It’s been said that those to whom reading is important, gets started on books early.
This specific human act of word-making and word-reading, the scanning of small black markers on plain surfaces (just like the movement of a camera), when it catches, becomes a kind disease — a fascination proliferating cancer of the mind.
When you’ve read James Joyce (who is not easy to read nor understand) at 17, you’ll embrace his “stream of consciousness.” It has a germ of truth, which he intertwined with arrogance and humility, regardless of literary censorship.
For 12 years, U.S. Customs refused the entry of the book, “Ulysses.” But finally, on Dec. 6, 1933, the ban was lifted via a decision of the United States District Court through the Honorable John M. Woolsey’s last paragraph:
“But my considered opinion, after long reflection, is that whilst in many places, effect of ‘Ulysses’ on the readers undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be aphrodisiac. ‘Ulysses’ may, therefore, be admitted in the United States.”
The controversial book was about persons of the lower middle close living in Dublin in 1904. It describes what they did on a certain early day in June,as they went about the city with their usual pre-occupation — what they thought through its ever-shifting kaleidoscope impressions, observation and behaviors affecting their lives.
Joyce’s sincerity and honest efforts were so misunderstood and misrepresented as too poignant and pre-occupied with sex in the thoughts of his characters.
In our younger years, good taste reached its peak when we encountered Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (written in old-fashioned English) — a book about events that happened a long time ago.
“Alice in Wonderland” is still an overwhelming favorite, not because it’s so funny but because it is so strange, wonderful. It is a gorgeous puzzle, seen from a child’s heart , which delights as much in its ambiguity as it does in its clarity.
“Little Women” was not written for little women or little men or little anybodies — it is the expression of a passionate memory.
Critics say these books were not products of knowledge or wisdom, but a kind of dream — like reminiscing childhood memories.
They are skillfully constructed, highly educational, and carefully suited to age. They are morally sanitary and psychologically impeccable for children, which includes “David Copperfield,” “Treasure Island,” Mother Goose Rhymes and “Robinson Crusoe.”
And of the Greek Classic? Plato, Homer and all the simple, beautiful Greek myths that are read with pleasure by each generation.
The great books list would be incomplete without the Stendhal, Homer, Plato, plays of Shakespeare, “Moby Dick,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” Prouse and Skindahl, Homer’s Plato mouthpiece; Aristotle and his first-rate mind: the dreamed up sentences of Bacon, Horace and Coleridge and that grizzled Spanish veteran, who in 1605 came out with a tale called, “Don Quixote de la Mancha.” The “pleasure” of memory in a certain school of thought.
The Brothers Karamazov, which I read ten times and each time gave up in rage directed at Dostoevsky and myself because I’m almost sure it required the reader to be of a certain age. Until now, in old age, I am too young for it. It’s dull and farfetched.
But all these books have suffered no diminution of popularity, being unmoved by the winds of literary and are not likely to suffer any.
Some books are so subtle and multi-leveled that we’ve read them five times and yet still have not finished them.
Certain clean and precise ideas that are as haunting as Heathcliff: the soliloquies of Ahab, Descartes’ systems of analytical geometry.
My favorite, W. Somerset Maugham, is said to have no immortal qualities and sets no bells ringing in one’s mind. But he is so admirably composed in his exact expressions of a particular attitude towards life (“Of Human Bondage,” “Princess September”) that his works leave a rare and special pleasure to readers.
Interesting commentaries that accompanied these personalities are the lunacies of S.J. Perelman, the lucidities of Bertrand Russel, the elegant frippery of Alexander Woollcott, the profound seriousness of Thomas Mann and the jeweled suavity of Santayer’s sinuous thoughts.
In the end, the best book survives — but the best of the best does not necessarily survive longest.
We cling to what we admire but more fiercely, we cling limpet-like to books we love, perhaps above all else — The Holy Bible,