What does it mean to be well-read? We who write have more than a passing interest in reading. We read to fuel our own thoughts and works, and we want others to read us. My idea of someone who is well-read is a person who can quote extensively and lovingly from my stories.
But seriously, folks…
More commonly, well-read looks like this list from the Telegraph: some of the biggest books from the canon plus history and modern classics.
Linda Holmes suggests that being well-read is an effort we make, not a destination we reach. There is too much to read, and there are too many other things that require and deserve our attention in life, to achieve literary mastery. In her article, Holmes links to this piece by Roger Ebert; he laments that people don’t have the interest in reading (especially the classics) that they used do, and great authors are slowly headed for cultural oblivion despite their genius.
Since the dawn of the printing press, contemporary authors and the sages of the ages have had to compete for shelf space. Increasingly, I would suggest, the sages lose to works with modern vocabulary and syntax. For sheer readability, Chaucer and his “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote the droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote” cannot beat “Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery,” the opening line of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Most of us aren’t going to fight our way through difficult sentences (whether venerable or not) just to say we’ve done it.
Being well-read requires actual reading; the Cliff’s Notes approach is flawed. You might know what the story is about, but you will not have immersed yourself in the author’s language and presentation. Reading synopses might, in some senses, be better than having no knowledge of a book, but Woody Allen wasn’t far from the mark when he said, “I took a speed–reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.” Just so, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar involves Rome, and many of Patrick O’Brian’s finest works involve water.
And thus it is that English teachers are the custodians of our culture. Without their patiently guiding the next generation through a smattering of the best writing of the centuries, the great authors would disappear far sooner than Mr. Ebert fears they will.
Boy, this sure hits the nail on the head. The other day it occurred to me for the umpteenth time that this may be the last generation that reads Shakespeare in high school, if in fact they still do. If they do, it will be like EMESL: Early Modern English as a Second Language.
Then I realized that’s basically what it is for me, too, and a modern student ought to be able, with effort, to read and understand many of Shakespeare’s plays. The trouble, as you’ve pointed out, is that reading isn’t the pastime it used to be. When I was in high school it was already pretty geeky to like Shakespeare, but some of us did. Others read it for the grade (“to say we’d read it”). Anyone who actually read it is probably glad now because their language is stronger for it.
Someone once said to me that I shouldn’t be concerned about the loss of popular familiarity with the masters, because that’s just the way it is and nothing is going to change it. That, though, is baloney. Just because that’s the way it is doesn’t mean it isn’t lamentable. Sin and death are “the way it is.” The Tea Party is “the way it is.”
And people learn second languages all the time, when they want to communicate with people outside their tiny range of experiences. Shakespeare, of course, is worth communicating with.
I just don’t know if I can teach them. I’d have to back up to grade-school curiosity about books and the habit of loving them.
Maybe Dr. Who can teach them. Did you see David Tenant’s Hamlet yet?