Response Video: Convincing You To Read Five Classics!

[00:00:00]Hello book. I've got another response video for you here on a on a bright sunny summer morning. Just I'm in a response of palooa today. But what can I say? I watch a lot of book and I watch it sincerely. I don't I don't watch it, you know, with a closed mind or hate watch or anything like that. I watch it sincerely and it it's bookish conversations. It's my whole life. Uh so often I will have a passionate response to something that I've seen and I've got the camera right here. So rather than, you know, haul out the manual typewriter and type out a letter to dear Abby, I can just make a response video on my own. So that's what I'm doing in this case to Jennifer who once had a channel called Insert Literary Pun here. Her channel is now Jennifer Gelenova or Jelinkova Flarity. It'd be nice if it was Jennifer Oclarity. That would be nice. That would make sense. Uh but she is one of our foremost literary thinkers. Anybody who finds her channel, they immediately know that even though she fills her videos with a lot of self-replicating humor.

[00:01:00]Nevertheless, uh it's quite obvious. Uh I have had her recommended her channel recommended to me in recent months by people who were unaware of the fact that I knew of her channel and that it's just possible that she has been a guest here at Hyde Cottage. That's just faintly possible.

[00:01:17]Uh I love her channel. I don't care. I don't care what it's called. Uh, and in a recent video of hers, she did a video about five canonical works, five classics that have been in one degree or another intimidating her for a long time, sitting there on her shelves, and that she's determined to stop that from being true and to read them. And I immediately thought I wanted to make a response video in which I not only encourage her to read these books, but encourage you to read these books as well. Uh, so we'll go through the books. It doesn't have to be a long video, and I'll leave a link to her video in case you missed it. you should definitely go and subscribe to her channel. Uh the first that we'll talk about is the complete sto short stories of Flare O' Conor in this beautiful new floppy trade paperback that you can get, you know, at a bookstore if you're lucky enough to have a bookstore in your town. You can buy it on Amazon or wherever you like and have it shipped to you or whatnot.

[00:02:08]And these are the short stories of an ineimitable southern writer who is feral. Flenry Alcon stories are feral.

[00:02:18]They are bizarre voyages into a realm of obscenity and sharp elbows. They are literarily brilliant. Absolutely brilliant, but they are not what you expect. The reason there's a peacock, a pretty peacock, a stately peacock on the cover of this book is not because of the content of the stories. It's because Fleno Conor had a thing for peacocks. That's all.

[00:02:42]Uh, and the designer of this cover must know that. Now, the stories themselves are they are straight shot suburban. They will make you disoriented, sick, and angry, but all in a good way. All in a good way. They are they are amazing. Uh in ways that I think remain perpetually unpredictable, which is terrific. Uh then another thing that uh Jennifer held up is a slim little thing. Won't take you any time at all to read. It's Orlando by Virginia Wolf.

[00:03:10]uh a terrific quasi historical novel about a character who lives through the ages but changes sex uh with Virginia Wolf's eye towards what that would mean towards the minor and major things that would mean and also giving Virginia Wolf a virtuoso opportunity to inhabit the personal and also the sensual moments of such a character but also what it would mean socially.

[00:03:41]I mean, Vita Sakville West could not inherit null, a country house as big as a small town. She couldn't inherit null because she was a woman, not a man. And that was in Virginia Wool's own day. So, it's not like these were ancient questions of primogenitor.

[00:04:00]No, the Virginia Wolf thought of these things a lot. any of you who have ever read her great uh essay which Jennifer sings she sings these praises in her video and I second that completely a room of one's own is it's extremely thoughtful it's extremely insightful but it's also full of anger at the fact that in Virginia Wolf's own day there were things that women were not allowed to do it is a very angry essay despite how beautiful it is Orlando is less angry but every bit as incredible it is it's an amazing work it's very much something that I want to recommend to her and to you. There's no reason at all why it should sit sit on your shelf unread. Uh and then this just Jennifer had a couple of books that are very similar. Uh they are actually the one was inspired by the other and uh to to some extent and uh the first of those that we'll talk about is Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. This is a long, increasingly long the more he got his hands on it. A bloated work of great American poetry. I say bloated because Wittmann loved the sound of his own versifying. He just loved that. But I'm much like Wdsworth that we've got two WWs and they both love the sound of their own versifying. But in both cases, I was slower to realize this with Wsworth than I was with Walt Whitman, but in both cases, the end work is genius. In both cases, no matter how much they augment or change or fiddle with the Prelude or Leaves of Grass, you'll end up once you get what they're doing, you'll end up just wishing they would keep doing it. Add more, add another thousand pages. Uh there are all sorts of great additions of Leaves of Grass that that are really good textual guides that will show you the different additions, the different variations in the additions, what may have been influencing Whitman when he was adding something.

[00:05:49]uh but they don't matter which is why I'm showing a picture of just the book itself and in the little bookroom I have the Penguin Classic that is you know a monument to Whitman scholarship to accessible Witman scholarship taking you through all the history of the text and I have the Norton critical of Leaves of Grass also in the little bookroom but the main copy I have the one that I go back to is just the book it's just the poems it's not it doesn't have any critical apparatus at all doesn't even have an introduction it's from the turn of the 20th century And I think that's probably the best way to approach this.

[00:06:22]But then again, as you're going to hear, I think that's the best way to approach all of these things.

[00:06:27]Uh, the best way to approach this is just to let it work on your senses the way Whitman intended.

[00:06:35]Uh, so any edition, I think the Dover thrift edition is like $2 and has no critical apparatus at all. You don't have to worry about it. Let the poems work on you first and then you can go and delve into the details. Same thing with this next one. She held up the big modern library uh essential writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Uh with this book, I believe and also definitely with the Witman, she uh introduced you to her inner grandmother by talking about the print size. Why is the print size so small? As if ebooks did not exist.

[00:07:08]Nevertheless, you want to deal with the book you have on your shelf, I guess.

[00:07:11]And print sizes can be a problem.

[00:07:13]Definitely. I've I've heard that was true in ye olden days.

[00:07:18]Uh but uh the modern library volume of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the the the essential Ralph Waldo Emerson, I mock the grandmotherly concerned with print sizes and yet I have this volume in paper and print and paper, but I also have as an ebook like a civilized person. And this is huge. It's a thousandpage long selection of Emerson's writings. Uh and there's an a lot that I could say about Emerson. a lot I not only that I could say but that I could quote not from later critics who go on and on vaporize about him all the time but from his contemporaries whose judgments of him were pretty pretty laser sharp pretty sharp elbowed pretty squinty there was one particular contemporary who said that I certainly hope and keep in mind most of these contemporaries knew of the the essential writings of Emerson from going and listening listening to him talk, not from reading him. I could I could take you to the the hall here in Boston where he would talk to a soldout auditorium of people anytime he wanted to. He could sell out that auditorium or any other venue. Uh but one person who was familiar not only with some of the essays in some of the American journals but also with him talking used to quip that I feel an intense satisfaction that Emerson knows what he means because I certainly don't and no one in the audience did either.

[00:08:47]There is a bit of truth in that. Uh if you if you read these you will see that uh Emerson also was in love with his own versification in this case in pros. He he doesn't always touch touch ground with reality, but he has he's a gorgeous crafter of pros and a gorgeous thinker in his own weird discombobulated way.

[00:09:11]Uh sometimes discombobulated way. So when he is batten down hardily onto a task and I might add under the watchful eye of an editor, he reads substantially different than when he's not. But still, this is a huge book. And when Jennifer was holding it up, she said, I think she said in her video that it had been sitting on her shelf unread for 10 years. Why you people? I don't know how you do that. I know a lot of you do, but I don't know how you do that. Um, and in relation to this book sitting there staring at her and all the other books of these five that she talks about, she makes a couple of really good points about how, you know, in the end, they're just books.

[00:09:52]In the end, a lot of what is creating whatever intimidation might be associated with them has nothing to do with them or with police sirens.

[00:10:09]An hour ago, uh, a butterfly floated by the window and briefly gripped onto the screen of the window. with the windows open to the to the summer air and pruned itself and assorted itself. Got the whiff of the air and then it took off again. And when it took off, the neighborhood was so quiet that I could hear it taking off. I could hear its wings, but we've got sirens when I when I film.

[00:10:35]Anyway, uh I just wonder what they think, you know, cuz they're in the fire engine station or in the police station or an ambulance in the in the ambulance bay that's three blocks up the street when suddenly they they all stand up and say, "Hey, we got to go." What do you mean? We don't have a call. We don't have an emergency. No, we still we got to go. I don't know why. We got to go.

[00:10:53]Well, hit the siren. What do you mean there's no traffic? Hit the siren anyway. I don't know why, but we got to do it anyway. Anyway, uh that sentiment that these are just books is completely right and something that I think people lose track of when they're talking about canonical works of literature. They tend to lose sight of it. They are helped to lose sight of it by well-intentioned things like a gigantic collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson or a gigantically annotated version of Leaves of Grass.

[00:11:24]You're encouraged when you see something like that to think, uh, well, this is an endeavor. I might need to take a class before I read this thing. I want you I want to stress to you, I want you to keep in mind that wasn't true of the original readers of these books, the people who made them classics. They didn't have anything like that. This was their latest material. And they read it and decided then 150 years ago, 200 years ago, 2,000 years ago, that these things were great.

[00:11:51]that they wanted to reread them, talk about them, give courses on them, hand them down to friends, ask if the teenagers in their lives are reading them, watch the teenagers fall under their spells. That was all organic. None of that had anything to do with introductions or long annotated editions or classroom traditions or anything like that. It they're just books. They're just books. They're made for you. If there's a learning gradient, and there might be in a couple of cases, the next one in particular, well, you can cover the learning gradient in an hour of reading, not a class, not preparatory volumes, no degree of intimidation. If the books aren't, if they aren't entertaining you, they're failing, no matter who they're by, no matter when they were written. Emerson will entertain you. You won't always know what the heck he's talking about, but he will entertain you. Flannry O' Conor stories will entertain you. You'll want a long hot bath after a lot of them, but they will entertain you. Uh, Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass will certainly entertain you. Uh, it's only if you feel like you need some sort of preparation, and you usually don't. Oh my god, if I had a nickel for every time somebody's come to me and said, I would like I saw this very volume. Li Modern Library did a great job with this volume. It's beautiful.

[00:13:03]Uh, if I had a nickel for every time somebody has come to me in my Eden box and said, "I saw this volume in my used bookstore, but I don't feel I'm ready for it. Maybe I should read a biography of Emerson first." God help us. No, I'd have a lot of nickels if that were true.

[00:13:16]No, you don't need to do anything like that. You don't need to do anything like that. Uh, you do need to do a tiny bit like that maybe for our next one, although I'd argue not. The last of the classics on Jennifer's list was the Anid translated by Robert Fagels with an introduction by Bernard Knox in this lovely Penguin Classic Deluxe edition with the French flaps and the gill the decled edges that is meant to go along with their with their Fagel's Iliad and Odyssey. This is the the legendary hattick of classical literature of what I consider to be classical literature where you do the two great ancient Greek epics and the one ancient Roman epic. Uh, and here you have, you know, a classic cover. If you know the story, this is the the Trojan warrior Anias flees from the burning city of Troy holding his little boy by the hand and carrying his infirmed father on his back.

[00:14:13]So you will in in covers of the aniid. I don't know why I just there's so many better scenes to put on the cover of your book, but on covers of the left, right, and center, you will see a picture of this famous image of Anias carrying anes on his shoulder on his back because the old man can't go fast enough and they've got to run out of town. Uh this is the story of uh Anias leaving burning Troy and following his duty to plant his flag and start his lineage uh in Italy.

[00:14:48]This was constructed by Virgil at the more or less elbow poking behest of the Roman Emperor Augustus to form a national epic about how the Roman state is connected with these great homeriic epics that everyone reads in school and loves even then that were old even in in Virgil's day and loved and lionized that we want to connect this and we also want to make it the will of the gods that there be a Rome.

[00:15:16]So Virgil takes the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad is the the heat and rush of battle on the Trojan plane. The Odyssey are the is the Picardesque adventures of Odysius as he makes his way home. Virgil takes those two and has has always been famously uh observed, puts them into this book. He reverses them and puts them into this book. The first half is the voyages of Anias. All sorts of adventures including a voyage to the underworld. And then the second half is the warfare. The second half because when he gets to him, it's got people in it. They don't want to give it up. They don't they were willing to fight for their homeland. Uh so in Anias goes from a town a town, a great city that was attacked by outsiders to being the outside attacker.

[00:16:04]Uh critics of the anid have often found that the second half is much less interesting reading than the first half.

[00:16:10]I for a long time agreed with that. I don't agree with it anymore. I think the way the easiest way for you to think that way is to discount Virgil's subtlety.

[00:16:19]And I I agree that it's it's pretty easy to to say that Virgil is not a subtle writer. The more you know of his use of Latin, the less you will think that his Latin is almost supernatural. And yet Latin is far easier to translate than for instance ancient Greek. So Fagel does a pretty good job. And the reason why, I mean, I would ordinarily say if you're feeling a learning gradient with this thing, like if you didn't know any of the stuff that I just said about the sack of Troy, maybe call up Wikipedia, type in the Anid for Wikipedia and get a plot summary. There'll be a five paragraph plot summary right there.

[00:16:56]That's all you need really to start you off. But if you've got this book, this book was on Jennifer's shelf. It might be on your shelf as well or in the neat box set that Penguin made that I would very much like uh of all three deluxe editions. Uh if this book is already on your shelf, well then you don't even need to make a trip to Wikipedia, which of course is helpful but has no eloquence. Instead, you've got the introduction by Bernard Knox, a great classicist who who comes from 60 years of experience in teaching this thing and communicating how exciting it is. His introduction gives you all the stuff that you need to read the book that follows.

[00:17:33]I would argue maybe that you don't need all that much to start at all. Maybe not nothing.

[00:17:41]Maybe not nothing or you won't know who any of the characters are. But even then, again, I want to stress no book is born great. None of Virgil's original readers, not all of his original readers knew all the details. They had been raised on the story of Troy. They'd been raised on Roman mythology and Roman social history, but not in any great detail. This this book as it came out in installments was bought by everybody on the geniculum.

[00:18:10]Everybody who could read was told this this this big things coming out. I I went to see the author give a talk. I I definitely want you know whatever whatever first part I can get.

[00:18:24]A lot of those people would not have been completely chapter and verse versent on everything that was happening here. And they still liked it. They still loved it. Plenty later generations have loved it without extensive encyclopedia foregrounding.

[00:18:36]The anid is a harder case than the others. But in all of these cases, I want to point out what Jennifer herself points out in her video, which is that these things shouldn't be intimidating.

[00:18:44]A book is a book. We're all readers.

[00:18:47]These things were weren't made to be studied in inmies. They were made to be enjoyed. They were written to be enjoyed. Even Flannry O' Conor was writing for people to enjoy her work.

[00:18:59]It's a different kind of enjoyment, but still all the these five are perfect choices, and there's nothing intimidating about any of them. Not in the least. So, join. I will leave a link to Jennifer's video. Feel free to join her in taking some of these down off the shelf. These same books or your own equivalent, the five books who've been staring you at the shelf while you wonder if you're up to it. You're up to it. Take my word for it. Uh, so I'm going to wrap this up. There is a book response video for you. Uh, but I'll be back. Thank you both.