On Reading Ambitiously

(As our maiden post, here's some thoughts on why I support tackling Big Things.)

I should say initially that I have no intention of using this title as an excuse to serve up my own fairly small list of Ambitious Things That I've Made It All the Way Through on a bed of Sniping at People Who Don’t Treat Reading as an Extreme Sport. If I end up slipping up and it comes across that way, please don't hesitate to catch your waiter's eye and send this back to the kitchen.

What I do mean to do is to make a case for moving consistently into deeper and more distant waters than those that you are used to. I've used "reading" as my main axis, but I take in my sights any medium with enough breadth to offer the choice.

(I should probably also mention that one of the things that has informed my view of this has been studying foreign languages and the debate/terror surrounding reading set texts "in the original". My view is that making the effort to do so is like seeing a painting in real life as opposed to in a textbook. Incidentally, if you’re not a native English speaker then not all of this will apply to you as is, though I think there are parallels.)

Don't Fear Them, Reader [link]

I think one of the best things about my education (fairly atypical in many respects) was that I was exposed to difficult things on a fairly frequent basis. I had a more-or-less unbroken succession of English teachers who threw The Classics (as distasteful as the canonisation drive is) at us, and indeed Classics teachers who did the same. I don't mean to imply that as an eleven-year-old I instantly got and appreciated the whole of Grey's Elegy, but that I was made aware of the existence of More Difficult Works, and shown that, while it would be impossible that I understand everything going on at first blush (even after puzzling over particular passages and looking up words and allusions, this being just before the Internet got serious), there was still value in attempting to grapple with something big, and the effort involved made what I did glean all the more valuable.

In short, I think that it taught me not to fear works. For me, this was an incredibly liberating feeling: once you have attained your literary maturity (more thoughts on which later), you essentially have the freedom of the whole of human civilization at your disposal. You are free to go up to any great Canon writer in the street, introduce yourself, and they will happily sit with you and hold a conversation. You might be surprised at how like you they and their characters are. The best part is that you can ask them to repeat themselves as many times as you like; it’s as though the same paragraphs or verses throw different shadows each time you read them, or gradually come more into focus as you grow. I don’t think educational background need necessarily affect your ability to do this – if you don’t get (say) a Classical mythology reference, you can look it up, and no-one will think less of you (or if they do, you have my full endorsement in smacking them about the face with a Classical Greek-English lexicon).

Taking Exception [link]

It's also possible, of course, that on meeting a particular writer you find that you don't really get on with them, or that you find that a writer that you once felt you had something in common with feels distant, or trivial. It will occasionally happen that their world-view strikes you as actively harmful, and so should be kept away from those at risk from it; sometimes you know this yourself as you used to get on with them, but now see that they affected you negatively, much as can happen with people. That case isn't really what we’re examining here, though.

How do you react to this lack of a spark? I think an indication of having achieved a certain level of growth is that you can like or dislike a work without needing to justify your decision, but without your decision needing to demonise or canonise the work in question. That is, you can dislike a particular author without needing to pass a value judgement on them, and without the need for a third party to agree with your judgement; if asked, you might be able to crystallise the particular reasons why you dislike their work, but your preference essentially stands alone, set in enough respect for its own validity that it doesn't need to beg.

In this light, dismissing an author (and again, this extends to musicians, painters and directors) becomes quite a serious statement. It implies a certain lack of respect - both for the author themselves but also for anyone who happens to enjoy their work. For works that incite jingoism, hatred and small-mindedness, it is precisely a lack of respect that we show by dismissing them, and with good reason. To my mind, though, it is a sign of immaturity to dismiss something that we once admired purely because we have grown out of it. I don't see any shame in writing for a particular audience; we don't dismiss teachers for spending their time with children instead of adults in their workplace. Who’s to say that in the future, you might not find what you enjoy now similarly childish? Or, indeed, that you might not find a new appreciation for what you now dismiss?

This requires a certain humility, even as it requires a certain level of pride. It seems to me that you have to say "I will not understand all of this, or I may see more than is in fact there" at the same time as saying "I am worthy of attempting to read this". There’s nothing to stop you going forth into the Canon and sampling its riches; all you have to do beyond paying the price of admission (which is frequently nothing in these days of Project Gutenberg and streaming) is to lay down the awful burden of needing to understand everything, or worse, to have everything explained to you.

Child- and Adult-Level Learning [link]

I think this latter curse comes from the schools method of learning being regretfully applied to literature. We take Hamlet and carve it into scene-by-scene homework analysis, predigested with modern English "translations", glossaries for old words and Classical allusions, and scene-by-scene summaries so that you never read an honest pentameter without a swarm of angry explanations cutting it into a train of textureless mouthfuls.

This is what I think of as child-level learning. As children (in the intellectual sense) we are presented with gobbets of information that are simply to be swallowed. This is in order to create a foundation for our adult understanding of the world. You don't need to know the rich history of the Latin alphabet, travelling as it has right from the Egyptian hieroglyphs through millennia of sacred knowledge to the present day, when you are learning to read and write; similarly, when bringing up a small child there is little place for negotiation - you tell it "no" without further discussion so that it learns to accept other people’s needs and opinions as equally and occasionally more valid than its own.

What I think of as adult-level learning requires what was learnt as a child as its spring-board. Instead of force-feeding, education takes the form of kindling: a teacher ignites the fire of interest in a particular field by dousing the dry materials with just enough explanation that the resultant passion can sustain itself, and steps back as the pupil's knowledge hopefully feeds itself. On this level the goal of teaching is not to fill the pupil with enough solid foundation that they can function in general in adult society (or, more cynically, that they can pass a series of exams), but to present a particular view of a subject that will excite their pupil's intelligence so that they charge forward into it in search of more.

You could compare this to the learning of a musical instrument, or of a foreign language. If you are learning on a child-level basis, you will swallow enough (hopefully) to be able to perform in an exam or on the spot if absolutely necessary; if you move to an adult-level one, you will spend your free time practising and perfecting for the sheer enjoyment of it, and achieve more than you ever could on the child level.

Invitation to a Canon Ball [link]

If you have never had this experience in reading (or other media), then I can give you no greater gift than to suggest that you find a copy of a Shakespeare play and just read it straight through. I would recommend Hamlet or The Tempest if you haven't had them dissected in school, or failing that any of the better known tragedies or comedies; get an edition with absolutely no critical apparatus to distract you. (The Gutenberg editions I've linked might be a bit stark, but there are plenty of others if you look around.) Start at the beginning, and read. There will be words and references you don't understand, sure, but ignore them, or try to guess them from context. If you don't understand a passage at all, by all means go back and read it again, or just move on. Resist the urge to look up the answers. Read the words aloud in your head, and (if you're not going to disturb anyone), try reading out a speech or two. Don't stop until you get to the end. They're not that long without the critical padding.

Hopefully what will happen is that the beauty, wit and magic of the play will come alive for you. You are sitting face-to-face with Shakespeare over coffee, and he's cancelled his plans for the afternoon to sit quietly with you and tell you a story. You end up laughing frequently. The whole place is empty apart from the two of you; every now and then he smiles at you as he talks as if to say, "I hope you like this part. I'm proud of it - I wrote it as a present, just for you." This is the magic trick with great works - he says the same to everyone who reads it, and for everyone who reads it it's still true.

You have the right to stride into the Canon and order whatever you want; all you have to do is to allow your teeth the time to sharpen, if you've only been fed on lighter fare before. I think it really is enriching to take on a work that feels as though it's heavier than you are. There's certainly a joyful feeling of achievement in getting onto familiar terms with a name you'd normally see written about to show off a character's erudition - they rarely bite.

Constructive Criticism [link]

And then, if you like, you should read a critical evaluation. I don't know about you, but I never read the introduction to a book before I read the book itself. It means that you're no longer alone with the author - you've got some interloper sitting next to you butting in with "Well actually, I think..." every couple of seconds. If you read criticism afterwards (in the proper sense of the word, that is, "judgement" as in "weighing up"), you have your own knowledge of the work in question, and it becomes more of an even discussion. Frequently, if the critic is a good one, you will end up with new perspectives on the work which will add to your own appreciation of it - but they won't ever try to replace yours, or suggest that they know "the real" so-and-so, and if they do you should feel free to take what they're saying with a large pinch of salt. (Also, by that I don't mean to knock really good stuff like the Introducing... series. I'd say that's more like giving you a push so you don't end up flat on your face with the Big Things.)

This is what real analysis is, if you've only ever been made to find all the instances of Atticus Finch being a good father in To Kill a Mockingbird. You read a phrase or a work, it makes a certain impression on you, you try to fish out what it is about it that made you feel that way. There might be currents underneath the surface that you had no conscious awareness of; a good critic will make the case for their existence, and if you deem it valid they will add to your understanding of the work in question. Good analysis never makes its subject less alive. It might mean that you can no longer take the work seriously, but it will not make you incapable of seeing it as anything more than a collection of bones, cartilage and soft tissues percolating a puddle of blood.

In Summary...

My intention has been to try to convince you, if you are unconvinced, that attempting to fight above what you feel is your weight is a worthwhile and nourishing thing to do. I would be distraught to think that this comes across as a defence of singing the praises of "having read" books - what I mean to suggest is that expanding your "reading for fun" books (or "consuming for fun" media) to include ambitious things (even if they don’t end up agreeing with you) is a rich and rewarding experience, and more than worth the increase in intellectual outlay over, say, rereading a young adult novel series.

(Don't take the link attacks too seriously. They're not meant to be. Hope that was at least thought-inducing, and see you in a week!)