Why I Read

Why I Read

‘these fragments I store against my ruins’  TS eliot, the WasteLand

‘Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them--if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.’ JD Salinger, Catcher in the Rye.

Words can’t express what literature mean to me. For me these writers, philosophers, and dreamers aren’t dead, they are alive in my heart, living and breathing, and their words blaze fire. It doesn’t matter to anyone else, but it matters to me. Some people will read a book, and feel excited by it, others will laugh or cry, some will want to escape the mundanity of existence, or seek knowledge. For me books are all of these things but more. I may sound completely eccentric but I believe literature is Sacred. There are some novels, poems and quotes, that I think about everyday, that I have sworn allegiance to, that have furnished my soul, and have taught me how to live. There is some literature that has changed my life, transformed me, that is the closest thing I know to having a faith. It is like a teacher-student relationship, and the fundamental lesson learned is how to be a better person, and reach out earnestly for that dream called happiness. 

When I went to university we sat in small dusty offices, and dissected the works of Coleridge, Keats, and Blake. We listened in lectures about the society Dickens wished to portray through his novels, the first world war’s influence on T.S Eliot, how Christianity vexed Milton, and how Robinson Crusoe is a myth of capitalism. In my Masters degree, it went much further we looked at, editions, manuscripts and theory. What constitutes an authentic work of art, which version is the best, does the author have any relevance to the article he produced. To me as much as I engaged with such questions, its was all pretty much humbug, because I was, and am, only interested in how these artists made me feel. I didn’t read Keats to learn about Romanticism I read him because his odes were beautiful and made me feel alive. I didn’t care if Camus’ philosophy was weak and unthought out compared to Sartre’s, I cared about his motive. I didn’t want to examine the minute workings of Milton mind, I wanted to be enriched by the majesty of his and feel kinship to the devil. In truth, I think the professors think the same: That the humanities in general, are really just a great and glorious game, that will actually play, not to contribute something to society, but because deep down we love it and it helps us live. This alone justifies it.

When I wrote my dissertation on Hermann Hesse, I discussed the use of symbol and image in his novels, his exile from German Society, and  his influence on Modernism. If I do a PHD, I will analyze the lyrics of 2pac, his relevance to modern culture, his existential authenticity, and relevance to the black Diaspora. These are really just elaborate cover stories. In reality, I just want to study them, because of how they make me feel. Hesse and 2pac are the two artists who have influenced me more than any other. At it is not an exaggeration to say, that in childhood, they saved my life. Thats how much they meant and still mean. 

So when it comes to why I read, the answer lies in what I writer can instill in me, wisdom and serenity, hope and happiness. I love how if I am feeling sad, I can read Hesse or listen to 2pac. I love how if I am feeling angry at the world, I can pick up the Brothers Karamazov or Pessimistic read Schopenhauer. I love how if I feel inspired, I can recite ode to a skylark or psalm to life. I love how if I feel passionate I can visit Wuthering heights, or Shakespeare’s tragedies. I love how if I need guidance, I can read Christopher Hitchens, or Dalai Lama in equal measure. 

I suppose to a certain extent this love is excessive to the normal person. It is true, it springs from my own personal problems, and my inadequate attempts in dealing with everyday life. But how beautiful, and heartening it is to know that there is commonwealth of shared experience. That although it might be glossed over in today’s world there are people suffering out there. Just to know someone else had gone through the struggle means a lot, and if I listen I will learn, and if my heart is open I will love. So what if Art is only for the sick suffering difficult men, and is no use to anyone but us maladpatives! Its enough to know its there, and it helps. I have more faith in these men than I do in any religion. 

So while others may read for pleasure, I read out of necessity. But literature, should not be used to escape life, but to awaken us to it. In reading, I have learned to live. That is why literature should not just bask in the problems of the world, but attempt to transform them through the medium of language. In modernism especially, their is a tendency to revel is despair, but it is not enough to just reflect the world’s ugliness, the world needs to be redeemed. I read Beckett, Sarah Kane, and Nietzsche at university, and was just disgusted by what critics claimed to be profound thoughts, genuine works of art, and complex innovate genre defying narratives. To me such works are appaling, because they posit a world that has no future, and no hope. Literature and art should be about helping people and restoring their optimism. As Hesse states: 

‘And these men, for whom life has no repose, live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment's happiness is flung so high and dazzlingly over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment. Thus, like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as their own dream of happiness.’

This is why I will always be a Romantic at heart, because even if I am intellectually persuaded by this literary despair, I could never consent to live by it. To me the fundamental point of life, and the measure of a man, is his ability to give back to others. This is what the commonwealth of artists, writers and philosophers is all about. It’s not just to alleviate my own depression that these writers exist, but to hold a little stash of noble sentiment and goodness, that will outlive all the misfortunes of history. How nice to know that these artists have been safeguarded for the future, and that through all the whims of time and place, their ideas and sentiment will remain chiseled in stone like the law of Moses. This is why I read, and why it matters.