Monthly Update

Books I’ve bought or otherwise received as a gift in December:
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
Claudius the God by Robert Graves
Angler
The Return of Depression Economics by Paul Krugman
The Best in American Sportswriting 2008
A Little History of the World, E.H. Gombrich
Hope on a Tightrope, Dr. Cornel West
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, Nikos Kazantzakis
Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Books that I’ve read completely or at least enough of during the month of December to talk about them to other folk:
I, Claudius
The Archer’s Tale
To Kill a Mockingbird
Claudius the God
The Odyssey
Hope on a Tightrope
Saturnalia

So I started the month by rereading To Kill a Mockingbird with one of my high school classes. I don’t really know how to assign books to high school readers, the fickle little a-literates that they are trying so desperately to remain. So I usually just tell them to read the book some time in the next two months, and then I give them random quizzes to make sure that they are doing at least some of the reading. It’s an incomplete method of which I’m fully aware, but I haven’t found or invented anything better, so for the moment I’m stuck with what I have. But that is a terrible digression that is about teaching far more than it is about reading. And the students have actually done a good job with this book – many were reading ahead of the quizzes because they liked it so much. I was reading ahead of the quizzes myself (I always make new quizzes every year so that I have to be involved in the reading too; otherwise I would probably rest on my laurels and read other things completely unrelated to class).

Long ago I decided that To Kill a Mockingbird was one of my top-five favorite books – being on the list meant that I had to read at least one of the books every year. Other top-fivers from the last decade included: The Lord of the Rings (which counted as one), The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, The Grapes of Wrath, and Little Women. I’m not sure what I would put on a top-five list right now, but I’m pretty sure that To Kill a Mockingbird would remain, especially since I fell in love with it all over again. There are usually one or two emotionally or socially devastating books on the list. If I were making a new list, I’d probably add The Life of Pi, which is at least as emotionally overwhelming as The Grapes of Wrath, just on a more personal level. The Claudius books also have an element of catastrophe and desperation – how goes the emperor goes the empire. And it rarely went well. Cornel West, whom I’ve also been reading a lot of lately, focuses on literature that is catastrophic – literature that so deeply conveys the painfulness of life that the primary reaction is despair. And from despair, Dr. West leads us with unending conviction to either or both resistance and hope. Dr. West’s deeply philosophical readings of literature, music, art, and life tend to follow this line: catastrophe, despair, resistance, and hope. The authors he loves are those who masterfully create catastrophe and despair and conclude by giving readers either the sense of resistance or hope. To Kill a Mockingbird fits this paradigm quite nicely and is, because of it, one of the very best books in American literature. It captures so many of the catastrophic elements that make America the tragic land it is: injustice, hatred, and despair. But it never fully gives in to the tragedies. Instead it tells us that to reach justice and tolerance we need to work harder.

Perhaps because of my recent readings of Dr. Cornel West, I have been wondering without answering the question of how to understand Atticus Finch. He is a highly compassionate man who nonetheless is no dedicated freedom fighter. He takes the case of Tom Robinson because he is asked to by the judge, not because he volunteered or offered his services out of any conviction that an essential injustice was taking place. Of course once he took the case, he did more than necessary and more than another lawyer would have in his place. The only plausible explanation given in the book comes fairly early when he justifies taking the case by telling his daughter Scout essentially that he couldn’t be a parent, or role model, if he shirked his moral duty in this case. The deep irony underlying this comment is that Atticus Finch long ago gave up public practice to focus on wills and contracts and land disputes, while living comfortably in a highly segregated society.

This more nuanced reading makes me suspicious of Atticus Finch in a way that I was not when I read the book in high school. At the same time, it makes Atticus Finch more fully human than I previously thought. I am reminded that Odysseus too had many flaws, and it was those flaws that made him so interesting. The deeply flawed character has come to the fore in the late postmodern period. Odysseus was always this way, which is one of the reasons that his story has survived so successfully for so long. Atticus Finch is another. Two of the other books I’ve read this past month also feature a flawed character in a central role. I, Claudius by Robert Graves and its sequel Claudius the God are the ‘autobiographical’ reminiscences of the Roman Emperor Claudius who ruled in the middle of the first century. Claudius survives the tyrannical rule of his nephew Caligula, his uncle Tiberius, and the machinations of Augustus’s wife Livia primarily because he is partially crippled with a speech impediment. These so-called flaws allow him to be seen as lacking ambition because no one believes he actually has any worthwhile abilities; consequently he is proclaimed Emperor by the Roman military and must then deal with an empire’s worth of machinations rather than just those of his family.

Finally and on a completely unrelated note, I read The Archer’s Tale while on vacation. Having never read anything by Bernard Cornwell, I was unsure what to expect. He’s a good storyteller who researches meticulously to write historical fiction. The book was good, perfect in fact as vacation reading. The story flowed well and the characters, while obviously of the ‘stock’ variety, had enough depth to keep me reading. The book ends rather abruptly, and I suspect that there is either a sequel out that I don’t know about or one in the works just waiting to be published. As for Cornwell, I will keep him in mind for more fun reading.