Readings

by Rick Dietrich

What Have I Been Reading Lately? — Poetry and Fiction

Recently, the Theology and Literature book group I belong to decided it would choose books two or three months ahead. We had been working from month to month. In November, then, we chose books for our December, January, and February meetings. We chose Nick Hornby's How to Be Good for December. For January, we read A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. And, for February, we chose The Wedding Dress by Virginia Ellis. But, as Robert Burns reminds us

The best-laid plans o’ mice an' men Gang aft a-gley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain For promised joy.

The Wedding Dress is not yet out in paperback — one of our requirements. (We're a cheap crowd — well read, but cheap.) So, at our January meeting we went back to the drawing board. We discussed a number of possibilities, including especially books by dead white guys, even if they weren't guys, because we settled on George Eliot's Romola, IF it wasn't too long. Well,

The best-laid plans o' mice an' men Gang aft, etc.

Romola is almost 600 pages, I discovered after our meeting. Maybe, we could read it over the summer. It does look well worth the effort, set in Italy at the time of Savonarola, so presumably full of the kind of stuff we like to talk about, religion and heresy. But for now . . . what?

We had also talked about reading something by Anthony Trollope, if Romola were too long, and I had suggested off the top of my head The Last Chronicle of Barset, probably because I already owned it. So, we had a back-up plan. But, Burns stuck his head in once again. The Last Chronicle is over 800 pages. So, we settled, or I settled, since we had scattered and I was making the decisions at this point, on another Trollope novel, The Warden, which is actually the first in the Barsetshire series, a mere 270 pages, and cheap, $7.95 in the Oxford paperback. We'll see who comes to talk about it.

Discussions of books are almost always helpful to me, even if they are only enjoyable. For example, I enjoyed our discussion of Owen Meany, but I'm still not sure what I think about the book. But I am still mulling over the world John Irving creates for the purposes of the novel — a world both like ours and unlike it. I take it that is the nature of fiction and a large part of its purpose: to create a world and to reflect on the real world, if there is such a thing.

I'm still trying to figure out, I find, why we read fiction at all. Do we read to learn more about our world? Or, do we read it to escape our world for another? The logicians among you will point out that "or" may not be the proper conjunction there. The two purposes are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

You're right. They're not. But to put the cards of one reader on the table (if only three up, two down): (1) I am not by nature an escapist. I don't read science fiction; I don't read spy thrillers; I don't read romance novels; I continue to think Philip Roth's American Pastoral is the best novel of the last twenty years. Along the same line, I prefer "little" movies to big, movies closer to my life than farther away. I much prefer Tender Mercies or About a Boy, since we're talking about Nick Hornby — to Harry Potter or James Bond, for instance.

(2) I do like to read dead guys (male and female). I don't think we spend enough time doing so. Not long ago I found myself thinking about Hilton Kramer's complaint that never in the history of humankind have we spent so much time reading our contemporaries and so little time reading our predecessors. I attended a Sunday School class recently that has spent years reading and discussing contemporary biblical criticism without looking, so far as I can tell, into the Bible. It's important for us to know what is going on now as well as what has gone on. But Kramer is right: we are losing our balance.

Recently, too, I began work on the critical section of my dissertation, which, as it is in Creative Writing, consists of a "book" of poems and a reflection on the nature of poetry. So far — about 7000 words into the reflection — I have written, I find, about Sappho, Catullus, Ben Jonson, the old English ballad "Lord Randel," and Walter Savage Landor — all dead. The next section, which I've just finished outlining, will invoke Juvenal and Sam Johnson, Horace and Alexander Pope — also dead. And before long, I'll be writing about Psalms, Proverbs, and the prophets.

(3) I voted for more Democrats than Republicans in the recent elections, which may uncover three more cards, if from a different hand, or may pose a multiple choice: (a) I am not irredeemably conservative; (b) my feet aren't as planted in reality as I think; (c) I'm part of the liberal media, so make of all of this what you will.

It is, at any rate, more than you wanted to hear about me, less than you deserved on what I've been reading lately. But to all my readers: (1) call this an attempt at truth in advertising; (2) may the rest of your year be joyful and prosperous; (3) keep reading.

Next time: What have I been reading lately? — Nonfiction.