Classics

I have a confession to make. Ready for it?

I have never read most of the classics.

I am a literary failure.

I have never read Jane Austin or anything by the Brontes. I have read very little of Dickens or Shakespeare. I have read Mark Twain and John Steinbeck, but Alexandre Dumas is a stranger to me, and this guy - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - well, I can't even read his name, let alone anything that he's written. Atwood, Eliot, Fitzgerald, Tolstoy, Woolf, James, Shelley, even Carroll are complete unknowns to me.

Oh, it's not that I'm not a reader. I love reading. I am an avid reader. I'm a good reader. Thick books with complicated language don't intimidate me. I have read loads and loads of books. It's just that I've never read many of the books that many people consider to be classics, and whenever those "100 Books You Must Read Before You Die" lists appear somewhere in my social media, I feel vaguely guilty, because apart from a few of them that are just jolly good yarns (like Lord of the Rings, The Narnia Chronicles, Sherlock Holmes, and To Kill a Mockingbird), I have read almost none of them, and I'm running out of time.

So I've set about to rectify that.

I discovered that many classics are available as free downloads on Kindle. So I downloaded one and read it. The Good Soldier, by Ford Maddox Ford. #43 in the list of 100 novels everyone must read before he or she dies. What was it about, you ask? Well, the plot is basically this. There is this guy, and he is sitting in a chair recounting the story of his life, or, at least, the last 10 years or so of his life. The end. It may have been the weirdest book I have ever read (although the book of Judges in the Bible is pretty weird, too). Despite that, I quite enjoyed it, when I wasn't hating it. It's not a "nice" book. It's haunting, actually, in a sad and tragic sort of way. But, still, in the end, I felt bolstered in my quest to conquer the classics.

My next choice has been Pride and Prejudice. #9 on the list. Plot line so far? A bunch of air-headed girls trying to win over a bunch of dandies, with lots of giggles and gossip and parties. I have to say, I'm bogging down. I'll be honest: I'm not finished the book yet. I'll finish it; I'm determined to classify myself. I'm way too early in my journey to give up yet.

But it's made me think: what makes a classic a classic? What makes a story great? (Other than Colin Firth in a top hat playing Mr. Darcy, of course). Why do some books make it onto top 100 lists, and others do not? Why do some paintings qualify as "art", and others are not? Why does one artist's red stripe on a blue background (or blue stripes on a red background) hang in the National Art Gallery, but your kid's similar magic marker wonder that bled through the paper and stained your coffee table is just a childish scribble? Why do some songs classify as "classical" while others fade away as mere noise?

I don't know that I have an answer. I know why I read. "We read to know that we are not alone." Some people say that C. S. Lewis said that. I don't know if he did, or not. I haven't read enough C. S. Lewis to know. But it is why I read. I look for some kind of hook, some way of being able to say, "Oh, me too!" Pride and Prejudice, so far, classic though it may be, is not doing that for me. I cannot imagine spending my days attending fancy parties and plotting ways to capture a man. Not even Colin Firth in a top hat.

But it's more than that. I read to feel big feelings, to know that there is good and courage and decency and justice and heroism in the world, and that ordinary people can make hard choices and do hard things, even sacrificial things, because of those virtues. I read to learn, to discover worlds not like my own, places I will never visit, times in which I will never live, issues and world events I may never face: Middle Earth, Victorian London shrouded by fog, Alabama in the 1930s . . . perhaps even Pemberley at the turn of the 19th century.

So what makes a classic? Maybe it's all a great joke, and long ago, some stuffy, dandruffy people with very bad senses of humour compiled lists of the thickest, hardest, most boring books they'd ever read, and called them "classics", and told the poor, unassuming public (beginning with hapless school children) that these books ought to be read, and that if you haven't read them, you're part of the great, unwashed masses of culturally illiterate, thereby inflicting a load of bad books upon generations to come. So we read them and we claim to love them and we talk sensibly (or pretentiously) about them, desperately attempting to rise above the common fray, while all along, we secretly think, "What a load of drivel this lot is!" and none of us dare to say, "I hated that book. I though it dreadfully boring."

Or maybe a classic becomes a classic when enough people read it and say, "Oh, me, too!" Or enough people read that book and feel big feelings, feelings of courage and decency and love and justice and heroism, and realise that small people can turn the wheels of the world (Tolkien, sort of, from Fellowship of the Ring). Or maybe enough people read that book and were intrigued by or wrestled with the world or events the book portrayed, and they told other people to read the book, and eventually the book became a classic. Or maybe there are, tucked in some of those thick volumes, some rollicking good tales that I have not discovered yet.

I haven't decided at this point. I'm still part of the unwashed masses. But I'll keep at it for a while.

Mr. Darcy may intrigue me yet.