Classic Mistakes 🤦♀️
Reading classics can be fun, but it wasn't always so — at least for me
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‘Tis the season for resolutions, so many of you are probably planning to read more. More of those famous books you’ve heard of, to be exact. You’re not alone. I’m gearing up for George Eliot’s fearsome Middlemarch this month. If I manage that, maybe I’ll give Infinite Jest a whirl. Or I'll wuss out again, like I did last year.
As someone who has made every mistake in the book in reading fiction, here are some notable ones and what I’ve learned from them. Feel free to have a few chuckles at my expense.
Getting Stuck on Brand Names
When I was 15, I decided to become all intellectual and stuff. I went into a used bookstore and picked up the first title I recognized: Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Convinced that I would raise my intellectualism by a few points, I set to reading without as much as looking at the synopsis. After a week of dogged persistence, I finished it, disappointed by the ending and repelled by Jane’s righteousness.
The problem wasn't Jane Eyre. It was me. As a cynical teenager, I couldn’t appreciate melodrama or understand Brontë’s critique of Christian morality. Nor did I have the patience for the slower pace typical of the Victorians. It was just not my thing. Postscript: I returned to the novel a few years ago with much more success and appreciation, although the dei ex machina still bother me.
I made the cardinal sin of going for the brand name instead of taste. That annoying thing that means that we have different preferences for style and content. Gabriel García Márquez's circuitous prose may enchant one as it bores another to tears. Ernest Hemingway's dubious attitudes toward women (and others) may repulse a reader while another can shrug it off for the bull runs. Such small things can sour someone on classics, perhaps forever.
Don’t just go for the big names. Look within. What kind of stories do you like? What issues pique your interest? How patient are you, really? Wherever your taste may be, at least one classic will tickle your fancy. All sorts of books have reached the vaunted rank of “classic” from the swashbucklers (Treasure Island), comedy (A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court), thrillers (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and more. If you're going to go classic, you may as well read something you like.
You can expand your horizons later. When you’re starting out, stick to what you actually like. If I had known this, maybe Jane Eyre wouldn’t have been the only classic I read outside of the classroom for a decade.
Going Too Heavy Too Fast
When I was 25, I attempted Anna Karenina after years of only reading YA bestsellers outside of the classroom. (Hey, they were fun!) It was a short-lived affair with me fading out as I read about Levin cutting grass.
Reading classics is like exercising. When you start out, you're inexperienced and weak. Even if you read a lot—articles, Facebook posts, and an occasional contemporary novel or nonfiction—classics are different. They use outdated prose, reference archaic customs, and so on. You're not used to that, just as you're not used to bench presses when you haven't been to the gym in a decade.
Just as you shouldn’t deadlift 300 pounds your first day back, you don’t start with the likes of Finnegan’s Wake (very experimental, very confusing) or Anna Karenina (less bewildering and very long). Wonderful books all, and unsuitable for the neophyte. You need to develop stamina and a background in literary references to appreciate the heavyweights. Otherwise, they will give you a hernia. Just like what happened to m and Anna Karenina.
As frustrating as it may sound, you want to revert to foundational works that are reasonably short and reasonably clear, all while avoiding mistake #1. Like some dark romance? Try Jane Eyre. Into sci-fi? Give Frankenstein or the Foundation series a go. Want a chuckle or two? Twain is my go-to. You can level up to longer authors whose works aren't overly complex, such as Dickens, Steinbeck, etc. Then you can upgrade to subtler works of Austen and Fitzgerald. And so on. This is especially key when you're coming into classics after a long hiatus from long-form reading.
Getting Lost in Translations
Many of the greats were written in languages other than our own. Since it’s terribly impractical to learn a new language every time we want to branch out from our culture and language, translations are our only option.
Things get lost in translation. More gets lost in bad translations. The Count of Monte Cristo taught me this the hard way. When I decided to revisit the story I had loved as a child, I downloaded a random free version. It bore little resemblance to what I remembered as a thrilling tale of revenge and adventure. The prose was clunky and stilted. There were scenes (and even a storyline) I was certain hadn’t existed in my previous reading. It was like I was reading a brand-new book—one I didn’t like. In a way, I had. I had gotten lost in the land of bad translations and editions.
To illustrate, here’s an excerpt from the free version of Anna Karenina:
[Nikolai] was even thinner than three years before, when Konstantin Levin had seen him last. He was wearing a short coat, and his hands and big bones seemed huger than ever. His hair had grown thinner, the same straight mustaches hid his lips, the same eyes gazed strangely and naively at his visitor.
—Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina (p. 125). Public Domain Books.
The same passage from a more recent translation (that I paid for):
He was still thinner than three years ago when Konstantin Levin had last seen him. He was wearing a short frock coat. His arms and broad bones seemed still more huge. His hair had become thinner, the same straight mustache hung over his lips, the same eyes gazed strangely and naïvely at the man coming in.
—Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club) (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (p. 86).
It’s hard to believe that these came from the same novel. The former is stilted and old-fashioned. The latter has a more modern sensibility with sharper descriptions. These versions give you a completely different feel, and picking the wrong one could ruin your experience. What a shame, since you may miss out on a great book because of a lousy translation.
A note on editions. A quick search turned up more than 100 distinct versions (!) of Charles Dickens' Bleak House from 588 to 1,036 pages (!!). (I have my suspicions about the legitimacy of the 588-page version, as counterfeits of classics lurk on the ‘net.) Like many of its 19-century counterparts, Bleak House was originally published in a serialized form, much like today's long-running television series like Lost or Games of the Thrones. The sprawling plots and multitudes of characters typical of the format just don't conform to the novel form. They’re too long and too sprawling. So we need some serious editing to shoehorn these stories into a book, especially one palatable to modern taste. The purists will want the uncut version. Most of us plebs will probably gravitate toward a more contemporary rendition.
Missing the Forest for the Trees
When I started reading for reals, I decided to be all serious about it. I looked up every unfamiliar word. If I didn't understand an interaction, I turned to my trusty Google. Sounds good in theory. The practice resulted in me slowed to a snail's pace, making me forget key plot details. The book became intellectual quicksand soon enough, so I gave up.
Since then, I’ve learned the value of focusing on the story without getting bogged down by the details. The skill of reading context is a handy trick, and one you can learn. Here’s a passage from the ever-so-subtle Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice we can use as practice:
“Are any of your younger sisters out, Miss Bennet?” [asked Lady Catherine.]
“Yes, ma’am, all,” [Elizabeth replied.]
“All! What, all five out at once? Very odd! And you only the second. The younger ones out before the elder ones are married! Your younger sisters must be very young?”
“Yes, my youngest is not sixteen. Perhaps she is full young to be much in company. But really, ma’am, I think it would be very hard upon younger sisters, that they should not have their share of society and amusement, because the elder may not have the means or inclination to marry early. The last-born has as good a right to the pleasures of youth at the first. And to be kept back on such a motive! I think it would not be very likely to promote sisterly affection or delicacy of mind.”
“Upon my word,” said her ladyship, “you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person.”
You can deduce a few things here without a trip to Google-land. One is that "coming out" means something very different in Georgian England than it does today. It has something to do with young women in society … or something like that. Lady Catherine's reaction reveals how uncouth it is to have so many sisters out at once. (Oh, think of the children!) Finally, we gather that Lady Catherine is a pompous bossypants, and a clash between her and Elizabeth is on the horizon. Even though we don't fully understand the "coming out" customs in 19th-century rural England, we grasp enough to get swept up into the story. Good enough.
I am not suggesting that you mindlessly plow through a book. Research comes in handy if you’re losing the thread of the story. I faced this problem with the brilliant and confounding One Hundred Years of Solitude, where just about everyone is named Aureliaño Buendía, and it's really, really important to know which one I’m reading about. Otherwise, I wouldn't know where the story was in time or place. My solution was to dog-ear the family tree page, which I referenced every time I was confused (which was often). I ended up—gasp—enjoying the labyrinthine family saga.
The story is the star of any classic. If you can follow it, you will discover why the book is so vaunted. You can always look up the details later.
Craving That Immediate Dopamine Hit
We read a lot nowadays. Tweets, Facebook posts, random comment threads, marketing emails, persistent notifications. Articles from all over the world. A world of words is a click away in our age of unprecedented access to language. We read more now than ever before.
The substance of our reading has changed, however. Literacy today is nothing like literacy yesterday. Contemporary writing is designed to grab eyeballs with headlines and first lines that shock and awe. Any teacher will tell you to start with a bang, with little mention of the ending. Many novels follow this model. Open up a current bestseller, and you'll find a zinger on page one. Boom, another one on page 36, and another on page 120. With such word-candy and instant gratification, we have grown into impatient and restless readers.
Classics are different. They were written in times when you didn't compete with the television or the Internet for readership. This led to a leisurely pace, otherwise known as being damn slow.
Look at how Thomas Hardy starts his tragedy Tess of the d’Urbervilles:
On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in confirmation of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of his hat was raffled, a patch being quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off. Presently he was met by an elderly parson astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed a wandering tune.
This violates all of the conventions of modern storytelling. There's no hook! It's just an old dude walking. Where's that Tess chick, anyhow? Where's the action? Other than the boring walking and riding, that is. A total snooze-fest, so let's give up right here.
Hold on. We’re evaluating Tess using today's doped-up standards. Hardy is setting up the scene and does so nicely. There is a pervasive sense of melancholy and loneliness, hinting at the terrible event to come. As the tension builds—very slowly and gradually—throughout the novel, ending with a stunner. Tess may take a while, but the finale is worth it. Today's stories dazzle you at the beginning; classics get you at the end.
If I can remember all of this, maybe I’ll get through Middlemarch. Keep your fingers crossed.
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Middlebrow is a little publication that makes literature accessible and fun! Written by me, Cristina, a writer and bibliophile. Check out my website to get in touch: Stringing Words Together.