Back to the Best Books
How the Classics Can Change Your Life
Marilyn Green Faulkner
A Unique Guide to 36 Great Books that
Enlighten, Inform and Inspire
Copyright © 2010 by Marilyn Green Faulkner.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2010908871
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-4535-0811-4
Softcover
978-1-4535-0810-7
Ebook
978-1-4535-0812-1
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
This book was printed in the United States of America.
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Dedicated with love and gratitude
to my Mother and lifelong reading partner
Lou Jean Berrett Green
CONTENTS
Getting Back to the Best Books: A Novel Idea
Chapter One Family First
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
The Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy
How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn
Chapter Two Growing Pains
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, by Jung Chang
Chapter Three Boys to Men
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
The Chosen, by Chaim Potok
The Power of One, by Bryce Courtenay
Chapter Four Road Trips
The Reivers, by William Faulkner
Kim, by Rudyard Kipling
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Chapter Five True Romance
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster
Possession by A.S. Byatt
Chapter Six Action Figures
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
Master and Commander, by Patrick O’Brian
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Marie Remarque
Chapter Seven Through the Eyes of a Child
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
The Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles Dickens
Silas Marner, by George Eliot
Chapter Eight Nobody’s Perfect
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray
Celestial Navigation, by Anne Tyler
Chapter Nine Chick-Lit for Grown-ups
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
O, Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
Chapter Ten A Good Man is Hard to Find
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
The Warden, by Anthony Trollope
The Keys of the Kingdom by A.J. Cronin
Chapter Eleven Fantasyland
The Harry Potter Novels, by J.K. Rowling
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
The Once and Future King, by T.H. White
Chapter Twelve The Mystery Makers
The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins
The Complete Sherlock Holmes, by A. Conan Doyle
The Agatha Christie Collection, by Agatha Christie
The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories by Dorothy L. Sayers
Thanks and Acknowledgments
For the last ten years I have written a column online called “Back to the Best Books,” where I invited readers to read the classics together and send comments via email. I have enjoyed reading hundreds of thoughtful responses to great books, some of which are included in this volume. My thanks go out to all the members of the Best Books Club, and to Meridian Magazine editors Scot and Maurine Proctor.
I am indebted to several dear friends who read portions of the manuscript and offered suggestions for improvement. Karen Lusby helped with the author biographies, and Roger Merrill and Sean Graham helped with the design. I’m lucky to have smart children: Kirk, Evan and Megan, Alison and Eric, Andrea and Brian, and Blake read chapters, made notes and pushed me to keep writing. I’m also fortunate to have a wonderful husband, Craig, whose encouragement, inspiration and publishing skills were essential to the success of this project. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the many great teachers, especially Dr. Arthur Henry King, who have enlightened, informed and inspired me through the years.
Getting Back to the Best Books: A Novel Idea
“‘Oh! it is only a novel!’ or, in short, only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusion of wit and humour are to be conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.”
Jane Austen—Northanger Abbey
Everybody reads novels. Over the course of a lifetime you may read hundreds of them, perhaps without giving much thought to the process. But the novel, that extended work of prose fiction that has become the staple of our reading diet, is a remarkable invention, and in its highest form offers a unique lens through which to view our lives. In his landmark work, Aspects of the Novel, E.M Forster makes this intriguing remark:
“We cannot understand each other, except in a rough and ready way; we cannot reveal ourselves, even when we want to; what we call intimacy is only a makeshift; perfect knowledge is an illusion. But in the novel we can know people perfectly, and apart from the general pleasure of reading, we can find here a compensation for their dimness in life. In this direction fiction is truer than history, because it goes beyond the evidence, and each of us knows from his own experience that there is something beyond the evidence, and even if the novelist has not got it correctly, well—he has tried.” (E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, p. 16)
Each great novel creates a little microcosm of the world. Have you ever had your life taken over by a book? It is a beautiful surrender. Though we may hesitate to admit it, some of us have fictional characters that are dearer to us than many living, breathing people. Just think how many women are in love with Mr. Darcy, though we know he is nothing more than printed words on a page! Did you know that there are actually clubs that revere Sherlock Holmes as a real person and refuse to speak the name of his creator, A. Conan Doyle? Throughout history people have embraced the characters in books as real people; from the hundreds of worried souls on the dock in New York, waiting for the news of Little Nell’s death, to the thousands of kids in costume waiting at midnight for the release of the latest Harry Potter novel, characters have the power to move us. Something magical happens when a fictional character makes its way into our minds through the skill of a great author, and the greatest novels continue to exert that power on generation after generation of readers.
Scientists tell us that what we put into our minds on a daily basis has a direct influence on how we perceive our lives. And, face it; most of what we put into our minds is pretty silly stuff. Television, romance novels or the latest bestselling thrillers may be entertaining, but do very little to prepare us for the complicated challenges we face each day. What if we were just a little smarter about what we load into our brains? And what if, as a result, we brought a little more wisdom and insight to our work and our relationships? Deep and thoughtful reading can help us reach a new level of understanding in our daily lives. Since each of us is the sum of what we
put in to our minds through the years, it makes sense to improve the quality of our mental nutrition. Systematically replacing ordinary books with great ones over the years may significantly affect our lives. So, how do we choose what to read?
What Makes it Great?
Do you ever wonder what makes a great book great? This was a question I often asked in school, but rarely received a satisfactory answer. There were certain books that everyone agreed were classics, but it wasn’t readily obvious to me why this was so. Mark Twain famously defined a classic as, “a book which people praise and don’t read.” Behind the humor lurks the idea that the classics are a chore: long, boring, difficult books that educated people have struggled through, or at least pretend to have struggled through! Why go to the effort to read the classics?
After a few decades of studying the question, I have learned some things about what makes a great book great. To begin with, great books offer a higher level of language, characterization, and insight than average books, along with a quality of timelessness that makes them relevant to readers in any age. Character usually takes precedence over plot in a classic; what happens in it is less important than who is in it and how they feel and think. The greatest books display an artistry of language that often blurs the line between poetry and prose. A great book is interactive; we bring our best to it and it offers its best to us. We cannot be passive readers; we become inextricably involved. Finally, a great book deals with great ideas and makes you think: if a book does not inspire discussion, thought, and even disagreement, it isn’t great. It is just entertainment.
When an author combines brilliant artistry with the desire to uplift and edify, the attentive reader achieves a deepened sense of what it is to be human. A great book is designed to change your mind, touch your heart, and lift your spirit. You should emerge from the experience of reading with some new wisdom about the human condition and a deeper perspective about the experiences of your own life. The careful and compassionate observation of the human soul is the gift that a great novel brings us. We cannot live everywhere; we cannot be everyone. But we can read, and by so doing send out a “cord of communion” (to quote Jane Eyre) to another kind of person, and then another, and then another, until we are reinvented by our interconnectedness. Those few authors that have created truly great novels deserve our serious attention; they add to our ability to live creative and thoughtful lives.
A Difficult Pleasure
It is interesting to note that many people will expend terrific effort, time and pain on physical pursuits, and yet resist the mental effort that great literature demands. Serious reading is not a passive activity; it is more like hiking or running, and it is rewarding in the same way. Harold Bloom calls it a “difficult pleasure.” As with a long run or a challenging hike, one has to invest a lot of effort in a great book. The vocabulary may be unfamiliar, the imagery confusing, and the length of the book may call for a large commitment of time. Such a book asks a lot of you, but offers in return the same thrill you feel when you reach the top of the mountain or finish that marathon. The “high” one experiences after a great read is comparable to the “high” one experiences after a great run. It’s worth the effort!
Every great book changes your life in some way, and a lifetime of reading great books can alter the course of your life. When I was a little girl my mother taught a class for her women’s organization titled “Out of the Best Books,” using an anthology with readings from the classics. I loved to sit in her room and look through the books, and those readings led us both to the complete volumes from which they were taken. My mother never went to college, but she educated herself through reading the best books, and her children reaped the rewards of her efforts. I grew up understanding that smart people get that way from reading smart books.
A Flabby Brain is Not a Pretty Thing
The brain is a muscle and, like any muscle, it needs to be used in order to grow. We know that television and movies ask very little of our brains, and thus offer us little in the way of mental enrichment. Good books are good for our brains. Since it invariably deals with ideas as well as events, a great book engages both hemispheres of the brain. (You can watch a movie on mental autopilot, but get two or three pages into Dickens or Tolstoy and your synapses will definitely be firing!) Most classics offer challenging vocabulary and symbolism, along with complex plot lines and poetic imagery. In addition, a great book asks us to think about complex problems, make value judgments and question our preconceived notions. Wrestling with such issues in a fictional setting can help us develop a “moral imagination” that may enable us to more creatively approach the knotty problems we face in real life.
That is why it is so important that literature paint an accurate, rather than an idealized representation of the human heart. Franz Kafka said, “A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul,” and Chaim Potok described the process of writing as “mapping the human heart.” The best books show us our true selves, warts and all, yet somehow inspire us to rise above those weaknesses to something finer. To have this kind of life-changing experience, we must reach beyond the level of simple entertainment. Some great books have happy endings, some do not, but each one teaches us something true about ourselves that may lead to more satisfying resolutions of our real-life dramas.
Great books teach us about the shared experience of living, the complexity of the human psyche and the simplicity of the human heart. It is difficult to read great literature and be narrow and prejudiced, and somehow it is easier to step back and understand our own experiences when they can be examined and illuminated through fictional lives. Great books, says David Denby, “speak most powerfully of what a human being can be.” This book offers an opportunity to take a fresh look at some great books that can offer insights into our own lives.
How to Use This Book
This volume was prepared to help you approach the classics in a new way. Each of the twelve chapters contains three selections, grouped by life topics (such as coming of age, or romantic love) that you may want to focus on as you read. Choose one book from each chapter, read it, and then discuss it with your book group, a friend, or just write about it in your book journal. Rather than a steady diet of classics, you may want to alternate these selections with more contemporary literature, and in that way this book may last you for several years of reading.
Since the chapters feature a topic of general interest, even those who haven’t read the selection can join in the discussion. For this purpose, a plot synopsis is included for each selection. This is followed by a section called “What Makes it Great,” touching on just a few elements in the work that elevate it to a higher status. A short biographical sketch of the author is included for your reference, along with sections titled “Did You Know,” and “Talk About It,” to help you engage in meaningful discussion about the text and its relevance to your own life. I offer some reader reactions, along with some personal reflections in a section called “Take it Personally.” Finally, in response to Kafka’s challenge, we’ll take a plunge into the frozen waters of our souls with an occasional “ice-axe” question, to explore what uncomfortable truths about each of us that these books reveal.
These days it seems that book groups are everywhere, but it’s sometimes hard to know just how to discuss a book in a group setting. Using this book as a guide makes it simple. Have each member present a section and your discussion will be focused and insightful, with participation from all. Or have one member prepare and lead the entire discussion using the sections as desired. If you are reading alone, you might enjoy “writing back to the book” in a journal. The insights that come as you read great literature can be life-changing, and are worth saving.
Finally, a note on how these works were selected: In a word, randomly. Though all of these books have garnered praise and awards, these are not the thirty-six best books ever written. In fact, some of them may never make the official canon of classics. My purpose in this volume was to
select a variety of works that share three qualities: they are well written, they are beloved by readers, and they are fun to read. Most of these books have also found a distinctive place in our culture that gives them special relevance. And a couple of them, though they have not yet passed the “time test” for a classic, are jut so good I couldn’t resist sharing them with you! I’ve got dozens more I would love to have talked about, but I have tried to offer a sampling here that will get you searching for classics of your own. At the end of the volume there are some book lists that may help you in that quest.
I hope that as you read and discuss these great works of literature, you will begin to perceive your own reality differently. Your life view will widen and deepen, and as your “moral imagination” grows, you will find new reservoirs of wisdom with which to respond to life’s challenges. You’ll feel that flabby brain grow sharper and may be inspired to think more creatively about the complex problems you face. Above all, you’ll have the thrill of reading some of the greatest stories ever told. Could reading better books actually lead to a better life? What a novel idea. Let’s curl up, grab a book, and see what happens!
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