Literature is for everyone!

Literature terrifies people. Just say the word aloud, “Literature.” Your nose turns up, your lip curls, and you feel blushingly pretentious. You grasp at faint memories of Grendyl, who probably ate someone, and Macbeth, who definitely killed someone, and Heathcliff, who either raved over his broken heart on the moors or chased Odie around on the cartoon pages. You renounced all contact with Literature as soon as you escaped high-school English. You consider Literature to be the exclusive property of smart women who keep cats and smart men who wear tweed. If you ever stopped to think about it, you wondered why some books are Literature and others are Just Books. But whatever you thought, you were convinced beyond questioning that Literature was far above your touch, and once you were no longer being graded on the subject, you were content to leave it so.

But why?

Imagine for a star-struck moment that you had written a work of literature. Something exceptional, something into which you poured everything you knew of human life, something you slaved over until you achieved the sweaty, striving miracle of good writing. Would you be content to see it closeted in a university English department? Would you be willing to withhold it from all your friends and neighbors who do not hold a graduate degree? Wouldn’t you care deeply about their reactions to your story? Wouldn’t you feel that the entire purpose had been defeated if only the cultured few were allowed to respond to you?

I have a Master’s degree in English literature, but the most important thing I learned from all that education was that literature is a quintessentially human artifact, a permanent record of what we have learned about our inclinations and susceptibilities. No matter that an extraordinary intellect is required for its creation; without responsive readers from all walks of life, literature is buried treasure, no more or less valuable than the earth that covers it. Without readers, literature is a failed communication, a letter that was never sent, a telephone call that was never answered.

Much can be gathered from a detailed study of literary theory, and I mean no disrespect to it, but most of us mortals will never learn enough about literary theory to make any real use of it. Yet ignorance of the “right” way to read literature keeps thousands of people from reading it. Ask yourself, “Why don’t I read literary books? Why don’t I read poetry and plays?” Push past the easy answers (“I don’t have time.” “No one is grading me anymore.” “My dog ate it.”), and reflect on what you might read if you believed yourself to be the critical equal of an Oxford don or a Harvard theorist. Wouldn’t you read with more voracity if you believed that Literature was written by a red-blooded human being reflecting on the experience of actual life? Wouldn’t you feel more interest in poetry if you knew you had something “informed” to say about it?

You do!

Big words can be looked up in the dictionary. New ideas can be pondered and digested. The only thing stopping you from reading Shakespeare at midnight is the dead battery in your flashlight. Shakespeare belongs to you. If you are reading this, you can speak English, and if you can speak English, Shakespeare is a part of your heritage. Shakespeare is nothing; he is simply a person writing about other people, waiting for someone like you to hear his voice.

If you need proof that you can talk sensibly about literature, let me offer you John Keats. Keats was the short, scrappy son of a London stableman. He had family trouble and girlfriend trouble, and he died too young. Yet he wrote some of the greatest poetry in the English language, so he will serve to bridge the divide between ordinary life and extraordinary genius. He wrote about life and death, love and religion, nature and art; all of these things are part of your life, just as they were part of his. Keats had this to say about understanding art:

“‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Don’t let that “ye” frighten you. That’s just an older way of saying “you.” This is the last line of a famous poem called “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” The Grecian urn is a pretty piece of pottery with pictures painted on the sides. Keats describes the pictures in the poem and reflects on the connection between life and art. At the end of the poem, he imagines that the urn speaks to him, telling him that what is beautiful is true, and what is true is beautiful. Keats then tells us that this is all we know and all we need to know.

Do you agree with him? Are there things in your life that are true but not beautiful? Does beauty lie? What is true beauty?

You have answers to all of those questions. They are central to your perception of reality and your experience of your human life.

I rest my case.