Renewing A Love For Literature

There are quite a few advisements floating around in our culture that people tend to accept without question, like my pet peeve, “Be a self-made man/woman,” as if we gave birth and raised ourselves or personally reinvented the wheel for every aspect large or small that makes up our world. Evidence to the contrary overwhelms us and loudly proclaims that from the moment we walk onto Earth’s stage, we benefit and learn from others. This is particularly so when it comes to receiving (note the verb) a good education.

When I see a beautiful work of art, hear exceptional music, or read the pièce de résistance of a great writer, I am in awe of the immense sacrifice and love that went into its creation. How splendid its existence for our mutual enjoyment and edification!

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become. ~ C.S. Lewis

Kevin Hartnett’s article Reading War and Peace: The Effects of Great Art on an Ordinary Life got me reading War and Peace for the first time and to acknowledging anew the edification values of great literature. Which are considered by respected academicians to be the best books in the English language? After perusing a number of Ivy League college and classic literature publisher lists, I found that the selections varied to a degree, but that certain books made every list. And, of course, we all have our personal favorites – 15 of mine I share with you below.

For fun, try to name author and title after reading the first sentence of these masterworks. Here we go …

1. To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.
2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
3. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
4. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
5. It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight.
6. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
7. The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the most delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
8. He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.
9. In the kitchen of the small thatched farmhouse the mother sat on a low bamboo stool behind the earthen stove and fed grass deftly into the hole where a fire burned beneath the iron caldron.
10. On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.
11. All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places.
12. Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining-parlor, in the town of P–, in Kentucky.
13. I first heard of Antonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America.
14. Just after passing Caraher’s saloon, on the County Road that ran south from Bonneville, and that divided the Broderson ranch from that of Los Muertos, Presley was suddenly aware of the faint and prolonged blowing of a steam whistle that he knew must come from the railroad shops near the depot at Bonneville.
15. I celebrate myself, / And what I assume you shall assume / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Whether these writings take us back to times past, into the hearts of human beings who struggle like us to find their place in the world, or beyond into fantasies and dreams, each opens a door to greater understanding of ourselves and the world. By renewing our love for great literature, we irrigate our deserts and cause the wildflowers of our soul to bloom again.

1. Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. 1984, George Orwell
4. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
5. Rain, W. Somerset Maugham
6. The Old Man and The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
7. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
8. Orlando, Virginia Woolf
9. The Mother, Pearl S. Buck
10. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
11. Star Rover, Jack London
12. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
13. My Antonia, Willa Cather
14. The Octopus, Frank Norris
15. Song of Myself, Walt Whitman

Image ~ above right ~ California Poppies.
Thumbnail image ~ Creative Commons photo by timetrax23. Used with permission.

Tagged as: 1984, A Tale of Two Cities, California poppies, Charles Dickens, edification, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Grapes of Wrath, great literature in the English language, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jack London, Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, Kevin Hartnett, literature, My Antonia, Orlando, Oscar Wilde, Pearl S. Buck, Pride and Prejudice, Somerset Maugham, Song of Myself, Star Rover, The Age of Innocence, The Mother, The Old Man and The Sea, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Tolstoy, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, War and Peace, Willa Cather