How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading (29 page)

The great majority of books that are read are stories of one kind or another. People who cannot read listen to stories.

We even make them up for ourselves. Fiction seems to be a necessity for human beings. Why is this?

One reason why fiction is a human necessity is that it satisfies many unconscious as well as conscious needs. It would be important if it only touched the conscious mind, as expository writing does. But fiction is important, too, because it also touches the unconscious.

On the simplest level-and a discussion of this subject could be very complex-we like or dislike certain kinds of people more than others, without always being sure why. If, in a novel, such people are rewarded or punished, we may have stronger feelings, either pro or con, about the book than it merits artistically.

For example, we are often pleased when a character in a novel inherits money, or otherwise comes into good fortune.

However, this tends to be true only if the character is "sympathetic"-meaning that we can identify with him or her. We do not admit to ourselves that we would like to inherit the money, we merely say that we like the book.

Perhaps we would all like to love more richly than we do.

Many novels are about love-most are, perhaps-and it gives us pleasure to identify with the loving characters. They are free, and we are not. But we may not want to admit this; for to do so might make us feel, consciously, that our own loves are inadequate.

Again, almost everyone has some unconscious sadism and masochism in his makeup. These are often satisfied in novels, where we can identify with either the conqueror or victim, or even with both. In each case, we are prone to say simply that we like "that kind of book"-without specifying or really knowing why.

Finally, we suspect that life as we know it is unjust. Why do good people suffer, and bad ones prosper? We do not know, we cannot know, but the fact causes great anxiety in everyone.

In stories, this chaotic and unpleasant situation is adjusted, and that is extremely satisfying to us.

In stories -in novels and narrative poems and plays- justice usually does exist. People get what they deserve; the author, who is like a god to his characters, sees to it that they are rewarded or punished according to their true merit. In a good story, in a satisfying one, this is usually so, at least. One of the most irritating things about a bad story is that the people in it seem to be punished or rewarded with no rhyme or reason. The great storyteller makes no mistakes. He is able to convince us that justice-poetic justice, we call it-has been done.

This is true even of high tragedy. There, terrible things happen to good men, but we see that the hero, even if he does not wholly deserve his fate, at least comes to understand it.

And we have a profound desire to share his understanding. If we only knew-then we could withstand whatever the world has in store for us. "I Want to Know Why" is the title of a story by Sherwood Anderson. It could be the title of many stories. The tragic hero does learn why, though often, of course, only after the ruin of his life. We can share his insight without sharing his suffering.

Thus, in criticizing fiction we must be careful to distinguish those books that satisfy our own particular unconscious needs-the ones that make us say, "I like this book, although I don't really know why"-from those that satisfy the deep unconscious needs of almost everybody. The latter are undoubtedly the great stories, the ones that live on and on for generations and centuries. As long as man is man, they will go on satisfying him, giving him something that he needs to have-a belief in justice and understanding and the allaying of anxiety. We do not know, we cannot be sure, that the real world is good. But the world of a great story is somehow good.

We want to live there as often and as long as we can.

A Note About Epics

Perhaps the most honored but probably the least read books in the great tradition of the Western World are the major epic poems, particularly the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Milton's Paradise Lost. This paradox requires some comment.

Judging by the very small number that have been completed successfully in the past 2,500 years, a long epic poem is apparently the most difficult thing a man can write. This is not for want of trying; hundreds of epics have been begun, and some-for example, Wordsworth's Prelude and Byron's Don Juan-have grown to extensive proportions without ever really being finished. So honor is due the poet who sticks to the task and completes it. Greater honor is due him if he produces a work that has the qualities of the five just mentioned.

But they are certainly not easy to read.

This is not only because they are written in verse-for in every case except that of Paradise Lost, prose translations are available to us. The difficulty seems rather to lie in their elevation, in their approach to their subject matter. Any of these major epics exerts enormous demands on the reader-demands of attention, of involvement, and of imagination. The effort required to read them is very great indeed.

Most of us are not aware of the loss we suffer by not making that effort. For the rewards to be gained from a good reading-an analytical reading, as we should say-of these epics are at least as great as those to be gained from the reading of any other books, certainly any other works of fiction.

Unfortunately, however, these rewards are not gained by readers who do less than a good job on these books.

We hope that you will take a stab at reading these five great epic poems, and that you will manage to get through all of them. We are certain you will not be disappointed if you do. And you will be able to enjoy a further satisfaction. Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton-they are the authors that every good poet, to say nothing of other writers, has read. Along with the Bible, they constitute the backbone of any serious reading program.

How to Read Plays

A play is fiction, a story, and insofar as that is true, it should be read like a story. Perhaps the reader has to be more active in creating the background, the world in which the characters live and move, for there is no description in plays such as abounds in novels. But the problems are essentially similar.

However, there is one important difference. When you read a play, you are not reading a complete work. The complete play (the work that the author intended you to apprehend) is only apprehended when it is acted on a stage. Like music, which must be heard, a play lacks a physical dimension when we read it in a book. The reader must supply that dimension.

The only way to do that is to make a pretense of seeing it acted. Therefore, once you have discovered what the play is about, as a whole and in detail, and once you have answered the other questions you must ask about any story, then try directing the play. Imagine that you have half a dozen good actors before you, awaiting your commands. Tell them how to say this line, how to play that scene. Explain the importance of these few words, and how that action is the climax of the work. You will have a lot of fun, and you will learn a lot about the play.

An example will show what we mean. In Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii, Polonius announces to the king and queen that Hamlet is insane because of his love for Ophelia, who has spurned the prince's advances. The king and queen are doubtful, whereupon Polonius proposes that the king and he hide behind an arras, in order to overhear a conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia. This proposal occurs in Act II, Scene ii, at lines 160-170; immediately thereafter Hamlet enters, reading. His speeches to Polonius are enigmatic; as Polonius says, "though this be madness, yet there is method in't!" Later on, early in Act III, Hamlet enters and delivers the famous soliloquy, beginning "To be or not to be," and then is interrupted by catching sight of Ophelia. He speaks to her quite reasonably for a time, but suddenly he cries: "Ha, ha! are you honest?" (III, i, line 103) . Now the question is, has Hamlet overheard Polonius say earlier that he and the king planned to spy on him? And did he perhaps also hear Polonius say that he would "loose my daughter to him"? If so Hamlet's conversations with both Polonius and Ophelia would mean one thing; if he did not overhear the plotting, they would mean another. Shakespeare left no stage directions; the reader (or director) must decide for himself. Your own decision will be central to your understanding of the play.

Many of Shakespeare's plays require this kind of activity on the part of the reader. Our point is that it is always desirable, no matter how explicit the playwright was in telling us exactly what we should expect to see. (We cannot question what we are to hear, since the play's words are before us.) Probably you have not read a play really well until you have pretended to put it on the stage in this way. At best, you have given it only a partial reading.

Earlier, we suggested that there were interesting exceptions to the rule that the playwright cannot speak directly to the reader as the author of a novel can and often does. (Fielding, in Tom Jones, is an example of this direct addressing of the reader in one great novel.) Two of these exceptions are separated by nearly twenty-five centuries of time. Aristophanes, the ancient Greek comic playwright, wrote the only examples of what is called Old Comedy that survive. From time to time in an Aristophanic play, and always at least once, the leading actor would step out of character, perhaps move forward toward the audience, and deliver a political speech that had nothing whatever to do with the action of the drama. It is felt that these speeches were expressions of the author's personal feelings. This is occasionally done nowadays-no useful artistic device is ever really lost-but perhaps not as effectively as Aristophanes did it.

The other example is that of Shaw, who not only expected his plays to be acted but also hoped that they would be read.

He published them all, at least one (Heartbreak House) before it was ever acted, and accompanied the publication with long prefaces in which he explained the meaning of the plays and told his readers how to understand them. (He also included very extensive stage directions in the published versions.) To read a Shavian play without reading the preface Shaw wrote for it is to turn one's back intentionally on an important aid to understanding. Again, other modern playwrights have imitated Shaw in this device, but never as effectively as he did.

One other bit of advice may be helpful, particularly in reading Shakespeare. We have already suggested the importance of reading the plays through, as nearly as possible at one sitting, in order to get a feel for the whole. But, since the plays are mostly in verse, and since the verse is more or less opaque in places because of changes in the language that have occurred since 160, it is often desirable to read a puzzling passage out loud. Read slowly, as if an audience were listening, and with "expression"-that is, try to make the words meaningful to you as you read them. This simple device will clear up many difficulties. Only after it has failed should you turn to the glossary or notes.

A Note About Tragedy

Most plays are not worth reading. This, we think, is because they are incomplete. They were not meant to be read -they were meant to be acted. There are many great expository works, and many great novels, stories, and lyric poems, but there are only a few great plays. However, those few-the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes, the plays of Shakespeare, Moliere's comedies, the works of a very few moderns -are very great indeed, for they contain within them some of the deepest and richest insights men have ever expressed in words.

Among these, Greek tragedy is probably the toughest nut to crack for beginning readers. For one thing, in the ancient world three tragedies were presented at one time, the three often dealing with a common theme, but except in one case (the Oresteia of Aeschylus) only single plays (or acts) survive. For another, it is almost impossible to stage the plays mentally, since we know almost nothing about how the Greek directors did it. For still another, the plays often are based on stories that were well known to their audiences but are known to us only through the plays. It is one thing to know the story of Oedipus, for example, as well as we know the story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree, and thus to view Sophocles' masterpiece as a commentary on a familiar tale; and it is quite another to see Oedipus Rex as the primary story and try to imagine the familiar tale that provided the background.

Nevertheless, the plays are so powerful that they triumph over even these obstacles, as well as others. It is important to read them well, for they not only can tell us much about life as we still live it, but they also form a kind of literary framework for many other plays written much later-for example, Racine's and O'Neill's. We have two bits of advice that may help.

The first is to remember that the essence of tragedy is time, or rather the lack of it. There is no problem in any Greek tragedy that could not have been solved if there had been enough time, but there is never enough. Decisions, choices have to be made in a moment, there is no time to think and weigh the consequences; and, since even tragic heroes are fallible-especially fallible, perhaps-the decisions are wrong.

It is easy for us to see what should have been done, but would we have been able to see in time? That is the question that you should always ask in reading any Greek tragedy.

The second bit of advice is this. One thing we do know about the staging of Greek plays is that the tragic actors wore buskins on their feet that elevated them several inches above the ground. (They also wore masks.) But the members of the chorus did not wear buskins, though they sometimes wore masks. The comparison between the size of the tragic protagonists, on the one hand, and the members of the chorus, on the other hand, was thus highly significant. Therefore you should always imagine, when you read the words of the chorus, that the words are spoken by persons of your own stature; while the words spoken by the protagonists proceed from the mouths of giants, from personages who did not only seem, but actually were, larger than life.