In novels, river of words flows from the past; reader's soul gives it sound [Unscripted column]

Jun 11, 2023

There are no such thing as "old" books, as any work that's new to you can feel fresh.

An old novel shouldn’t exist.

The thing is an oxymoron: A novel is “new.” An old novel can’t do anymore what a novel does: It cannot speak to living people in the tones and wisdom they know. In modern classrooms it can only confuse and offend.

There. Now can the rest of us go back to simply reading and loving them?

“A novel is like a violin bow; the box which gives off the sounds is the soul of the reader.”(Stendhal, “Life of Henri Brulard”)

In the first Elizabeth’s day, certain people in England began to write stories for an audience, not a patron or a prince. They told the people vivid tales in a living tongue. And they’ve been starving at it ever since.

There were 4 million or so English speakers in the world then, less than half of them literate, and maybe 20,000 or fewer around London who read the pamphlets and paid for a seat at one of the theaters.

From that, Hamlet and Lear.

Great writing doesn’t want a mass audience; it asks of a reader patient attention, an open ear, and awareness of what has been done in the language by other authors.

Education isn’t required. Studying lit in school likely dulls your ear. You can hold rich literary conversation with a secretary from a tube factory, a social worker or a truck driver. I know.

Out of the past flows a river of words. When you find a book you like, look next to it. What books did this person write? Read? Who came later and learned from this writer?

Just keep reading. The unwritten rules are few and simple. Ignore reviews or introductions. Read an edition without illustrations. Never have seen the movie first.

***

My mother was a reader. She was a pleasure to her English teacher in high school because, as she told us kids, if she didn’t like something “Ivanhoe” or some other classic was doing, she’d say so right out and why. She was that way toward us, too, so we sympathized with Sir Walter.

My daughter recently came of age to announce her favorite Brontë. The equivalent in other households I know might be the eldest son choosing a favorite Beatle. Branwell the wayward brother is the “Ringo” pick, if you’re playing at home. Anne is George. The other two are easy. I won’t say which she picked, but her mom and I each had a hope.

One pleasure of watching a young reader is seeing joys discovered. To read a classic before you know what it is or even that it’s considered great. To have a book sneak up on you. All your life, to know you’re among the few who once had it fresh. To read a line and another and not know what the next holds.

***

For 400 years or so a hive of artists working in awareness of one another buzzed around the problem of how to express truth and beauty in English words with utmost durable power.

This was the racetrack of language. A set of people working in competitive awareness of one another, each trying to make large-scale English storytelling “go” as well as it could.

They tended and manured an audience. They maintained it at a high level of wit and sensibility. They and the booksellers convinced us that, if you have a mind, this is part of what you do with it.

That is everyone’s heritage who can listen in English. The words belong to all of us: Look what they can do! Taste what’s been put into visible sounds and savored for ages. The words that fed the minds that made us.

When my daughter was younger (she’d read the “Harry Potters”), “Jekyll and Hyde” came up somehow. To her the names meant nothing. So she read it, turning each page not knowing what happens. The story blossoming, dark petal by petal, word by word, and forming solid monster and human anguish out of the spume of sounds in her mind. She read it as few have since 1886.

Doug Harper is a copy editor at LNP | LancasterOnline. “Unscripted” is a weekly entertainment column produced by a rotating team of writers.

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