A young friend asked me the other day for recommendations of classic books to get started on. For most people, the very word ‘classic’ unfortunately, does not mean something that has been valued and read for a long time, but something that’s boring, stodgy and has difficult language. If it’s been read and reread by many people, many times, there surely has to be a reason. The other day, I read a modern-day romantic novel. It was rather nice and seemed an original take until it started giving me a sense of déjà vu. It was a modern take on an old Dickens novel — one of my favourites, in fact.
Anyone who has read some Shakespeare would have experienced this feeling time and again as they watch movies or read a gripping ‘new’ novel. (Indeed, even our daily conversations use about 1,700 words that Shakespeare introduced!) We all build on what has gone before. Themes and human emotions are identifiable and have remained more or less the same, with few tweaks, down the centuries. Falling in love, coming of age, taking revenge, the fight between good and evil, laughter, fear, guilt, the philosophies that guide us, and so on, have been a part of human lives forever!
Often, it’s the sight of a fat volume with what seems to us to be difficult sentences that puts us off. So today, let’s discuss a few tiny ‘big’ novels that are classics worth a read. And… we’ll stick with books that are entirely readable in terms of language!
Since I mentioned Dickens, let’s begin with him. ‘A Christmas Carol’ is a ghost story and was originally published just before Christmas in 1843. By Christmas Day, it was a bestseller and nearly 200 years later, it continues to be read and loved. Scrooge is the original Grinch. And when we call stingy people a Scrooge, we are referring to Dickens’ creative genius — sometimes without even knowing it! Oh, and though Scrooge gets visited by 4 ghosts (one of them is even quite jolly) throughout the book, it’s Scrooge who is spooked and not the reader. And the most famous quote? Just two words: “Bah! Humbug!” expressing Scrooge’s attitude towards Christmas.
‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde is another rather spooky story, though without ghosts. Dorian Gray is paranoid about losing his looks and becoming old, so when he has his portrait painted, his fear that that beautiful face would one day fade away has him make a deal with the devil. No matter what kind of life Dorian leads, it’s the portrait that shows the effects of his lifestyle. Dorian himself remains youthful and good-looking. ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ was criticised heavily at one time for ‘immorality’. Oscar Wilde’s take: “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
Moving on to lighter stuff, let’s talk about ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ by Mark Twain. A little boy who doesn’t want to go to school, doesn’t want to do chores, just wants to have fun. Does that sound like someone you know? If you’re Tom Sawyer, you’ll find ways around chores as often as possible. Such clever ways, in fact, that his friends actually pay Tom to do his tasks! “He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.” Tom’s a natural master of human psychology.
John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’ is one of my favourite books. It’s a tiny, heart-wrenching story about George and his friend, Lennie. Today, we would say that Lennie is ‘on the spectrum’, but in the early 20th century, he was just mentally ‘off’. Life was hard, but George was kind. The two were itinerant workers, and the pair dreamed of a better life one day, which included a place of their own. Lennie’s gentle nature and immense strength are at odds, leading to a hard-not-to-cry moment. The bond that ties George and Lennie is probably best expressed by: “A guy needs somebody to be near him”.
‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by J D Salinger is about a 16-year-old, Holden Caulfield, who gets expelled from boarding school. This event prompts him to go on an adventure (and several misadventures) while he tries to make sense of the world. He often fails to do so and rails at the phoniness that surrounds him. As the most recent of the classics listed here, this is probably the most easily relatable. I’m spoilt for choice where quotes go on this one — there are so many that speak to us in the world we live in. “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
There are so many more — but I did promise I’d talk only about the very shortest here.