About 18 months ago, I posted the following on another blog I kept for a while (www.chaisociety.wordpress.com). I was prompted to re-post here, as I am re-reading War and Peace and I was challenged for a second time about my reading habits.
Flicking through a magazine in a doctor’s waiting room today set off a whole train of thoughts; a train with many carriages and compartments.
The article I leafed through was about Mark Twain. I am ashamed to say I have never read any of his works, even though I know he is revered as a writer and intellectual on both sides of the pond. My bookshelves don’t groan with many 19th century writers from North America. Emily Dickinson sits rather lonely between Keats, Manley Hopkins, Coleridge and Wordsworth.
This worries me. I would consider myself literate. I have an honours degree in English literature from a prestigious university. If I haven’t read Mark Twain, who of the next generation is reading him?
I am curious to know, is there anyone out there, under 35 (and not in a university) who is reading Tolstoy, Hugo, Dumas, de Maupassant, Eliot, Gaskell, Dickens, Dostoyevsky? What are we doing in our education systems if we are not inspiring young adults to read the greatest thinkers and observers of life? How can we make the world views of these writers accessible to today’s generation, so that the questions of life can be interpreted and in some case answered by these great minds?
For years I have revelled and rolled around in translations of Russian literature, like a new foal on warm grass. I just can’t get enough of them. But if my circle of young friends is indicative, they haven’t read any serious literature either in their native tongue or in translation.
Please will someone prove me wrong on this? I hope I am not the last generation to choose several hours with my nose in a book over several hours on Facebook?
7 comments:
My niece is in college, reading all sorts of literature! So have no fear, there is a new generation reading.
Now, do you know anyone in the next generation studying Ladino? That may unfortunately has no next generation.
I'm reading Kate Chopin now. Got a copy at a library sale.
I have only read "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" and that was ages ago, but they were fantastic!
They young ones have read Mark Twain! :-)
Have you ever looked at the curriculum of an American school? They start reading through the world's literature early, and this at public schools. Same in Austria, Italy and Germany, from what I have seen.
I think today's young people are at least as literate as the generation before them, judging from my kids and their friends and classmates. They are more sophisticated in their tastes than I was at their age.
Very nice photos
Interesting comment regarding American educational systems. I'm American, living in NZ with a kiwi a guy. I love books, he hasn't picked one up in YEARS (he'll be surprised on his birthday!).
We Americans are "forced" to read a lot of various things - I hated Dickens' "Great Expectations" in high school, but loved "Oliver Twist" as a non-assignment in college. While I'm not sure about other Kiwi reading habits, I can say I've met several college grads from around the world that just DON'T read for pleasure! It astounds me that they would rather watch tellie all day! But I've also met less "scholarly" people that understand the meaning of books better than I ever will.
By the way, "The Count of Monte Cristo" is one of my favorites and "The Grapes of Wrath" is heartbreaking.
i know at least three young people between 17 and 22 who read all of the above as well as a lot mre as a matter of course. They read books in the rain at a bus stop and never move without one in their satchel. They live just across the big ditch from you and are three of my grandchildren. Engendering a love of literature is something that is done at home and by example. It is so rarely achieved in schools.
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