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Key insights from
On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life
through Great Books
By
Karen Swallow Prior
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What You’ll Learn
Oscar Wilde said, “There is no such thing as a moral or an
immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” For
the most part, however, literary critics since Aristotle disagree with
Wilde. In fact, until the turn of the 20th century, the practice of
literary criticism was primarily dedicated to exploring how books taught us
about morality. On Reading Well by Karen Swallow Prior returns to
this long-established conversation. How do we become good humans? And how
can Great Books help us achieve that? By exploring the ways critical works
of literature illustrate cardinal, theological, and heavenly virtues, Prior
challenges those who believe reading “after virtue” is a simplistic or
naive approach. Her appeal to modern readers is twofold: Excellent books do
shape the quality of our moral life, but only if we practice the virtues
necessary to read well.
Read on for key insights from On Reading Well.
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1. Books tell us
virtue is more wonderful than our illusions of what is good.
Within the framework of Aristotelian philosophy that
established the ancient world’s understanding of virtue, practicing virtue
was a means toward the ultimate human purpose: happiness. Later,
Christianity declared a similar approach. However, for Christians, the
ultimate human aim (happiness) also has a relational quality: communion
with God in eternity.
Today, we live by the remnants of a different tradition, the
Enlightenment, which undermines both Aristotelian and Christian views of
virtue, calls into question all instincts toward the transcendental, and
focuses our attention on the material world. For this reason, discussing
virtue in modern times is almost impossible. Since a shared moral language
relies on a common destiny outside of our own lives, discussions
about virtues become subjective when we view life as only material.
Consequently, we begin to confuse living a moral life with our sentiments
for self-preservation.
Fortunately, our innate responses to the meanings of good
books reveal that somewhere deep in us, we can converse with the
transcendent; that our nature longs to participate in the shared,
immemorial human journey towards the absolute good. Unlike a dictionary or
a manual designed to exclusively transmit information and assert
statements, literature uses poetic language to paint a whole experience in
our minds. As such, representations of virtue achieve the same effect. We
not only learn about virtues (their practical benefits and uses),
but we also experience their poetic breadth and width when they invade our
imagination, whether through positive or negative examples.
Indeed, literature shows that our personal, frail desires
are dull compared to the extraordinary principles that build a moral life.
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2. Life is
tasteless to both the indulgent and the self-abnegating; temperance feels
really good.
Temperance is a virtue molded by a lifetime of slow and
ordinary discipline. Contrary to popular belief, it is also a virtue that
nurtures true pleasure. Through temperance, we achieve a proper enjoyment
of our desires, such as food, drink, sex, and the use of goods. All of
these appetites are necessary for life and part of our happiness, but only
if we master them rather than become enslaved to them. Temperance, in other
words, is the balance that allows us to enjoy the pleasures of life without
destroying ourselves, and thus pleasure itself.
Indulgence and insensibility are the two vices at the extreme
ends of the spectrum of temperance. Today, we are mostly stimulated by
these extremes: minimalism and hoarding, fast food and extreme diets,
sexual licentiousness and purity culture. This swinging pendulum of
extremes at the heart of American culture underlines the narrative of The
Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gatsby is a man consumed by
sexual appetites, wealth, and visions of glory. He lives in the age of
Prohibition, a time characterized by a cultural compulsion to
suppress.
The destruction of the characters in the novel can be
attributed to their inability to reconcile the polarities of their lives
and culture: the West Egg and the East Egg, working and upper classes, lack
and excess, etc. Gatsby’s story and context teach us that achieving temperance
is not simply a matter of restraint from vices but a balanced mixing of
opposites.
For Gatsby, one internal polarity he cannot reconcile is his
relationship between the real and the ideal, for imagination is another
dimension of temperance. Gatsby’s love for Daisy is founded on his craving
to satisfy an impossible and forbidden desire: the wife of a richer, more
powerful man. Since it is not Daisy, but the greatness of his scheme that
drives him, Gatsby imagines in her a pleasure that does not really involve
her whatsoever and thus can never be fulfilled. In many ways, Daisy is to
Gatsby what the books in his flashy library are to his ego; they are never
opened or read but only used to project an image of grandiosity.
Temperance also possesses a quality of time and pace.
Gatsby’s longing to recover some vision of his former self that has passed
and now wasted is a symptom of a disordered relationship with time. This
sense that he doesn’t have enough time puts his spirit “in constant,
turbulent riot.” Squeezing time too much, it turns out, is a waste of
time—for time runs out for all who ask too much of it.
At the opposite end, we encounter Nick Carroway. Although a
modest and struggling businessman, he represents the intemperance of being
too passive. Nick’s lack of judgment and unreliability as the narrator only
make him ignorant of his effect on Gatsby’s life, but do not relinquish his
responsibility. Though he attempts to remain a mere observer, we are
reminded that passivity is also a choice. Living our story requires that we
judge good from evil, but it also requires acknowledging that our
understanding of good and evil is limited—basically, it requires
temperance!
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3. Sentimentality
is nourished by lies; love depends on truth.
In The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy tells the
story of Ivan’s last days as he experiences the consequences of a lifetime
spent serving the vice of cupidity. The word cupidity comes from the god of
erotic love, Cupid. In the Christian tradition, cupidity happens when we
love things on account of themselves: pleasure, status, wealth, and so on.
From an early age, our main character served sensuality and vanity by
structuring his life around success and decorum. Ivan’s love for appearance
is his downfall, conveyed metaphorically when he falls trying to hang a
drapery in his newest and biggest home, causing a fatal injury that
eventually kills him.
On his deathbed, Ivan realizes the things and people he
spent his life with are unable to bear his suffering with him. He lacks all
forms of loves: brotherly, erotic, and familial. In fact, because Ivan only
bonded with his wife, family, and friends for the perceived benefit they
would give him as a man of status, he in turn, receives the same treatment.
Ivan’s so-called friends only endure the inconvenience of paying
condolences because they believe his death will help advance their wealth
and careers.
Ivan’s acquaintances and family do not suffer with him
because they imagine they are immortal beings. Their love for the things of
this life deludes them into thinking that they are abstracts rather than
particulars, that they exist outside of the limits of nature. This is why
the majority of the novel's characters are blind to the scope of the
situation, the emptiness of their relationships, their mortality, and their
vanity. They all whisper to themselves: “Well, he’s dead but I’m alive!”
And though Ivan knows full well that people are lying to his face when they
tell him he is only experiencing a brief illness, he also has difficulty
accepting the truth.
The problem with only loving appearances, status, and
manners is that such love is incapable of reaching some of the gloomier
parts of life, like dying at 45.
Love makes itself available only to those who are willing to
love things for what they are and in the right proportion. Love demands
that we face the reality of the human condition, both the transcendental
realities and the here and now realities like mortality.
In the Christian tradition, agape refers to supernatural
love, a quality of love that is sacrificial and self-giving. Agape
enables us to generate love toward people that are detestable in our eyes,
or to experience love in bleak and hapless situations. Agape love
is far too great for us to create, which is why we rely on God to provide
it. We can participate in this love—though we may not possess it—because we
are created in God’s image and are part of his economy.
It is not until his last moments that Ivan finally asks:
“But what is the right thing?” And suddenly it grows clear to him. He looks
at his wife and son, feels sorry for them and releases them from more
suffering by dying. Ivan realizes that an encounter with the fullness of
reality creates a love that is more than just polite sentiments. This love
bears other’s burdens, which is impossible if we pretend burdens don’t
exist.
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4. Lust ruins the
weak and lonely; the chaste person burns fiercely.
The novel Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton shows us
sides of lust that we rarely entertain. At first glance, Ethan is a likable
guy. After returning home from school to take care of his dying mother, he
falls in love with his cousin Zeena, who comes to help him. They get
married. Within a year, Zeena becomes ill with hypochondria and their union
begins to collapse. Then Mattie Silver enters the picture and Ethan falls in
love with her.
Of course, Zeena—like her husband—bears responsibility for
their failing marriage. She makes herself very hard to love and often
complains with a “flat whine” that makes her company unbearable. So when
Ethan abandons the wife of his youth, who has false teeth and lashless
eyes, to spend time with Mattie, we understand that his situation is hard.
However, this does not excuse his betrayal.
Research confirms that if people put the time, attention,
and emotional investment they give their affairs into their marriage, the
affair could be avoided altogether. Though Ethan never has sex with Mattie,
he is culpable of being unchaste emotionally and spiritually with her. Even
in modern times, we still embrace the idea that hard things must be worked at,
but we often make an exception for marriage. If (or rather, once)
it gets hard, we bail.
When Ethan decides to give more time and attention to Mattie
than to his ill wife, the arrogant spirit of self-sufficiency begins to
fester inside of him and leads to his ruin. In the vows of marriage, both
partners become one body and each of them shapes the other. Under this
logic, what makes a marriage work is caring for your partner the way you
would care for yourself. Ethan’s lust, therefore, is an abandonment of
himself.
Ethan and Zeena's situation is worsened by the fact that
they live in the lonely, private, and stoic town, intentionally named
Starkfield. Lust, we find, is a vice borne in isolation, whereas chastity
is a virtue supported by a community. Unsurprisingly, this pattern is
active in the world today. Consider the fact that the same technology that
created a crisis of loneliness is also the birthplace of most porn
addictions.
All in all, the meaning of chastity is often assumed but
little understood. Simply said, chastity is fidelity to ourselves, our
partners, and our community—no matter how we square it, it demands more
than mere suppression of sexual desire. Chastity is something mighty
that instructs us to properly arrange a good desire within a hierarchy of
other good desires. Ethan did not commit any sexual act and yet he was
unchaste to his wife, to Mattie, and to himself.
Christian and secular thinkers alike have reduced the
meaning of chastity by over-idealizing or abhorring it. The ancient
Christian and pagan cultures idealized the virtue so much that they
confused it with celibacy. This reductionary view inspired others, like
atheist poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, to make fun of chastity by saying it was
the "virtue of the cheaply virtuous / Who pride themselves in
senselessness and frost." Similarly, Aldous Huxley described chastity
as "the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions."
The opposite of chastity, lust is not a vice of malicious
intent but of powerlessness in the face of the hollow sensualities of life.
Even Dante, in his epic poem The Divine Comedy, represented lust
as one of the most delicate of sins, only worthy of being punished in the
second circle of hell, where strong blasts of wind perpetually whip around
love-starved souls.
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5. There is a
language that bridges spiritual and physical reality, but only the diligent
know it.
Similar to temperance, diligence lives in the mean of two
extremes: burnout and idleness. It is a balance between putting too much
effort into an endeavor and not putting in any effort. Both extremes are
equally harmful to a person. Moreover, diligence is internal as much as
external. Internal diligence involves the heart, mind, and soul. External
diligence is seen in our actions and work.
Diligence is not a virtue we can fully evaluate just by
looking at external outcomes. We can easily notice physical laziness in
others, but it is harder to perceive apathy and carelessness in someone’s
affections and thoughts. Modern systems favor and praise vices such as workaholism
or perfectionism and we confuse them with diligence. A hard-core work ethic
may help us drown our worries with money and things, but it will never
surpass the riches of a diligent mind, heart, and soul.
In The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan narrates the
trials of Christian in his journey to the Celestial City. Taken literally,
the story is the journey of a man toward a perfect city and the obstacles
he encounters along the way. Allegorically, Pilgrim’s Progress is
the embodied representation of a Christian life well lived: Resist
temptation, walk through the narrow gate, overcome obstacles, and enter
into eternity with God. The names of the book’s characters represent the
exact things they symbolize: Mr.Talkative, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Hopeful,
Christian, etc. Yet, the simplicity of these metaphors is deceiving.
Bunyan makes a daring claim by placing the Christian message
in the form of allegory, namely that the truth of life has both a material
nature and a poetic nature. In other words, life is similar to an allegory.
Living “the good life" involves both our external participation in the
world, and our internal sensibility and understanding of it. Likewise, The
Pilgrim’s Progress depends on both the tangible and the intangible—a
little imbalance on either side and the allegory veers off track.
Seeing The Pilgrim’s Progress for more than just a
straightforward story requires diligence from the reader. Understanding it
as an allegory for life requires internal and external work. Readers must
work to grasp the story’s true meaning, just as people must work to grasp
the true meaning of life. Understanding the depths of Bunyan’s allegory
depends on our internal discernment and pursuit of Godly desire.
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6. Literature is
like a good friend: It demands things from you.
The excellence of a good work of literature hides behind
both content and form. Content refers to what is said, for instance, in The
Great Gatsby about Gatsby’s mad life, whereas form refers to how it is
said through the poetry of Fitzgerald's deliciously crafted
sentences.
Just as with true virtue, the aesthetic experience of a
literary work is only accessible to those who delight in it for its own
sake. Under this logic, the impact of a work of literature in our lives is
tied to our willingness to make sacrifices and engage with its content and
form.
Technology has facilitated our addiction to short, abrupt,
and fragmented pieces of information by giving us tools that prioritize
content and neglect form. Websites like CliffsNotes tell us concisely the
ideas, characters, and themes of a book. But the benefits of knowing about
books are vastly different than experiencing said knowledge through
narrative and form. Though engaging with content can expand our discussions
about books, making fast-food-style information our sole source of meaning
combines two very dangerous things: arrogance and laziness. Arrogance
because we are overly confident about the information we consume, and
laziness because we are satisfied with superficial knowledge. How
something is communicated is just as important as what is being
communicated.
Like a good friend, a good book changes the way we live. But
just as with friends, reading literature well must be based on mutual
responsibility. We can trust great literature will offer an insightful
representation of life's moral dimensions and inspire a love of virtue in
us. But to acquire the wisdom in these books, they demand our appropriate
time, affection, and patience to both their content and form. They demand
virtue in return.
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Endnotes
These insights are
just an introduction. If you're ready to dive deeper, pick up a copy of On
Reading Well here. And since we get a commission on
every sale, your purchase will help keep this newsletter free.
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