Getting into the Classics

I've not been a real reader for that long of a time - I've only gotten into reading around two years ago; all just to learn that apparently modern reading is dead, and everything that comes out now is crybaby, soy, DEI, Sweet Baby Inc. B.S. Apparently. Idk - but I do belive that literature, if not just for a spike in the season, will make a comeback. Both in a semi-mainstream way and in a qualitative way.

This is not a post on the why I belive the market will make a comeback but in short it's because I believe that as our society moves further and further down into this technological dark age, as the gap between what is real and what is not lessens, as the social intimacy increases in a superficial way but completely evaporates in a true and meaningful one continues, I believe more and more people will find themselves struggling to relate to other people. Feeling very uncomfortable in their own skin, retreating more into their own heads, thinking more and processing less, becoming less socially intelligent, more introspective and intuitive from a natural lack of external experience to inform decision; this will all lead to people becoming less gregarious, less fulfilled and more lonely, and what better conditions suit the opening of a decent novel? I won't go into how this will compete with streaming services and short form content, because I believe those will be stepping stones on the road to a desire for an entertainment more pertinent and fulfilling.

But onto the point, I found myself reading what are considered the classics: Moby Dick, In Cold Blood, Crime and Punishment, The Illiad and The Odyssey, War and Peace - even some Mccarthy because that man wrote like he was born to a time where periods had yet to take form, like before the hands of the fates were set there sat a troll who hovered above the three and watched devilishly with an inchoate grin whispering obesenities down at the maidens that every rod's length cut should instead be exacted to the furlong and not the cubit so that in everymans time he might do well in learning that that which can be consummated in a decade ought for him be protracted to the century so that in his journeys and findings he might go and come back and cross and recross and look down and see his steps and wonder at where he'd been and where he was going and why he was going and why he was and who he was and where he was and was he was and and

I found myself reading these stories and the more recommendations I got - and especially the very passionate and seemingly sincere ones - it made me over-zealously and very shamelessly download pdfs of numerous old time authors and I thought I'd try my best to work through the cannon.

I'm still trying... don't let this seem like I'm not, but I can't lie - and people always say: No, brother, no, you have to understand that things were different then. We're all a product of our times, come on, be fair. And I always say - me being a black person, mind you: Yes, I agree. It's not fair to judge them on modern standards, and I'm not, but still, this... I don't know how to explain it. I feel fake reading it. I feel like I'm reading someone's diary or something, or I'm reading something I'm not supposed to read or something that was not written for me, and that's because it's not, let's be forreal.

I don't let that stop me, but I admit it limits my enjoyment; like having work friends: only when it's necessary.

I don't find much connection, or really anything in common with the authors at all, except maybe Tolstoy, because we're both suckers; we give all our money away to people who don't deserve it.

At first I didn't think this would be a problem, because I thought my ability to compartmentalize information would detach me from any necessity to identify with the author or their views, but now I'm starting to see what the girls are talking about and why they don't like to read from authors who are known misogynists. Much of reading is connection to the text on an emotional level; I've come to learn that. So many readers vouch for their favorite authors, and so many of those authors are just so mid. And I'm sure some people think my favorite things are mid, but now in starting to realize the paradoxicality in reading. Reading requires intelligence, but it also requires emotional investment, but emotion requires the pendulum to veer over from the side of logic into the side of feeling and subjectivity, and that explains a lot.

A lot of these classical authors - I'm gonna get shit for this, I'm ready, I have an opinion - are mid.

People see what they want to see and they see what's relevant to them. If they don't have any lines of commonality or mutual interest, the work is going to be an absolute slog. I think a lot of the classics suffer from that. Overly pompous to the point of losing all relatabililty and immersion, especially in dialog. Too much ink. Too much. Too much word for read. Too self-refferential - everyone says that the classics are good just because they were written at a time where if you were moderately read(and were european) and had a good handle on diction and prose, were a learned man( emphasis on man) and had a decent name, it didn't matter as long as it was moderately good and you were endorsed you were taken seriously, even if the theme of the book is not that deep.

All of these critisms are unfair, because, they were in fact written at a time distant but not by that much, and written for a class of people who lived far easier and better than we do now and quite frankly, had way more time to read than we do. ( Better meaning financially).

This is not an attack on classic books, but more an understanding I have for the people who get shit on for not liking books that have authors whose world views they're at odds with or who don't automatically like The Canon, like all the literary people say you're supposed to. I used to think that they were just being soft bitches until I actually read stuff that had some extremely bad stuff to say about me and what I am. Everyone thinks that if they find themselves in a situation that they saw someone else in who didn't act in the way that they think they would have, that they'll act the way they think they would have, but that's just rarely true imo. Even though I don't have much example for it, I'm almost certain of it when I see people who are genuinely passionate about something I find okay at best. It tells me that we're more emotional than logical when we're in that state of adoration, and that even classic works are still heavily dependent on the audience's interpretation of it.

I think that I've written enough. I lost the script multiple times, but I think I got enough of what I was trying to get at.

If you read all this I love you. I don't know how you did it.