Does anyone want to be "well-read?"

"Death disports with writers more cruelly than with the rest of humankind," Cynthia Ozick wrote in a recent issue of The New Republic.

"The grave can hardly make more mute those who were voiceless when alive--dust to dust, muteness to muteness. But the silence that dogs the established writer's noisy obituary, with its boisterous shock and busy regret, is more profound than any other.

"Oblivion comes more cuttingly to the writer whose presence has been felt, argued over, championed, disparaged--the writer who is seen to be what Lionel Trilling calls a Figure. Lionel Trilling? "Consider: who at this hour (apart from some professorial specialist currying his "field") is reading Mary McCarthy, James T. Farrell, John Berryman, Allan Bloom, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, Edmund Wilson, Anne Sexton, Alice Adams, Robert Lowell, Grace Paley, Owen Barfield, Stanley Elkin, Robert Penn Warren, Norman Mailer, Leslie Fiedler, R.P. Blackmur, Paul Goodman, Susan Sontag, Lillian Hellman, John Crowe Ransom, Stephen Spender, Daniel Fuchs, Hugh Kenner, Seymour Krim, J.F. Powers, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Rahv, Jack Richardson, John Auerbach, Harvey Swados--or Trilling himself?"

I read through this list with dismay. I have read all but two of those writers, love some, and met five. Yet I know with a sinking feeling that Ozick asks the correct question. Who at this hour is reading them? Paul Goodman, whose books so deeply influenced and formed me? Edmund Wilson, a role model? James Farrell, whose naturalistic Studs Lonigan evoked a decade of Chicago life? Mailer, who boasted he had beaten all of his contemporaries?

How many of them have you read? Some, I suspect, but they belong to your past. Most of you will have read Ginsberg's "Howl," but how much more of his poetry? I have his collected poems on my shelf, but don't care to take them down. Whitman's poems, on the other hand, are at the side of my chair and I read one every morning. I have every one of Edmund Wilson's books, in the sublimely uniform Farrar Strauss & Giroux editions. Who cites him? Susan Sontag? Remembered for defining Camp.

The occasion for Ozick's sad litany was her review of the letters of Saul Bellow, the one figure among all those contemporaries she believes is still read and will endure. For the same magazine many years ago, James Atlas wrote an argument that the search for the Great American Novel can end, because Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March is that book.

Yes, Saul Bellow is still read, and I am still reading him, and I confess I have no plans to return to any of the other authors on her list in whatever time I have remaining. I have, however, recently started reading The Ambassadors by Henry James for the third time. Soon I plan my third journey through Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, another author I believe will endure.

I have always read for pleasure. I once thought I might be a professor of English, and made it through one year of PhD study at the University of Chicago before recognizing that film criticism had captured me full time. I was not congenitally a good student, but I was influenced by my teachers as role models. In graduate school at Illinois I had one of the great Shakespeare scholars, G. Blakemore Evans, general editor of the Riverside Shakespeare. I'd read Julius Caesar and Macbeth in high school, and then not another word until I entered his classroom. It was clear Evans knew Shakespeare and loved him. Visiting his office, so filled with musty volumes, I was captured by the romance of his occupation, started reading Shakespeare with a passion and never stopped--always using my worn-out Riverside edition, although I have three or four others.

I've written before about the mentor of my undergraduate years, Daniel Curley, he of the corduroy pants, Sears boots and rucksack. In English 101 he assigned us Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, James, Forster, Cather, Wharton, Joyce, Hemingway. I still read all of them. In 1960, he told us, 'What will last of Hemingway's work are the short stories and The Sun Also Rises.' Half a century later, I would say he was correct.

My first exposure to Henry James was the short story "The Real Thing." I thought no one had ever written sentences so obdurate and baffling. They had the fluency of a crossword puzzle. By the time I arrived at The Ambassadors, I was beginning to catch on. His sentences are a labyrinth of diffident but precise observation. In their construction is the creation of character; in their reluctance to boldly state something, we feel the reality of what goes unsaid.

Having read Great Expectations under some duress in high school, I went through seven years of college without ever encountering Dickens again. It was in about 1980 that I signed up for the Folio edition of Dickens, picked up Nicholas Nickleby, and was hooked. No one is more compulsively readable. But I had to come to that myself. Oddly, I started sooner on Trollope. "He is such a consolation," Curley told me one day in a London pub. "During the London Blitz, Trollope enjoyed an enormous popularity." Where should I start? I asked. "Oh, with the Barsetshire novels, I should say."

That's how I've done my reading: Haphazardly, by inclination. I consider myself well read, but there has been no plan. Reading Cynthia Ozick's article brought me up short: I realized I knew almost every writer she was referring to, and I realized they were no longer read. In deciding to begin this piece with the list of all the names in its second paragraph, I realized I would probably alienate many readers. I decided that was all right. This would only be of interest to those who knew a name or two.

All right, then. Bellow has lasted and may continue to last. Setting aside living writers, who is still read? I speak of considerable writers, not potboilers. Dickens, George Eliot, Austen and Trollope, and then some people get to Mrs. Gaskell. Dostoyevsky, Chekhov and Tolstoy. Kafka. Balzac, Flaubert, Stendhal and Hugo. Poe. Mark Twain. James and Wharton. The big four Americans of the first half-century, Cather, Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald. The smaller Americans, Chandler, Steinbeck, Hammett. John O'Hara? Not so much. Sinclair Lewis? Not at all. Nabokov. From Britain, Conrad, Evelyn Waugh, Greene, Forster. Anthony Powell, Iris Murdoch, Virginia Woolf, Orwell, Wodehouse. From France, Georges Simenon endures and Camus hangs on. From South America, Borges and Marquez.

I do not mean to make a list. Many names and entire nations are missing. You will find those writers you enjoy, and value them. I have been in a little discussion recently about how readable Beckett's plays are. Every month or so someone pops up who has discovered Willa Cather and fallen under her vision. There are certain books that are milestones in my reading. I've been going through the 12 volumes of Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time again. Later this year I will again pick up Paul Scott's The Raj Trilogy. On my shelf The Cairo Trilogy by Mahfouz is waiting.

There is no pattern. My only goal is to enjoy reading. I learn that he average American teenager spends 17 minutes a weekend in voluntary reading. Surely that statistic is wrong. Do they mean reading of "serious" novels? I would certainly count science fiction, graphic novels, vampires, Harry Potter, newspapers, magazines, blogs--anything. Just to read for yourself for pleasure is the point. Dickens will come later, Henry James perhaps never.

At the end of the day, some authors will endure and most, including some very good ones, will not. Why do I think reading is important? It is such an effective medium between mind and mind. We think largely in words. A medium made only of words doesn't impose the barrier of any other medium. It is naked and unprotected communication. That's how you get pregnant. May you always be so.

What gets me about Vance is that, according to Vance, he only ever read “sci-fi” very early on in his career. We’re talking “weird tales” era, stuff like Clark Ashton Smith and CL Moore from the 30’s. If I recall, he didn’t really read anybody else of from own generation, at least speculative fiction/sci-fi wise. He was really good buddies with Poul Anderson and Frank Herbert, and still is with Robert Silverberg. But he claims tha he has never read any of their work.

Freegards

That might be how he’s referred to but that doesn’t make it. When was the last time a Shakespeare book sold 7 million copies? With 49 books published and 350 million sold that’s what Stephen King averages. Music students aren’t voluntarily listening, and they might not be doing Beethoven today, it could be a Mozart day, but on the top 40 radio stations it’s ALWAYS Gaga day. All you’ve got to do is look at how symphony attendance is plummeting in this country to know that even low rent rock bands are probably more popular than any given classical guy.

Shakespeare has sold much more than seven million copies. Not to mention books ABOUT Shakespeare. In the long run he outsells everyone. And has much more of an impact on people of all stripes.

Music students are voluntarily music students so they went in with the intent to study Beethoven and such. There are free concerts in the park all over the country that draw large crowds. You think the way you do because classical is completely ignored by the mainstream media so you assume it isn’t popular. It’s far and away the most popular form of music in the world. For instance, Opera is hugely popular. Try getting a ticket to the Met. Beethoven and Tchaikovsky are played in countries that don’t have a clue about some American pop tart. But classical musicians will tell you that even though they play to sell-out halls, talk shows of all stripes routinely tell them “we don’t do Classical” It’s an illusion.

Shakespeare had a head start, so gross sales in an unfare comparison. But new publication sales is a fair comparison. The next book King publishes will sell around 7 million copies, the next Shakespeare book published will not. Thus we know, as a patently obvious FACT that King is more popular, period.

Music students aren’t necessarily voluntary. I knew a lot of kids growing up taking various classes because mommy and daddy said so, and that’s a situation that hasn’t changed any. You know why the classical concerts in the park are free? Because people won’t pay to see them. Even dive bar bands can get people to fork over a couple bucks to see them. It’s no illusion, selling out a hall isn’t that hard, selling out tour after tour after tour is. The Moody Blues are going to get a bigger audience next month in Tucson than Tchaikovsky, and nobody listens to the Moody Blues anymore.

It’s not just a Lit term it’s for all the Arts. Serious Music and Visual Art people would use it to. It’s a general aesthetic designation. Shakespeare doesn’t produce anything anymore so obviously new material will outsell a reprint of something that many people already own. But I bet that Hamlet sells more copies yearly than a 1970s King novel like ‘Salem’s Lot’. And there are a lot more books ABOUT Hamlet than there ever will be about any King work new or old.

I’m talking about older music students. Teens and up. It’s still a lot. Star Classical instrumentalists like Evgeny Kissin and Lang Lang DO sell out tour after tour. And they are more popular worldwide than ANY pop band.

Literati don’t just read, like all labels it’s best not to take it literally and just understand the grouping. The same guys that read a lot of Joyce also tend to go to the symphony and art openings. And call things “high art” and talk about “aesthetic designation”.

Hamlet gets taught in high school. Being mandatory reading for a significant chunk of the population helps sales. But I bet in 2004, when the mini-series came out, Salems Lot did really well.

I’m talking about the general populace, the people that make things popular. There are more top 40 listeners than classical listeners, just gotta look at the radio dial to see that. Thus top 40 acts have more listeners than classical, which is why there’s more competition to reach their ears. I never said it wasn’t a lot of people, actually I said DIRECTLY that thanks to the large number of people on the planet you can be unpopular and still have MANY listeners, but you won’t as big an audience as somebody popular. Michael Jackson died right before he was going to do a 50 date stand in London, and he was a has been, has Lang Lang ever done a 50 date stand? Not more popular than any pop band.

I don’t understand why you’re so worked about about this. It’s frankly beneath you. You KNOW full well these things aren’t that popular, you’ve POSTED articles discussing the situation. Stop taking it personally, and stop making this foolish stand against simple obvious facts that you know are true. None of the classics are more poplar than the current tops, and it’s been that way for ages, and it’s going to stay that way for the foreseeable future, and saying otherwise is quite simply BSing. You’re smarter than that, I’m done with this stupid discussion. If you want to get back to something where you get to show your intellect great, but if you insist on continuing this display that makes you look stupid do it alone.

Radio stations aren’t a fair comparison as there aren’t any Classical stations in most places. I think there are only about a half dozen left in North America. Classical radio declined as radio itself has become relegated primarily to drive time when people only listen for a brief period while they’re in the car (enough for a hit or two but not a symphony). When the whole family gathered around the radio in the living room there were a lot of Classical on the radio.

I’m not worked up just making what seems like fairly straightforward points. That being that worldwide Beethoven is more popular than anything in the Top 40 right now.

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