these days, nearly everyone is first introduced to old books or literature by school, where they inadvertantly teach students that their primary purpose is to be fodder for boring homework assignments, the dreaded five-paragraph “essays” “analyzing” “themes”, and class discussions where clearly nobody has read anything more than a brief summary. the majority of pupils get the message loud and clear, they immediately give up reading forever and resign themselves to a lifetime of cable television youtube and video games. a handful of sensitive literary souls stubbornly stick with it, though what they may not realize is that they’ve still been poisoned by that initial impression of the “proper” way to read literature...
besides all the usual culprits like fried attention spans, i think this is yet another reason people have difficulty reading old books: school teaches us to associate reading old books with work, not fun. then, when people read old books on their own, they feel pressured to demonstrate somehow to the teacher in their head that they’ve successfully “engaged” with the work on a “deep” level and completed their homework, whether it be by leaving a thoughtful goodreads review or offering a bon mot about it to people who ask what you’ve been reading. for many this turns reading old books into a chore, too much of an investment, it becomes something they can’t enjoy casually, so it's only natural that for relaxation they turn to something that demands less of them like genre fiction or tv showsneither of which, i might add, are tainted by being the subject of school assignments (yet?).
what i’m here to tell you is that there is absolutely no need to take reading old books so seriously, placing them on this vaunted pedestal where you can’t read them without some noble purpose like self-edification or without putting in a bunch of extra effort to pay the proper respects by “extracting” themes or whatever. old books weren’t always so revered, perhaps some historical perspective is in order: back when they were still new, many old books now regarded as “high literature” were originally serialized in monthly magazines as popular entertainment, similar to “prestige” television today. when they first appeared on the scene in the 18th century, prose fiction novels were looked upon with suspicion by the guardians of high culture at the time, who believed all the usual things like that they were only for the uneducated rabble and that they were corrupting the youth (does anything ever change?). samuel johnson, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (according to wikipedia) “arguably the most distinguished man of letters in english history”, wrote in a famous essay that the “new species of writing” – the novel – was written to the “young, ignorant, and the idle” (wow, literally me). also, “Although contemporary periodicals increasingly reviewed new works of prose fiction, they did so under such headings as “Entertainment”. Novels were not, it was implied, to be taken too seriously.”
the source for the above is the introduction to my copy of Tristram Shandy, a dignified "Oxford World's Classics" edition. it serves as a good example here because it's a well-respected early english comic novel from the 1760s that doesn't take itself too seriously, and yet over the centuries it has presumably been studied very seriously by generations of humorless academicsi think this is another thing that scares people away from old books, the mistaken impression that they’re dry or boring. in fact i think that’s more a feature of tedious newer “experimental literature”, many old books are very funny, especially THE novel of all time, Don Quixote. at its core Don Quixote is a wacky adventure story about the hijinks of a guy driven crazy by reading too many chivalric romances, which very serious Spanish academics reverently refer to as “El Quixote” and frequently spend entire careers analyzing. those Quixote-worshipping academics include the stern Jésus G. Maestro, known for posting extemporaneous diatribes on youtube where he asserts the last work of genuine literature was Cien años de soledad (1967) and that everything after that, including bolaño, has been irredeemably corrupted by postmodern “anglo-saxon” sensibilities.. if you've actually read it that's amusing to imagine, perhaps it's sterne's final gag played out across time, because in addition to its high-concept satire of various great thinkers Tristram Shandy is also absolutely chock-full of dick jokes, raunchy innendoes, and other outrageous bawdy antics. when it came out many were offended by the obscenity, it was closer to south park than shakespeare, though of course the controversy only served to stoke its popularity.
anyways, there's nothing stopping anyone today from approaching old books the same way, as someone "young, ignorant, and idle" looking for some dirty jokes and light entertainment. if anything this is how they were intended to be read, not for silly school assignments or by stuffy academics. i shamelessly read old books primarily for entertainment, and only as a happy accident do i occasionally emerge with a morsel of timeless wisdom or something stuck to my brain like a burr. it's one of the reasons i don't write much around here about reading literature despite it being one of my three main hobbiesit’s also partially out of a desire to appear humble and unpretentious, and partially to avoid giving readers of the site what i think they want, i don't feel the urge to say anything about the books i read and i refuse to force myself to do so out of some misguided sense of "duty" to "engage deeply" with them or something. what can i say, i have very refined tastes and high standards when it comes to my casual entertainment, life is too short for anything in my free time besides the absolute highest quality workshowever, i do adhere to a "barbell" strategy where i also partake of the lowbrow while avoiding the middlebrow, for every work of literature i read i watch one dumb anime or mrbeast video to balance things out.
when it comes to choosing old books to read, there's no need to worry about trying to read books you feel you "should" read, you don't have to start with "the classics", you don't have to read "important" or "essential" books, you don't have to read "the canon", you can choose whatever seems interesting or fun to you and drop it the second you get bored. one good thing about old books especially is that time is the greatest filter for quality, the stinkers throughout history have long been forgotten, if they haven't been lost entirely. i proudly choose to read with little regard for anything besides what sounds interesting to me in the moment, most books i read solely because the premise sounds neat. for example, i read nostromo because one day i developed a sudden craving for something set in a small south american country during the 19th century (it happens), tom jones because somebody swore the intricate plot led into the most satisfying conclusion ever, and dictionary of the khazars because it has an insane structural gimmick. what i'm saying is don't worry too much about it, go forth and "Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader!"quote from Tristram Shandy that appears on the back of my copy
also, there has been a lot of talk lately about the "Male Reading Crisis"... don't worry, i have a solution for that too: make an anime with cute girls who read.
"isn't that your solution for everything?" yes, any other questions?
