Reading and the Classics

Books are uniquely portable magic –Stephen King

A friend sent me an article on the study of reading patterns of American males by Constance Grady in a magazine called Vox. She writes: “Here’s where we ended up: men are slightly less likely to read than women are and less likely to read fiction, although the margin is not the yawning gap it’s usually presented as. Male authors continue to sell well and win awards. They won the National Award in four of five past years and many top bestseller lists. While it’s true that women make up the vast majority of publishing staff, men are over-represented at the executive level. At the same time, the problem of men who no longer read is presented as one that is urgent for the culture to address. So how did we get here? Are men’s reading habits truly a national crisis?”

And came the summation: “male readers are around 20% of book readers and women 80%, while graduate males read more. Reading’s role as a therapy food for mental and emotional health”, and the mention of Trump who probably never holds a book in his hand to read! According to the article, novels are considered feminine frivolities coming down from the Victorian Era.

I almost laughed outright. Give it to the Americans to spend time and money on researching the reading habits of adults, and males at that. Very intractable phenomenon or habit. Also to treat the seen decline in reading as an urgent problem, national crisis. Without eliminating Trump they vote him into the presidency! What is the national significance that males are reading less fiction?

If the reading habit of children declines it is a problem as it surely must be in America with its diversity of entertainment avenues. With much less such ‘delights’ to eat into precious leisure time, children in this land too read so much less. And hardly do they read good books in English – many reasons: Sinhala Only, poor teaching staff, cost of books.

I got to writing this because my friend Leelananda De Silva, a retired senior public servant and UN consultant, has expressed his disappointment and accompanying alarm, several times, that our school children do not have even a nodding recognition of the classics of English fiction, leave alone read them. And these should be introduced to them so they read them. I agree with him but judging by the standard of English of the majority of children, it is impossible to expect them to read Charles Dickens.

Which brings me to the question of what a literary classic is. Here is one definition:

“|A classic is a book accepted as being exemplary or particularly noteworthy.” In 1850 Charles Augustine Sainte-Beuve (1840-69) defined thus: “The idea of a classic implies something that has continuance and consistence, and which produces unity and tradition, fashions and transmits itself, and endures.” The author of a classic: “has enriched the human mind, increased its treasure, and caused it to advance a step; has discovered some moral and unequivocal truth or revealed some internal passion in that heart…”

T S Eliot did not define but said: “A classic can only occur when civilization is mature; when a language and a literature are mature; and it must be the work of a mature mind.” He added that a book to qualify as a classic has to be comprehensive and “within its formal limitations, express the maximum possible of the whole range of feeling which represents the character of the people who speak that language.” To Eliot, only Virgil wrote classics.

For many years I believed, as heard or read, that Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights was considered the best novel in the English Language with Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens close followers. In Sri Lanka for long Leonard Woolf’s Village in the Jungle was the best local book in English. The above was just off my mind. Here are books selected by Britannia as ten of the greatest works of literature down the ages. Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Gabriel Garzia Marquez’s One hundred years of solitude, E M Forster’s A passage to India, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Tony Morrison’s Beloved, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dolloway. Chinua Achebe’s Things fall apart, Jane Eyre and Alice Walker’s Colour Purple. The list is interesting for the range of its authors and the inclusion of non British and women of colour novelists.

Types of books read in life’s stages

Coming to my personal life with books, I need to say first and foremost that with age the reading habit has waned; time spent curled up with a book is far far less; choosy about fiction read and biographies much preferred. I presume it’s the same with other seniors. Leelananda has a vast collection of books which he bought over the years to read. While fully employed he would have read most but now he says he reads much less.

I remember with sweet nostalgia starting off with Enid Blyton who catered for the five plus to the young teen. Then it was moving to school stories and girl stories such as Anne of Green Gables, Richmal Crompton’s books on the crazy escapades of William, Ginger and the Outlaws. I never was into true romance paperbacks and Barbara Cartland. This mostly because I school holidayed in my brother’s home and a couple of miles away lived a ‘squire’ with a vast collection of books whom my sister-in-law borrowed from – Somerset Maugham, James Hilton and such like. So it was a straight jump from Blyton to adult fiction for me as a teenager. Later, appreciated much were Indian writers – Picor Iyer, Vikram Seth, Anita and daughter Kiran Desai and others.

I admit I was not into the classics of Dickens et al. Appreciated and loved a classic when done in class as text but preference was always for the more modern and easier reads. I loved Wuthering Heights, but Thomas Hardy only read as a text – Trumpet Major in Form Four. Down with measles and confined to a room when 16, I took to hand The Complete Works of Jane Austen won as a prize. Opened to me was excellent writing that overrode the slowness of the narratives. Austen’s ‘carving on ivory’ engrossed and enthralled me. Dickens was most appreciated when his Great Expectations was done as a text for the GAQ under Mr Kuruwila.

Its stunning symbolism was appreciated: the escaped convict holding Pip by the feet so he was turned upside down and Pip seeing every issue topsy turvy like believing Ms Havisham was his benefactor.

The men in my life meaning brothers, husband, and later sons were all devoured books. Time was when I would forego household chores, supervision of children’s homework, even meals to complete reading the novel in hand. No more now.

Thus the consequent thought: we benefited because English was, in the older generation like mine, first language and though my sons studied in the Sinhala medium, they grew up with English books around and frequent visits, at first with me and then alone, to the British Council and American Center libraries. And thus, Leelananda agreeing, I thank the British colonialists who introduced English to us.

Children of now and the classics

I voice Leelananda De Silva’s plea that children of today be introduced and encouraged to read the classics – the late teenagers. Those in schools in the big cities may be proficient in their English so they could cope, with difficultly of course, Dickens, Austen et al. English in even rural schools is being given greater emphasis but are teachers in these schools competent to even suggest a book for reading or better read it out to the class? I emphasize that standards of English in school children in general is far far inadequate to even tackle the simpler classics. Of course the abridged versions of great books can be a starter for kids. They may be bored with Austen but Dickens should appeal and so also Arthur C Clarke and other more recent writers. We have some good books written by local authors but not Shehan Karunatilake’s Booker Prize winner which will be tackled by even a Colombo 7 student!

Leelananda De Silva made another succinct point. Local publishers should publish books considered classics to be sold cheap since copyright for most would have lapsed by now. Our people, known to venerate books and never sit or tread on them, will buy classics at affordable prices in the hope their kids will one day read them if they are reluctant to do so as yet another chore. They must be led to the classics.