The classics. Literature’s Greatest Hits.
You’ve been hearing
about these supposedly elite, magnificent books for forever, yet
you’ve never really picked one up and cracked open its cover. Or
clicked, in this digital age. Still, it’s likely you’ve wanted to
read a classic novel at least at some point in your life.
That time is now:
whether you want to get through a single novel just to say you did,
or find yourself ready to plunge into a year-long literary
exploration, we have some pointers for you.
Make a list—or
a few lists
What makes a classic
book, anyway? There’s no strict definition, which can make it
almost impossible to get started.
Authoritative lists
are here to help. The Guardian has a compilation of 100 best
English-language novels, which comes with obliging, one-sentence
explanations for why each work deserves a place in the sacred canon.
Le Monde, Time Magazine, and The Telegraph offer similar lists.
You’ll notice
certain books cropping up again and again: J.D. Salinger’s angsty
faux-memoir The Catcher in the Rye, Kurt Vonnegut’s biting war
satire Slaughterhouse-Five, Vladimir Nabokov’s troubled Lolita,
and, hopefully, Tolstoy’s unremitting epic War and Peace. These are
some works you could start with, should their summaries pique your
interest.
But keep in mind
that “the classics” span a broad range. ”‘Classic’ doesn’t
necessarily mean ‘old’,” Gwen Glazer, a librarian at the New
York Public Library, tells Quartz. “A classic [can just be] an
important book making a contribution, or a really good representation
of a particular genre.”
Instead of making
one massive, overwhelming bucket list, break it up. Draw up a list of
Victorian classics. Or theatre classics. Or science fiction classics.
You can also find or make lists by theme:
Figure out what
you already love
All contemporary
work is “imbued with the classical work,” Brooklyn Public Library
librarian Ben Gocker points out. So if you like reading essays by
Ta-Nahesi Coates, you might find yourself enjoying older authors who
wrote about similar topics—think James Baldwin, think W.E.B.
DuBois.
If you’re a
devotee of Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games books, there’s a chance
you’ll get obsessed with George Orwell’s 1984 or Philip K. Dick’s
intriguing dystopias. Like big, meaty stories? Try George Eliot’s
Victorian classic Middlemarch. Can’t get enough of Gillian Flynn’s
Gone Girl? Invest in a copy of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, known
to many as the Western world’s original mystery novel.
“Think of it as
monkey bars,” Gocker suggests. “If you’re interested in
classics, you’re interested in reading. So is there something you
can grab onto [from which] you can start moving into the classics?”
Many, many
contemporary books and films nowadays are also based on classic
literature. And we’re not just talking about modern adaptations;
there are probably more contemporary twists on old tales out there
than you realize, and those links can serve as excellent bridge
between the very ancient and the very new.
Did you know:
Clueless is really the tale of Jane Austen’s Emma; Easy A is a
modern high school retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet
Letter; HBO’s The Wire draws its inspiration from Balzac and Greek
tragedy; The Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? is an update
of the The Odyssey.
Draw up a
schedule
You can aim to read
a book a week or one a year—it doesn’t matter. Stig Abell, the
new editor of the Times Literary Supplement, read all of the
Shakespeare canon while commuting to work. He assumed an hour of
commuting time a day, which was roughly a play a week. That’s all
of the Bard—38 plays in total—in less than a year.
Whatever your
schedule is, just make sure to stick to it, lest you fall into the
easy “I’m sure I’ll pick this back up at some point” trap and
end up with a tome just gathering dust in your living room.
Be social about
it
In spite of the
stereotype, reading doesn’t have to be a solitary act. Reaching out
to friends about books or signing up for a site like Goodreads, which
offers personalized book recommendations from friends across your
social networks, can be an excellent way to get hooked on certain
types of literature.
Even just posting a
query on Facebook—perhaps a quick, “Hey, does anyone have
recommendations for good classic books?”—can yield inspiration.
You can also put down the internet and try joining a real-life book
club, which comes the added benefit of meeting interesting new
people.
Work your way up
to the greats
Just as you wouldn’t
start playing a video game on the most difficult level, don’t start
your venture into classic literature with the likes of Homer and
Shakespeare, whose works are full of obscure language and unfamiliar
references.
Ruth Yeazell, a
professor specializing in Victorian literature in Yale University’s
English department, personally recommends starting with classics in
the Victorian era because the social and historical context of that
time may be most similar to that of our own. Novels like Jane Eyre
and Wuthering Heights are “not that linguistically or culturally
far away” compared to many others, she says.
They were also
written specifically for a popular audience—not a particularly
elite, intellectual class. That means they could be easiest to get
into. And make sure to add some historical and social context into
those storylines nonetheless. ”Read books in the Oxford and Penguin
editions, which have a good introduction and some notes to things you
don’t know that might stump you,” Yeazell said.
When you’re ready,
tackle the greatest of the greats slowly and surely.
Try reading a page
at a time, consulting Wikipedia entries and dictionary definitions if
you need. And it might prove beneficial to start with a short, fast
work like The Tempest, which is more plot-driven than Shakespeare’s
hefty kings plays. Abell, who read all of Shakespeare on the Tube,
recommends Arden editions for their “explanatory footnotes [and]
great introductions.”
You’ll quickly get
the hang of it—after which you can move your way through trickier
works.
If you don’t
like it, give it up for something else
Bottom line: there
are classic books out there worth your time, and ones that aren’t.
But it’s all personal. “Leaving a book halfway done, a quarter of
the way done—that’s okay,” Gocker says. “You don’t need to
read the whole book to get a sense of the presence of the writer,
which is what you’re really getting from literature. If you don’t
want to spend another second with them, don’t.”
What makes a classic
good, anyway? According to Yeazell, “the greatest novels have a
kind of richness of psychological complexity.” Gocker says good
classics of literature tend to have “a real obdurate heart.” To
Glazer, “any book you’re excited about is a great book for you,
because there shouldn’t be value judgment in reading.”
Italian author Italo
Calvino famously has 14 whole reasons to read the classics, the best
of which may be this simple definition: “A classic is a book that
has never finished saying what it has to say.”
So, go out, and hit
up your local library or bookstore. You actually can’t go wrong.