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To be a classic a book’s got to be
old. It needs to have been tested over the course of two
generations—about 50 years—before we can say it is definitely
worth reading. But if everyone were to read only old books, how could
any new books ever take hold?
We should read the classics, but we
need to read contemporary works too. The point is not to let one
overshadow the other. Maybe in 1000 years when our tradition has
reached a stable equilibrium we can stick to the classics alone. But
our world is changing rapidly and new ideas are emerging to adapt to
this change. We should be cautious in trying new, untested ideas; we
also need the courage to stick to a new principle once we’ve
adopted it, so that we can be living proof of its truth. Only then
can we help make something a classic.
Above is a graph of the works I’ve listed in my (admittedly provisional) canon. I’d wager
you’d see a similar pattern whatever canon you graph. There are two
main groups of dots—one during the time of Greece and Rome, and one
during the modern era. These are the two periods of the most rapid
growth of literary culture in the West. Though more books were
written in the 400s AD than at any time before, few managed to
overshadow the brilliance of the original Greek philosophers.
The modern era, you’ll notice, has a
lot more tiny dots. This is because we don’t yet know which books
will be the true classics of the future. Even the big ones are
relatively provisional, and are likely to shrink or even disappear
with time as their relevance wanes. The weeding process will always
be ongoing, as truly-outdated books are neglected and new cultural
heroes trumpet their greatest influences.
You don’t hear much about the
classics these days. How did they fall out favor, especially if
they’re supposed to be so beneficial? Shouldn’t those who read
them be the most successful and admired people still today? Shouldn’t
we hear them recommended everywhere? The fact is, the last century
has seen an extraordinary growth in technology and industry. So the
most influential people are still largely scientists and other
technocrats. As a result, university philosophy itself has become
overly impressed with the power of science and has bowed to its
apparent might. University culture as a whole has lost an
appreciation for what it already had. The myth of progress has taken
hold even there, a myth that favors mass media and mass government, a
myth that now controls the airwaves and the mass consciousness of our
nation. Progress culture has become viral, demeaning and suppressing
what was most precious and ancient. It will take some time before the
far richer traditions of the past can come back into their own, but
they will be helped as our decline proceeds and our material wealth
collapses.
Under the pressure of more extreme
selective pressures to come, the classics will return, our canon will
be refined, and new classics will be forged.
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There’s an interesting article over on Maria Popova’s site about Hemingway’s advice to a novice
writer. The first thing he did was hand him a list of classics “every
writer should have read.”
Every great thinker and writer has a
list of classics that made them what they are. I can’t think of any
exception to this rule. How could there be? If you haven’t listened
to the conversation so far, how can you possibly contribute? Reading
classic works is the beginning and foundation of any good education.
The only other essential thing is having a good mentor, and a good
book can be a mentor too in a pinch.
If there is a secret to creating a
classic, it’s to study classics.
Hemingway wrote, “Never compete with
living writers. You don’t know whether they’re good or not.
Compete with the dead ones you know are good.”
Reading too many recent books is
dangerous, because it gives a skewed historical perspective. It
biases you toward the present. It makes you forget. It teaches you
complacency with what our culture is losing.
I recently did a survey of
my list of classics to see what story themes are most common. Out of
14 narratives whose main themes were “psychological” (for example
Crime and Punishment, the
climax of which is the inner repentance of the protagonist) 8 were
written in the last 100 years, and none more than 250 years ago. By
contrast, out of 16 classics with significant “political” themes
(involving leaders or nations), 7 were written in the last 100 years,
and 4 were written over 250 years ago. Four might not seem like many,
but these particular four are the largest and most significant
collections of old stories we have: Plutarch’s Lives,
the Bible, Dante’s
Divine Comedy, and the
plays of Shakespeare.
It
looks like we moderns have gotten hung up on our own internal
psychology. It’s no wonder that our civic traditions are
foundering. We call Ulysses the
greatest novel of our time, a story that seems to encourage us to
lose ourselves in the meaningless intricacies of our own broken
psyches. I’ll take Homer’s wide-ranging version of Ulysses over
Joyce’s self-involuted one any day.
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Ancient classics are also more likely
to champion tradition-respecting, rural, close-to-nature living. They
are far more ecological, far less urban-centric. It is a pernicious
myth that romanticizing nature is a modern pastime. The best pastoral
poetry ever written was penned by Virgil two millennia ago. The Bible
itself has more ecological themes than you tend to find in modern
literature—according to my rough count they are twice as common.
These themes include man vs. nature, the follies of pursuing power,
and the follies of urbanized life. Stories such as “The Tower of
Babel” and “Sodom and Gomorrah” fall into this category, as do
the prophecies of almost every biblical seer, prophecies that preach
the eventual destruction of decadent, materialistic civilizations—and
which, details aside, have invariably proven true. Rome and Babylon
were, as surviving records indicate, crushed under the weight of
their own material success and psychological decadence. The Bible
is profound because it is the record of those few sages who saw it
all coming.
When the Bible first took hold
in Rome, it was against the grain of the times. Most philosophies
were Aristotle-inspired variants on Stoicism, which taught inner
quietude, skepticism, and the primacy of reason. The Stoics believed
that suffering was unnecessary, that by detachment from the world one
can find everlasting happiness. But this is essentially to teach
self-involution, an extinguishing of the relation between the inner
“psychological” world and the outer “political” one. Even as
invasions and plagues swept in, the non-Christians of Rome generally
assumed it would all pass, that their empire would be the center of
civilization for eternity.
But the early Christians cultivated the
opposite attitude. Instead of detachment the Bible taught attachment:
“Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth. Love
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all
things.” Christianity taught not indifference to good and evil, but
the difference between good and evil. It taught that evil would sow
the fruits of its own demise, that no worldly power could attain
everlasting victory, and that on the other hand—“Love never
fails.”
The Bible is
against the grain of our time too. As a result we consider it
“outdated.” I have a feeling that, quite to the contrary, its
advice will prove as prescient as it was last time we got so full of
ourselves.
Or
perhaps a new body of sacred literature will begin to crystallize,
still more against the grain and more profound, more prescient even
than anything that has come before. If such a body of writing does
emerge, most of us won’t realize which it is until it’s too late.
I find this thought humbling, a needed antidote to a pernicious—and
ungodly—pride of culture.
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