Greg Stepanich

My esteemed Doctor:

I understood you quite well. You say you need not get anything lasting out of reading the classics, that the reading is enough. Again I say that if you are not improved, if you are not changed in any way by what you have read, if you take nothing away from the experience, then you have been merely entertained, and your endeavor is identical to one of lesser intellectual powers watcing a sporting event. The Dolphins fan derives passing amusement as the game proceeds; you derive precisely the same benefit turning the brittle pages of some musty tome. Where, I ask, is the difference?

My point, really, although I admit I've been coy about it, is that there is a huge difference, and that your denial of such a difference is either false modesty or pandering to the masses or both. Or perhaps you truly do underestimate yourself.

A reader of Kierkegaard is almost certainly of far superior intelligence than a watcher of football games, and you should not be ashamed to say so. You read smart books because you're smart, and you get smarter by doing so. Only a moron would be entertained watching the same adolescent dramas play out on his TV screen Sunday after Sunday. Your desire to seek out more demanding amusements indicates you are moving on a higher plane. You would not continue reading Great Books if you derived only mere entertainment from them, for come on, that's just too damn much work for a few hours diversion, and an intelligent person would not make a simple task difficult for no benefit. If mere entertainment is what you truly seek, you are sharp enough to know you could find it much more easily elsewhere.

Each time I read a good book, I carry some piece of it away with me that I believe shapes me slightly. The odler I get, the harder I am to shape, it's true, but if I find myself reading something that I don't believe is moving me forward, I toss it aside. Do you not feel this personal growth as well?

But I tire of this topic, and it's getting too far down in your postings to get any notice. I shall try to pick a fight tonight with an entry higher up.

Meanwhile, a much more important question: How many variations do you think you could construct on the theme "I could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet"? I need music for a project pronto.

To the piano, Causubon!

My beloved Maurice:

I guess I didn't make myself quite clear: I don't think that reading Greats (as the Oxford crowd calls it) is ultimately the same as parsing something fluffy, and that simply reading is enough.
What I was getting at was that the exploration of the canonical works -- not simply any works -- is worth the journey simply to see these great minds wrestle with big issues, or even small ones greatly. In other words, I don't have to have a destination other than the journey to get something out of it.
In your first post you appeared to be saying that reading something recognized as culturally significant was supposed to give you something by absorbing it, that you were to get better, and in a better way, by reading it.
But that's not always the case, and that doesn't negate the value of the canon. To pull an example out of a hat, there's Kierkegaard: I've read a good bit of Either/Or a few years ago, and it was clearly the work of an absolutely brilliant person.
Now I don't know that it changed my worldview, and I don't pretend to have understood it all on only one reading (re-reading: now there's a good topic), but it was good to read it because it made me aware of how intensely you can focus on something and find meaning.
And as to the question of why there has to be an air of superiority when saying that you read something serious and brainy: There's a historical legacy at work here, left over from the Victorians, about uplift and improvement. You were more virtuous if you applied yourself to the reading of something lofty.
And there's our American heritage of pride in anti-intellectualism. Lots of would-be scholars -- and I've known a few -- are not truly possessed of a scholarly bent; they're just trying to differentiate themselves from their fellow Americans.
Mix the two, and you have Pretense.
What would really be nice is if you could say you liked Sherman's Lagoon AND Proust, and people would believe you about the Proust.
Yes, you can get something meaningful out of deep-sea cartoon comedy (I like that he keeps trying for watery verisimilitude by inking in bubbles), but I think you can get a little more out of something canonical without having to turn into a philosopher, or a priest, or taking up residence in a cork-lined room.
Back to you, M. Andre.
Yrs. faithfully,
Dr. Casaubon

My most esteemed Stepaninski:

Many thanks for your quick and thoughtful reply. I have but a quibble or two.

In essence, you argue that the Great Books are entertainment, a passing amusement of immaterial lasting value equivalent to o, i don't know, an episode of three's company. Asking more of them is a naive misunderstanding of the grand journey afforded in the here and now during the actual reading, which, according to you is what counts. And what a dope I was for expecting more than a few trifling hours of diversion from works hailed for centuries as critical to my culture. I could have done as well spending that time whittling, fishing in a rain puddle or even watching a football game.

In that light, your sally -- "in some sense, light reading isn't really reading at all" -- is a puzzling contradiction, but not one that I would be so rude as to point out as such.

Instead, I must confess that I embrace your argument wholeheartedly. I too find that after Hamlet, Huck and Holden, I really don't need another Great Book to teach me that reality is cruel to youthful idealists, who must perforce off themselves, light out for the territory or go loony. Yes, I agree that after that one is merely reading to bask in one's enlightenment, to employ his refined palate, to enjoy the fact that he can read a great book and enjoy it while the masses must make do with cable TV.

For you are correct, this is indeed the case. My only concern: Why must an air of superiority and the implication of noble effort inevitably accompany any mention of the Great Books one has read or is reading? Why can we not just admit that's what does it for us, it's no better or worse than reading Sherman's Lagoon?

I await your counterpunch, Maurice

Maurice:

On the one hand, yes, I concede that many people try to do the Great Books thing because they're really doing the self-aggrandizement thing.
But as to your final point that you might not need too many of them because you'll find the wisdom in a few if you know what you're doing: well, I'm not sure.
There are two issues there, it seems to me: The care that you bring to your reading, and the question of exploration as an end in itself.
Many people I know never give the act of reading the respect it deserves, and so the books they read usually end up frustrating them in some way or another. So I'm a big fan of preparing to read, and carving out real time to read, and truly concentrating -- and I mean most of the time. In some sense, light reading isn't actually reading at all.
Secondly, you don't need to be searching for an answer while reading the Great Books. You're just along for the intellectual experience, which is life-enriching enough. It doesn't have to lead anywhere permanent; this is why it seems some famous folks you hear about will say their lives were changed by reading a certain book (often a religious text), and they don't seem to read anything much after that.
To me, that's not reading, and it's not the Great Books, either. That's going to the pharmacy and getting a prescription.
But real reading is a way of life, in which the journey matters more than the destination. The benefit, if there must be one, is that it deepens your own thought processes and helps you think about things in new ways.
You make new connections, and you see insights through a different mind. That's the joy of the Great Books for me; it's the conversation, not the conversion.
Back to you, my dear Mr. Andre.

Just a couple points for sake of debate:

I think a few Great Books might be plenty. At some point, you cross a line where what they're giving you isn't intellectual nurishment, but a self-esteem boost, a bragging right. It's a way to check something off your list and pat yourself on the back, rather than the mental quest great books are when you first come in contact with them.

Trying to read them all is somehow similar to trying to eat 100 hot dogs in one sitting. It goes beyond the normal pleasures of eating and becomes a contest with yourself, an attempt to prove something. It's no longer about the books. It's about you.

After all, the more great books you read, the more disappointing they are because you've heard all the stories before. To bring anything more to them, you have to stop reading the start gathering experience. Also, if the books are truly great, you'll need only a few because each will contain the wisdom you seek. If you need more than a handful of great books to get you through life, either you aren't reading great books or you're not reading them well.

Back to you, Stepanovich, or whatever your name is