I'm not trying to get people to come around and convince me that I am smart or educated or deep. The fact is, I'm not a trained reader. Besides a couple classes in high school and the world's greatest bookclub, I'm mostly self-taught, exploring books on my own, and while there's really nothing wrong with that, it does have limits. (After all, you wouldn't want a self-taught surgeon taking out your gall bladder.) I am trained as a scientist, and although I am sure you could pick up the latest issue of The Journal of Bacteriology and make comments, I'd like to think that I would be able to read it at a different level. We all bring different skill sets and tools to the table.
When I read these so-called classics and I just don't get them (not that this happens all the time, but it does happen), I start to wonder if it's my lack of training that is getting in the way. I'll read passages full of description and details, and instead of loving the words, I am thinking, "just spit it out, already!" Or I'll miss some symbolism. ("What do you mean that the fish represented his long-lost brother? I didn't even know he had a brother!")
A few years back, I read "Catch-22" and I can't tell you how much I hated it. In fact, as I was reading it, I started to worry. Let me explain. You know how you might love a certain food, but you don't get it as much as you would like. Say there was a certain type of cake you loved, but you only got it for special occasions. But then a bakery who specialized in that cake opened right across the street from you, so you could get it whenever you wanted. So you got that cake once a week, maybe more. Then one day, you went to get a piece and you thought to yourself, "I am really tired of that cake. In fact, I'm not sure I like it anymore." And you really never do want that cake again. What does this have to do with "Catch-22"? When I was reading "Catch-22", I hated it so much, I was actually afraid that I was tired of reading. That, after all these years, this was the breaking point: I no longer even liked reading. (Luckily, this was not the case.)
But I do wonder: what am I missing here? This novel consistently shows up on those "great books" lists, and I simply did not get it at all. Do we really need a book to tell us that war is bad and ridiculous? The characters were all so unlikable and boring. I didn't really notice any great writing or interesting turns-of-phrase. I had to push myself to finish (I kept hoping it would get better or there would be some clever thing that got me in the end, but no such luck.) There is a part of me that thinks maybe I should try again, but then my soul starts weeping.
How much training should one have to have to enjoy "great" literature? Should it need that much explaining? Should it be easy? I won't stop reading and I won't stop pushing myself, but I'm staying away from Joseph Heller.
2 comments:
I don't think you can teach someone "how to read" (after a certain point) any more than you can teach someone to write (after a certain point). Fact is, you train yourself -- by reading. You don't need to like everything. That's not the point. But what you "do" like, and love, should somehow transform you, should make you want to leap across buildings, should make you want to cry and at the same time, shout to the world, "Yes. This -- this is 'it!'" I think you're doing just fine.
I recently read One Hundred Years of Solitude. Well, I read most of it. I stopped about 35 pages from the end. That was the point where I decided I had atoned from my sins of reading romance novels back in the day.
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