I’ve been fascinated by Classic literature for as long as I can remember. As a child, I was introduced to Barrie, Dickens, Kipling, Twain, Stevenson and Wyss. In Fourth Grade I found Benjamin Franklin, dressing like him to give a school-boys’ report on his life and accomplishments after reading his autobiography (abridged). In Fifth Grade, dressed as Dracula, I introduced a recording of “The Tale Tell Heart” (read by Vincent Price) at a school Halloween party. Afterward, I begged for a copy of Poe’s Complete Works and carried that green tome for years, reading every chance I could. Wait . . . Dracula? Then came Frankenstein. Heinlein took me over the moon and Bradbury stole my literary heart with creepy carnivals and Martian colonies. I don’t recall when I found Shakespeare— seems he was always there.
And then came Tolkien, who was frowned upon by my parents, who instead sought to distract me with another author named Lewis. If only they knew . . .
I have a very short list of things I’d do over again, if I could. One of those things would be to enroll in St. John’s College, one of the oldest schools in America. The curriculum is The Great Books of the Western World, based on The Harvard Classics. A few years ago the library at the University where I was employed for 20 years caught fire. Over time, each rescued book was inspected and was either returned to inventory, given away or discarded altogether. I was fortunate to reap a few armfuls of books, including a 12 volume set of books that proved to be a reading guide for The Great Books! The college came to me!
Over the past few months, I’ve been making my way through the curriculum by means of the reading guide. So far I’ve read either all or some of Sophocles, Socrates (in Plato), The Book of Job in the Old Testament, Aristotle, Plutarch, Tolstoy, Augustine, Montaigne. Apart from the curriculum I try to read at least 10 chapters of the Bible each day, and a measured dose of daily dose of Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius or Musonius Rufus. I’m not sure how many times I’ve read The Bible, but there’s no reason to stop.
Considering all the literature I’ve touched and retouched over the course of my life (so far), including most fiction, I am confident I could say that each work, from any point on the globe and from any time, seeks the answer to the question, “why?” Why am I here? Why is the world the way it is? Why do we behave as we do? Why is this acceptable and not that? And so forth. The “who, what, where, when” questions follow the “why?”
I also venture that those who don’t read classic literature have a tougher time finding the answer to any question, perhaps not knowing how to ask. I could be wrong but as I grow older, I encounter deeper stages of apathy in the world. To borrow from Postman, our culture is one of entertaining ourselves to death, having no patience to explore questions that matter.
I’ll be pressing on, sharing what I read as I read it. Perhaps a little curiosity will be stirred here and there that will grow an intense hunger for someone else to know.
