Beacon Lights of Literature

As I was growing up, my parents had a home-made bookshelf made of bricks and planks with two shelves full of books.Considering how much my mom and dad encouraged me to read and bought me any book I wanted, that doesn’t seem like a lot of books for themselves. The collection included, among other things, some of my dad’s books from his engineering degree, John Blackburn’s A Scent of New-mown Hay, and three of my parents’ high-school literature books. I said a few months ago that I should write a post about those textbooks, and here it is!

Sadly, I have to start by saying that I gave all three to a used bookstore a few years ago and then, quickly regretting my decision, tried to replace them with copies I could buy online. I found two of the three but couldn’t remember the name of the third. The two I have are from a series called Beacon Lights of Literature. They are the ninth-grade and eleventh-grade books. I believe the book I haven’t recovered was a tenth-grade book. Either my parents’ high school didn’t teach literature in the twelfth grade, or neither of them bothered to keep the textbook.

The introduction to the ninth-grade offering says that each section is arranged so that students will actually enjoy the experience. “Poems, stories, plays, and novels,” that preface says to the student (and possibly teacher), “are not merely examples for dull analysis. They were written either to thrill, to entertain, or to uplift.” I doubt that that explanation changed things for many people, but my dad experienced all three reactions in his reading and talked to me about books as if that’s just what happens, so it happened with me, too.

The ninth-grade volume starts with short stories. The first is Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.” What could cause more horror than a Poe story? Finding out that the last page was missing from my parents’ book! Fortunately, the copy I now have has all the pages of that classic. As a kid, I also enjoyed “The Most Dangerous Game,” by Richard Connell. Section two has a good chunk of the Odyssey, which didn’t interest me when I was young. (It does now.) Section three presents Ivanhoe, the book I reread a few months ago that made me think to mention these old lit books. I read it the first time out of this school anthology, but, thinking that it might have been abridged (to keep it thrilling and uplifting!), I bought a separate copy this past February. Section four includes “Ballads,” and the editors have classed under that rubric some “ancient” ballads, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” which I think I gave up on when I was young, and “The Highwayman,” which I LOVED! “Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!” Section five has some American poetry by Bryant and Longfellow and Whittier and their pals. I don’t remember having any reaction to this part from my early years; I can guess why. Now that I understand more how to enjoy poetry, I should actually read this section. I may even have read all of the poems separately before, but reading them as a small anthology would be nice. Section six has A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and since The Patty Duke Show and Flipper taught me that Shakespeare was boring, I missed out on the fun for another couple of decades. *sigh*

The eleventh-grade book has a lot iof excerpts. It starts with a portion of Sandberg’s biography of Lincoln. I think I said in a post a few years ago that my dad just talked to me like I would read the whole thing “some day,” so I skipped this part at the time. (When I finally read “the whole thing,” I read Sandberg’s one-volume condensation.) Shakespeare pops up again. This time it’s Julius Caesar, which I would have loved if I hadn’t listened to ‘60s sitcoms. It also includes a one-act play called Sam Average, which I remember liking. But I don’t remember why, so I should reread it. Next comes English poetry, which I know I skipped. Maybe it’s for the best. Would I enjoy Wordsworth and Tennyson today if I had read these when I was 10 and didn’t understand them?  Eleventh-graders are apparently ready for some essays, because they get a lot of those next. I definitely don’t remember anything about any of them, so I think I wasn’t ready to be “thrilled” by non-fiction. The last section, disappointing again, has, instead of one good novel, excerpts from five novels. I never bothered. But much more interesting to me was a list on the final pages of “THE FINEST NOVELS IN THE WORLD.” Here’s the list (its in chronological order):

1. Robinson Crusoe
2. Gulliver’s Travels
3. Clarissa
4. Tom Jones (They got away with recommending that one to students!)
5. Eugenie Grandet
6. The Three Musketeers
7. David Copperfield
8. The Scarlet Letter
9. Henry Esmond
10. Madame Bovary
11. Fathers and Children
12. Les Miserables
13. Anna Karenina
14. The Brothers Karamazov
15. Huckleberry Finn

I possibly haven’t looked at that list in forty years. I’m pleased to say that I’ve read all fifteen. I think fourteen of them are good; I don’t understand how Clarissa pleased so many readers so much for so long. The editors admit that nothing from the previous fifty years made the list, but they suggest that Moby-Dick may one day be considered a classic. They also include a list of “interesting novels” that includes some of those more recent books, including some detective fiction: Main Street, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and Of Human Bondage make the cut along with about fifty others.

For some reason, I didn’t grow up thinking that I had to read or understand everything in those engineering books. But I did grow up thinking that I should read the contents of Beacon Lights of Literature. Together with Classics Illustrated (a series of adaptations in comic-book form that I’ve mentioned before in these posts), these books gave me an idea of a canon. Flawed though the idea may be, this literature does tend “to thrill, to entertain, and to uplift” me, and I understand that both writing it and reading it require knowledge, wisdom, creativity, and technical skill, and that applying those accomplishments is satisfying. So I’m OK with idea of a canon, even if no one comes up with a perfect list. (I’ve heard that physicians know the idea of a perfectly healthy human body even though they’ve never seen one.) Having these books on those makeshift shelves certainly gave me an idea that literature was once taught in American public schools, and their influence surely weighs heavily in the disappointment I felt when my school gutted its English curriculum just as I reached high school. We had to learn what was “relevant” then, and Shakespeare & Co. were deemed irrelevant. In the end it’s OK, because I eventually decided to work hard to give myself the education in literature that the school denied me, and then I started a blog, and then I wrote this post, and then you read it!

Oh! Just remembered. I also read A Scent of New-mown Hay. It’s good!

What Can I Say? It’s Good!

After reading Paradise Lost (this was my third time), what can I say? 

I can say that I don't think Milton was right to say that the evil spirits felt cause to stick together. My criticism is not that I think he makes the demons too good or noble. It is a common observation that Milton makes Satan and the fallen angels too sympathetic. I disagree; the demons are despicable. I think that their acknowledgement that their new situation isn’t as pleasant as Heaven and their struggle to convince themselves that they should have no regrets is interesting and powerful and shows that each demon is dedicated to himself and his own comfort better than any presentation of them as mad monsters would. No, my criticism is based on the philosophy that the evil spirits have no purpose to hold to in unity. Evil is not a thing, so there is no principal to bind them. 

I can say that the footnotes in the Oxford edition drove me nuts. It's so hard not to look, but I don't need the editor to tell me that “discovered” can mean “revealed.” I tried for a while to tell myself to quell my discomfort by remembering that maybe some people really need these notes. But then I thought how much better it was for me, in my several decades of reading English from the 14th through the 19th centuries, just to learn these old words and old meanings by context. I sometimes look up words in glossaries and dictionaries, of course. But I usually choose editions that allow me to decide when to do that instead of one that has constant reminders of explanatory footnotes conveniently placed at the bottom of the page. If I read the note and then try to remember the equation “this old word means that thing,” I usually don’t remember because that information is disconnected and, in my mind, arbitrary. Much better just to learn to read these usages in context. I’ve read so many times that Adam or Lancelot or Mr. Pickwick was loath to do something that I have no trouble remembering what the archaic word means. I wouldn’t probably remember if I just tried to memorize a definition from a glossary.

I could say that I wish, when I was teaching literature to home-school students a few years ago, I had had them read book V instead of book IV. I thought I would entice them to read more of the poem if I left them with the cliffhanger of Satan seeing Adam for the first time and then formulating his plan of attack. But I think these kids at the Christian co-op probably would have liked the idyllic scenes of Eden before the Fall better.

Well, I can say those things. But what good does it do for me to say that Paradise Lost is good? If you’ve read it, you know it’s good. If you haven’t read it, you probably already have a notion that it must be good in some way or else it wouldn’t be a famous classic. So I’ll just let Milton show you how good his epic is. Here’s Adam’s morning prayer (book V, lines 153 ff.):

These are thy glorious works, Parent of good,
Almightie, thine this universal Frame,
Thus wondrous fair; thy self how wondrous then!
Unspeakable, who sitst above these Heavens
To us invisible or dimly seen
In these thy lowest works, yet these declare
Thy goodness beyond thought, and Power Divine:
Speak yee who best can tell, ye Sons of light,
Angels, for yee behold him, and with songs
And choral symphonies, Day without Night,
Circle his Throne rejoycing, yee in Heav’n,
On Earth joyn all yee Creatures to extoll
Him first, him last, him midst, and without end.
Fairest of Starrs, last in the train of Night,
If better thou belong not to the dawn,
Sure pledge of day, that crownst the smiling Morn
With thy bright Circlet, praise him in thy Spheare
While day arises, that sweet hour of Prime.
Thou Sun, of this great World both Eye and Soule,
Acknowledge him thy Greater, sound his praise
In thy eternal course, both when thou climb’st,
And when high Noon hast gaind, & when thou fallst.
Moon, that now meetst the orient Sun, now fli’st
With the fixt Starrs, fixt in thir Orb that flies,
And yee five other wandring Fires that move
In mystic Dance not without Song, resound
His praise, who out of Darkness call’d up Light.
Aire, and ye Elements the eldest birth
Of Natures Womb, that in quaternion run
Perpetual Circle, multiform; and mix
And nourish all things, let your ceasless change
Varie to our great Maker still new praise.
Ye Mists and Exhalations that now rise
From Hill or steaming Lake, duskie or grey,
Till the Sun paint your fleecie skirts with Gold,
In honour to the Worlds great Author rise,
Whether to deck with Clouds the uncolourd skie,
Or wet the thirstie Earth with falling showers,
Rising or falling still advance his praise.
His praise ye Winds, that from four Quarters blow,
Breath soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye Pines,
With every Plant, in sign of Worship wave.
Fountains and yee, that warble, as ye flow,
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.
Joyn voices all ye living Souls, ye Birds,
That singing up to Heaven Gate ascend,
Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise;
Yee that in Waters glide, and yee that walk
The Earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep;
Witness if I be silent, Morn or Eeven,
To Hill, or Valley, Fountain, or fresh shade
Made vocal by my Song, and taught his praise.
Hail universal Lord, be bounteous still
To give us onely good; and if the night
Have gathered aught of evil or conceald,
Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark.