Reading the Classics

In Beowulf on the Beach, writer Jack Murnigan tells about classic novels that actually make good summer reading. Aside from a catchy title, Murnigan's book sounds like a good read in itself. Interviewed on Weekend Edition Sunday on June 14, he said that Anna Karenina is a real page-turner, and Moby Dick is very funny, although teachers never let on about this to their students.

Which led Murnigan to bemoan the fact that our educational system tries to teach classics to us when we are too young to appreciate or sometimes even understand them. Having listened to my 15-year-old complain about reading Great Expectations this year, I think he may be right. She thought Dickens was incredibly boring and couldn't understand why it was important for her to read him.

While the Murnigan interview didn't get into his full argument, I have the feeling he believes schools would be better off teaching excerpts or abridged versions, so that students get a taste of the classics without the turnoff, so that later they might read the whole book with a bit more life experience.

I had (and in some ways still have) a huge aversion to books that are considered classics. According to Murnigan, a British study found that 65 percent of those surveyed had lied about having read this or that classic book. I'm not sure I've lied, but I've definitely skirted the fact that I haven't read something, implying that I had, just because I knew some facts about its plot or characters.

Having gone to high school in the "roll-your-own-education" 1970s, I wasn't forced to read much of anything. We were always having electives, and so I chose what to read, partly depending on which teacher was offering which class. I read an abridged version of The Odyssey, but the complete texts of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. And the book of Job, in combination with the play J.B. by Archibald MacLeish (now, that was very 1970s!) Plus short stories by authors whose novels we didn't read -- Hawthorne, Melville, Bierce, Twain. And a lot of poetry. (Not to mention the trendy Lord of the Flies and A Separate Peace combo class.)

During college, I took classes on Southern fiction that brought me to Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and William Styron. And, based on how much I loved one of those short stories from high school, I took a whole class on Nathaniel Hawthorne and read every one of his novels. Which turned out to be not so much fun.

But I avoided Austen, Dickens, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Melville, Twain and many others. Well past college, I finally read all of Austen and loved her. I've dabbled in Fitzgerald, but still haven't managed to read Dickens, Hemingway, Melville or Twain. Let alone Tolstoy.

I'm not sure why, but there's a lingering mental weight to these books. It feels as though it would be work to read them, when my major reason for reading is pleasure.

But I just may pick up a copy of Beowulf on the Beach to map out my strategy for catching up on the classics. (By the way, Beowulf is a classic I've actually read. And Grendel, too.)