captivates your intellect, regardless of their class, background, or parents(!).  I fell in love the first time I read Pride and Prejudice at 17 or 18 without even knowing why, and later felt almost embarrassed for doing so (it’s a chick book, isn’t it?).  Good books, however, and neither ‘chick lit’ nor ‘Young adult’ nor ‘world’s classics.’  They are simply there, waiting to be read, and waiting to bear us off on the “phoenix wings” of desire.  Until our next reading…

Focus on Sergei Rachmainov, Part II: Piano Concerto No. 4 (1926, rev. 1928/41)

Piano Concerto No.4: For many concertgoers or classical music fans, Rachmaninov is a composer of two works: Piano Concerto Nos. 2 and 3.  The Second Piano concerto is quintiessential Rachmaninov, full of brooding, gushing themes, all of which are instantly memorable and have been quoted out of context for almost a hundred years.  Ironically, this work came at a crisis of faith for Rachmaninov, as his previous work, the First Symphony, had been a disastrous failure as conducted by Glazunov in St. Petersburg (apparently, Glazunov had been drinking and St. Petersburg critics were never too kind to Muscovites).  He needed over a year of silence and hypnotic therapy (!) before he wrote his first bona fide masterpiece, which even today draws large crowds and is one of the true ‘blockbusters’ of the concerto repertoire.  No.3 is an even more valedictory essay, as it’s twice as long, twice as opulent,  and just a touch more masterful than No.2.  Opening with an innocent, chant-like melody, the concerto explores every inch of what the piano +orchestra combination can do.  It truly is the epitome of the late Romantic concerto.  After this, you simply have to resign yourself to copying him or laying down your pen.  Which poses an interesting question: what could Rachmaninov write after Piano Concerto No.3 if he dared to write a fourth piano conerto? 

And he did write a Fourth concerto, the “ugly duckling” of Rachmaninov’s concertos, which in some ways is my favorite.  Not that it’s quite the equal of Nos. 2 and 3, since those are beyond peer; however, it shows Rachmaninov trying something new, and learning to adapt his expansive, melodic style into a more cryptic, pithy framework.  In some ways this concerto can be seen as a rough draft for the famous Rhapsody on a Theme of Paginini (ostensibly Concerto No.5), which is about the same length and offers more wit, rhythmic play, and modernist zest than any of his previous works.  What makes that work successful is its sheer showmanship; it’s very much a work for the theatre, meant to dazzle and charm.  Piano Concerto No. 4 is more like one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays,” in that it doesn’t deliver what the audience expects, and leaves people scratching their heads, unsure where to place it generically.  Is it a romantic piano concerto writ small?  Is it an aborted modernist work by a composer who couldn’t quite shake off the ghost of Tchaikovsky?  Certainly the old Rachmaninov is everywhere present: gorgeous orchestration—again, with more than a hint of Broadway—rhapsodic keyboard runs, soaring, endless melodies…and yet, none of it ‘soars’ or dazzles the way it should (if we assume all concertos should be like Nos. 2 and 3).  Instead, Rachmaninov seems to tease us, opening with a grand, epic invocation from the orchestra which is immediately pushed aside by a piano that hammers out notes aggressively, as if to say “I’ll make you forget the Tchaikovsky No.1!”  But then…it settles down to a much quieter, more subtle argument that approaches chamber music.  Yet the music itself is divine: Rachmaninov conjures up sounds never before heard in his music; it is much more playful than ever before, with the piano resembling some of his less tuneful Etudes-Tableaux.  A gorgeous Rachmaninov tune enters around the 2 minute mark, seeming to detour into Piano Concerto No.2 territory (it could easily exist in that work), but like the Third Symphony, it quickly morphs into a scherzo.  The music then drives into a darker realm, creating an almost spooky atmosphere of great seriousness.  After a grand climax the piano climbs out of the depths with solemn chords, and before long, the scherzo reasserts itself, followed by the gorgeous theme, and then—an abrupt, “blink or you’ll miss it” ending.  Indeed, many critics have criticized this ending, but in reality, it was longer; Rachmaninov decided it needed pruning and left us with this.  There’s something quite cheeky about how he ends it, and in many ways, it reminds me of the end of The Rhapsody, which also ends quite deadpan.  I have to think this is his defensive response to critics who accused him of too much romantic bombast.  In any case, taken on its own terms it works and it’s an enormously successful, varied first movement. 

The slow moment is also unusual—a broad, serene theme that some have compared (unreasonably) to “Three Blind Mice.”  I think it’s typical Rachmaninov, just without the romance; can a theme be beautiful without conjuring up desperate lovers and Pre-Raphaelite portraits?  Naturally—Mozart did it, and this reminds me of a Mozart Romance from his piano concertos, perhaps Nos. 20, 22, or 27.  Indeed, there is much that is Mozartian here, and though Mozart is not a composer one readily associates with Rachmaninov, there is much affinity between the two in Rachmaninov’s late music.  The autumnal quality, certainly, but also his willingness to experiment and play with form—think of Mozart’s 27^th concerto, which defies all the previous works in its lack of theatricality.  It simply exists as it is. 

The finale opens brashly—even cheekily in the orchestra, before the piano careens in, almost a tad drunkenly.  Everything here seems composed with a nod to Prokofiev by way of Broadway.  Indeed, there is a slight hint of Jazz beneath this music; let’s not forget that Rachmaninov was in the audience during the premier of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue!  This is one of Rachmainov’s first works written squarely in the 20^th century, and one that, without radically altering his style, converts the often heavy, austere quality of the Second Symphony into athletic, ‘young’ sounding music.  Of course, there’s melody and beauty throughout, but the dominant mood is satiric high spirits.  Indeed, the finale sounds like a discarded movement from the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, particularly Variations 19-21, which groove and shake like no other work in his opus (except this concerto).  So why is it so neglected?  Sure, it’s played now and then, and recorded when anyone does a complete set of his concerti, but as a stand-alone piece it delights—and is a nice reposte to those who exclaim Rachmaninov is old hat, washed up, hopelessly Romantic.  Amazingly, in his 60’s Rachmaninov was still reinventing himself and listening (and taking notes) on American music.  I often have to be in just the right mood to listen to Piano Concerto No.3, but No.4 always takes me by surprise and transports me to its unique soundscape.  For these reasons it makes an ideal introduction to Rachmaninov’s music, rather than a tolerated footnote to his compositional legacy. 

My favorite version is the classic recording from Ormandy and Entremont with the Philadelphia Symphony.  This was “Rachmaninov’s orchestra,” since he had a warm working relationship with them, and premiered several works with them, two of which he conceived with them in mind: Symphony No.3 and the Symphonic Dances.  Other great versions include the Ashkenazy/Haitnik version, as well as the much lauded version by Michelangeli, along with Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G (a novel, and very appropriate coupling!).  

The Weight-Loss Approach to Reading

In some respects, we’re living in a renaissance of reading—a true rebirth of reading culture.  When I was in college, it seemed like few people read books outside of classes, and almost no one knew any of the big authors, outside of the ones whose books were instantly translated into films.  With the advent of Kindle and e-books, suddenly it’s become cool to read again, since reading looks more like television or staring at a computer; it’s not ‘boring’ and you can actually read much faster on a Kindle than you can a ‘real’ book.  Partially this comes down to the skimming factor, since I suspect many people read e-books the way they read Facebook/Twitter feeds.  Of course, we’ve become so reliant on technology that for many people, sitting down with an actual paper book seems hopelessly old-fashioned and the lure of the screen becomes impossible to ignore.  Some of my students complain that they simply can’t sit down with a paperback for more than a few minutes before their mind starts racing.  E-books, however, allay that mental fear of losing the screen and they feel more connected; suddenly, people are rediscovering the ability to read a short book in a one go, or at least having an hour or two of uninterrupted pleasure.  So that’s a good thing; people are reading again, and from a quick glance at sites like Goodreads or Booklikes, they’re reading tons of books as quickly as they can find them.  Again, this is good—read books, read many books, and lose yourself in other writers’ lives and minds. 

What does concern me is the distressing focus on quantity on all these sites.  Goodreads offers a 2014 Reading Challenge, where you’re supposed to set a reading goal—say, 50 books—that you hope to meet by the end of the year.  I’ve seen people boast about reading 200 books—some even more.  Many readers’ accounts have hundreds and hundreds of books on their ‘to read’ list, and they are all the time adding more, reading more, devouring more.  Also, these sites encourage you to update your progress: what page are you on, how close are you to finishing, how many books have you completed this month?  Even the Kindle reader has a little bar on the bottom telling you the percentage you have left of the book, as if we can all sigh with relief when it finally, mercifully, reaches 80%.  There are even sites that track how fast you read books and encourage you to increase your speed, buy products that can help you read words faster, etc.  Granted, few of these books are Joyce’s Ulysses or anything that requires deep concentration, but even so, should we encourage reading to the finish line?  Why are we trying to read so many books so quickly?  My own ‘to read’ pile is enormous, and always has been, but the last thing I want to do is set time limits on how quickly I plan to demolish it so I can start a new one.  What’s the rush? 

In Alan Jacob’s excellent little book, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (2011), he addresses this very issue of reading fast and posting it for all the world to see:

I think this is a bad idea.  It’s what you’re reading that matters, and how you’re reading it, not the speed with which you’re getting through it.  Reading is supposed to be about the encounter with other minds, not an opportunity to return to the endlessly appealing subject of Me.  Americans have enough encouragements to narcissism; let’s try to do without this one (67). 

Though this passage—and I suppose my entire post here—sounds a bit hectoring, I think it makes a great point about why people have taken up reading with such aplomb.  It’s a kind of boasting, isn’t it?   Would people read so much if they had to do it in silence, in solitude?  Why do we need to constantly post what we’ve read, how much we’ve read, how much we want to read?  Is it really all about me?  And in our rush to beat last year’s record, or to show our followers how many eclectic books we can experience, are we actually doing anything resembling good old fashioned reading?  Don’t get me wrong—I commit all of the sins outlined above: I read books fairly quickly, post about them, write reviews of them, etc.  However, I don’t feel any urge to set limits and my training as an English scholar has taught me to read slowly, deeply, and for more than surface appreciation.  Does that make me better than anyone else?  Of course not…but I suspect I’m enjoying the books I read a bit more, since I’m not racing through them or glancing at the readout that tells me how much time left until I can get off the Stairmaster.

Shouldn’t reading be fun?  Something savored, the way you would take your time over a great meal, or perhaps more suitably, the way you spend time with someone you love?  Do you really want it to end so you can get on to your next meal—or your next love affair?  If so, what is the value of a good meal or a true relationship with another person?  Is it all just casual sex or fast food take out?  Okay, so who cares if people make out with their books and eat great quantities of high calorie romance novels (to stretch the metaphor to its breaking point)?  This leads to my second point: by focusing more on reading quickly, we might be reading with blinders.  Let’s face it, not every book is written the same; some books are all about plot, with little emphasis on style or character development.  Others are all about how the sentence is written, how the character looks at a certain building at a certain time of day.  For some books, description is the plot, is the character development (despite our modern maxims that description is lazy writing, is boring, is fluff).  

When we read fast, we read for two things: plot and genre.  You can’t read quickly without looking for (and relying on) the convenient sign posts of genre.  You see Character X which you recognize from a thousand books; you see Plot Y which you’ve read over and over again, but you expect a new, fresh twist on it right at the end.  A satisfying, five-star read is a book that gives you exactly what you expected, yet adds one tiny spice to make you, for a moment, think you’ve read a different book.  This is why after Harry Potter every publisher green-lighted stories about adolescent sorcerers; why after Twilight teenage vampires invaded every high school and small town across America; and after The Hunger Games dystopian worlds and gladiatorial games became the soup du jour.  So what happens to those writers, past and present, who don’t want to follow the pre-packaged mold?  A mold which, ironically, was not followed by J.K. Rowling, Stephanie Meyer, or Suzanne Collins.  Do we know how to read those books?  Can we appreciate them?  Or do we get irritated with them and even call them out for being ‘bad’ or ‘disappointing’?

To return once more to Alan Jacobs, he discusses how much pleasure he’s derived from reading the philosopher David Hume, who is by no stretch of the imagination a “page turner.”  As he explains,

For almost all of us, then, Hume’s writing will provide a kind of test—an opportunity to find out just how much patience we have, how much time we’re willing to take.  And to spare any suspense on this point, the results of that test will almost certainly be: not patient enough.  But this is no cause for discouragement.  A person who had been sedentary for a lifetime would not think that she could rise up from her sofa, head out the door, and run a breezy 10K.  Instead she would work up to it slowly, starting with a few strolls around the block perhaps, then longer walks, then a little jogging, and so on.  The same applies to the reading of texts written in an unfamiliar idiom or genre, or written in an age whose stylistic preferences differ from our own (49). 

As an English teacher and scholar of older literatures, I deeply identify with this statement.  I, too, started out sedentary then learned to crawl, then walk, then jog, then sprint—and even then, only for a short time before becoming winded.  However, I always knew that it was a race worth running.  Yet as reading becomes more and more about a different kind of race, are we able to take the time to adjust our reading preferences or grapple with a different period, culture, style, or author?  I ask this because I’ve seen so much ignorant nonsense on sites like Goodreads, Booklikes, and even Amazon, from readers who give classic books such as Pride and Prejudice and The Lord of the Rings negative reviews for being too long, too wordy, too descriptive, and ultimately, too boring.  One reviewer—who, conveniently enough, was also an author—claimed that Tolkein needed to learn how to edit, and that he could make the three novels into one really good one, if anyone cared to ask him.  I’ve heard similar comments about The Iliad and all of Shakespeare’s works: pointless, discursive, and in need of a good editor.  

The ignorance of these statements is shattering.   First of all, it assumes that we, in the 21^st century, invented editing.  Don’t you think it was edited?  In fact, I would wager to believe that many works of the past were edited with more intelligence and rigor that anything we push through the presses today.  Take The Iliad, for example; this is a work from the oral tradition that was probably re-written, revised, and recast for hundreds of years before it assumed anything like its final form.  Jane Austen completely re-wrote the book Pride and Prejudice was based on (First Impressions), changing it from an epistolary novel to a more traditional one, and in the process making a work of the late Enlightenment into a fledgling Romantic novel.  Can you imagine the work (and critical fortitude) that must have went into this process?  Secondly, making a book from the past into a ‘bestseller’ would not notably improve it; indeed, it would destroy what makes it unique and able to transcend its moment in time.  By this logic, should we abolish different languages in favor of one we all agree on, that could speak to everyone equally, without taking into account the nuances of culture and poetry?  In short, reading takes time, and learning to read the works of the past, as well as works outside our own cultural and generic norms, takes patience (to quote Jacobs).  I don’t think the current reading environment encourages patience, and many young readers, raised on this approach, will quickly abandon works that don’t “speak to them,” assuming that it’s a flaw of the book/author.  As a reader, I usually assume the fault lies with me, and I need to recalibrate my expectations before I dismiss a book as 1 or 2 stars, or heap it on the “will never finish” pile. 

As an English teacher, more and more of my first-year students seem to read books, which is amazing—no question.  Yet these same students are more reluctant, it seems, to read books that demand more of them, that don’t fit into a genre they like or an author they’ve previously read.  I hear quite often, “I don’t like classics,” as if this is a genre or a style of writing.  My point, if I really have one, is that our reading seems more driven by advertising and marketing than a desire to read new books and meet new ideas.  All new technology destroys as it creates, and I fear our frantic embrace of e-books and the marketers that come with it, are making us count books as we count calories.  Are books good for you?  Of course they are; they enrich the mind, nourish the soul, and knock us out of our selfish bubble to see other worlds—worlds we may never visit in person (all the more so for worlds in the past).  Yet reading by itself isn’t necessarily good; I could read a thousand cereal boxes and not walk away enlightened.  Reading is an art, which is ultimately a tool, a means to transport us to another state of mind/being.  If we read blindly, we learn blindly, too.  Reading should never become like our 1,500 “friends” on Facebook.  Even if you read only one book this year, read it slowly, patiently, and let the experience transform you.  If you love books, of course you want to read as many as possible—I certainly do—but don’t let sheer numbers impress you.  Don’t count the books or take stock of the pages.  Just keep reading: different books and different authors, different styles and genres, and in different languages if possible…especially when no one’s looking.