BOOKISH: Reading the Classics

It has been brought to my attention writers don’t read the classics. This is bad. And good. Let me explain.

The classics would be Hawthorne, Stowe, Dickinson, Poe, James, Wharton. Those guys. And gals. Or shall we say, women. No one reads them.

Well, I do. But I’m a freak. Or rather, I studied literature in college, and held on to my books. It’s easy to grab one and open it up, just to see if anything’s changed.

And the writing does change. Or rather, my response has changed. Hawthorne was once a god. He was the father of the American novel, a plumber of our dark and terrible past from which all American novelists descend. Right up to this day. American neuroses. American fear. That terrible stew of guilt and prurience that makes our writing so wonderful, and so awful.

I can’t read Hawthorne. Not because these themes have been lost in our liberal, or liberated imagination. No, we’re worse than ever. We’re almost Peeping Toms, as bad as Hawthorne ever was. And I can’t read him. Or any of them.

The writing is the fault. Badly overwritten, the classic novels of Hawthorne and others are loaded with compound sentences and evasive, artificial dialog that never gets to the point. These writers employ descriptions of rooms and tables and scenery that goes on and on, as overdecorated as your grandmother’s stuffy apartment. The one bulging with pictures, pillows, dishes, figurines, kleenex dispensers, decorative plates from all the early Disney movies. She can’t throw anything away. Neither could Hawthorne.

Hawthorne’s still a gold mine. If you have a pick and shovel and plenty of patience. I recommend The Blythedale Romance. But when writers tell me they don’t read the classics I can’t fault them, for several reasons.

Most writers have already read them. Once is enough, unless you are writing a paper for class. I don’t know about you, but thank god those days are over.

Technically, one has very little to learn. We no longer write in that ornate style. Writers are always studying, comparing. A stuffed bird in a county museum is a poor excuse for the real thing.

Writers don’t read the classics because they don’t read anything. They’re too busy writing.

This last one is the most persuasive. When you’re involved with a project, you almost can’t read your email. Let alone a five hundred page “classic”. These are boring. At the risk of being obvious, when you have something better to do, other things are boring.

So don’t feel bad if you don’t read the classics. Or answer emails. Or make your bed, or put the dishes away, or sweep the floor. You and I have an excuse. We’re writers. That’s why we became writers, or some of us did.