In the last post, we looked at a handful of books written in the naturalist style. Now I'd like to trace the realist and naturalist influence back to one of its sources, the Russian author Ivan Turgenev.
A Sportsman's Sketches (1852) by Ivan Turgenev
Nineteenth century Russian books have a reputation for being long, difficult works with far too many characters and impenetrable cultural contexts that might bewilder new readers. But if you're curious about Russian fiction, this collection is a good place to start. The individual stories in A Sportsman's Sketches are intense and entertaining, and taken together they form a satisfyingly unified whole. While this book is very much of its time, the sheer humanity of its characters cuts across cultural and temporal divides. Much of what you need to know about history to appreciate this collection can be found within the text itself.
Turgenev wrote about a feudal system in decline; landowners were once prosperous, but the glory days have long since passed. Many once thriving estates are crumbling and the descendants of wealthy landowning families find it increasingly difficult to manage their properties successfully--often because of their own shortsightedness.
Pastoral Russia
is as much a character in these stories as anyone residing in its woods. Turgenev's vibrant descriptions of the natural world are some
of the most lovely and engaging of their kind in all of literature, and
his style and tone had a pragmatic as well as aesthetic advantage; by
employing the naturalist device of the disinterested narrator, he was
able to get provocative ideas past the censors to speak directly to his
audience about the many injustices of Russia's feudal system.
Each piece is about the people the narrator meets and the stories he hears while hunting in the countryside. In "Raspberry Water", the narrator encounters two elderly men fishing, both former house serfs, who embody the region's fading past. Styopushka, a homeless former serf is humble and directionless, foraging for his daily bread and living on the former estate of a wealthy landowner through the charity of a peasant family who currently lives there. Tuman (Russian for "frog"), is a freed house serf who tells stories about his former master's abundant estate and his sometimes severe manner with the servants. While talking to the two old men, another serf, the middle aged Vlass, arrives home from a long journey visiting his landlord in Moscow. Joining the conversation, he laments the recent death of his son and his inability to get his absentee landlord to allow him to move to a smaller piece of land that he can afford. His landlord reprimands him for not taking the issue to the bailiff first. Vlass' story gives us a glimpse of the plight of peasant farmers who can barely make a living under the feudal system and were subjected to many abuses by landowners and their employees. In "Bailiff" we learn about the kind of blackmail and manipulation often committed by those who manage the landowners' estates, giving us a pretty good idea of why, in the earlier story, Vlass was reluctant to deal directly with his master's employee.
"Two Country Gentlemen" gives us a closer look at the landed gentry. Retired General Hvalinsky is a man of austere habits with a serious countenance who is an inept manager of his affairs. He keeps his inferiors at arm's length and supplicates his betters, but prefers to play cards with his inferiors. He enjoys his status, but is self-conscious about appearing to be too ostentatious. The opposite is true of Mardary Apollonitch, a jovial, friendly man with only a superficial interest in the affairs of his large estate. He is a landowner of the old style to whom appearances are of primary importance while in stark contrast, his servants live in squalid, ruinous huts overlooking his property.
Turgenev also brings in elements of traditional folklore in "Byezhin Prairie", a charming story about a group of boys by a campfire telling each other tales of faeries and ghosts. There is dark humor in these stories as well: "Lgov" is about a fishing trip gone wrong as a party of fisherman capsizes in a borrowed boat led a foolhardy fisherman named Vladimir. "Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District" lampoons the pretensions of the landowning elite through the story of one of their ranks who has realized the meaninglessness of his social standing, and "Tatyana Borisovna and her Nephew" is a wryly comic story of a woman whose nephew is whisked away to St. Petersburg by a rich benefactor. He leaves his aunt's home as an art prodigy and returns as a boorish, lazy, drunken lout. Now that's realism!
The longest piece of this collection is the two part story found in "Chertopkhanov and Nedopyuskin" and the sequel, "The End of Chertopkhanov", It is a tale of misfortune and existential terror in the heart of a landowner whose family and fortunes are on the wane. In these stories can be found, part and parcel, the very stuff of Russian storytelling: destitution, death, torrid romance, a fine horse, obsession, loss, drunkenness and insanity.
I found a wonderful contextual clue while researching this book: A Sportsman's Sketches was published in the same year as Harriet Beecher Stowe's landmark novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Both of these works highlighted the injustices of slavery. The popularity of Turgenev's collection helped to raise awareness of the plight of Russia's peasantry, leading to an abolition of serfdom in 1860. The realism of Stowe's novel brought the horror of the enslavement of blacks into the public consciousness of Americans, and the change in public opinion ultimately led to the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Both authors used clear language to communicate stark truths that influenced the social and economic trajectories of their respective countries. The combination of plain words, good intentions and a willing audience can actually affect real change.
This is, of course, a best case scenario. Individual results may vary.
Download A Sportsman's Sketches, Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg
Download A Sportsman's Sketches, Volume 2 from Project Gutenberg
A note on the digital edition: Project Gutenberg has continued to revise their catalog by creating digital editions that work better with modern eReader devices. Currently, this book exists in two volumes, the second of which has yet to be formatted for such devices although it is available in plain text that can be converted to other formats using free eBook authoring software like Calibre. Let's hope that this classic is reviewed and revised into a nice eBook that contains both volumes. They're very busy folks who are doing good work, so we'll give them a break.
Every innovation, every new mode of expression, every attempt to expand the boundaries of art has met with stern opposition. Novel reading was not always seen as an activity worthy of the upstanding, moral middle class. Like most new and enjoyable things, novels were once seen as a gateway drug to immorality. The moral gatekeepers of the Victorian age had very definite ideas of what constituted acceptable literature--usually those works that reinforced their ideal vision of themselves as God-fearing, prudent, self-reliant and industrious people. These are not exactly the ingredients for compelling fiction, and fortunately for us, the most widely read books of the period tended to subtly (and often not so subtly) subvert and question these ideals within their pages despite the objections of prim moralists. By mid-century, strains of a more realistic view of the world began to find a way into mainstream fiction that increasingly expressed the need for social change.
These two novels are examples of naturalism, a movement that sought to overturn conventional Victorian morality and style in favor of more realistic characters, settings and stories that used more direct language. It's beginnings can be seen in the works of Russian author Ivan Turgenev and the works of French novelist Émile Zola.
The thematic breadth and scope of literature during this period expanded while prose became leaner and the narrative voice became more objective. The characters depicted in naturalist novels did real things that most people do, like have sex, drink, gamble, fight, murder, etc. Moreover, the naturalist movement gave an emerging voice to the plight of women, the poor and to other issues of social and economic inequality that characterized the Victorian era. Naturalists saw human behavior as inexorably tied to heredity, class and education, and the behavior of the characters they created were portrayed as natural and inevitable responses to their environments.
As might be imagined, this movement generated its share of controversy. French novels of the mid-nineteenth century were seen as far too saucy and frank for English and American readers, but their influence was to be found in the work of a new crop of reform-minded writers who directly addressed unpleasant truths while attempting to express the commonality of human suffering to a mainstream, middle class audience. Critics saw this new literature as sordid, but by the time these novels were written, naturalism was more or less familiar to readers in both England and the U.S.
These two novels are worth considering side by side:
Esther Waters (1894) by George Moore
Discovering the work of Irish author and playwright George Moore is like discovering a secret. He wrote many novels, short stories and plays, but Esther Waters is his most famous work. Moore's brand of naturalism got him into trouble with lending libraries that refused to circulate his books, but by 1894, the furor had died down and this novel was widely acclaimed.
It's the story of a poor London girl who, lacking any other option and hoping to get away from an abusive family life, goes into service in the home of a well-to-do family whose wealth comes from breeding and racing horses. Her deeply religious background doesn't prepare her for the reality of her new surroundings in which loose talk and drinking among her fellow servants and the gambling obsession that possesses nearly everyone in the household regardless of rank, stands in contrast to the moral lessons of her youth. While below stairs, she falls in love with William, a fellow servant who promises to marry her as soon as his bets start to bring in money, but instead leaves her with child and runs off with a wealthy cousin of the household. She is then forced to fend for herself while caring for her son in a world that has little sympathy for an illiterate servant girl with a bastard child.
Esther's story mirrors the real life struggles of single English mothers of the age. In deciding to keep her son, she has taken on a burden that so stigmatizes her as to make it difficult for her to make even a meager living. She and those around her struggle against a rigid class system that allows for little social and economic mobility. Gambling seems the only chance to escape poverty and toil, but more often it leads to short term gains followed by long term ruin. Esther's religious beliefs become increasingly incongruous to her, representing to her an ideal which she finds it impossible to live up to and difficult to reconcile with the reality she faces.
But this is no artless social criticism or political tract; this is a very finely crafted novel written with great sensitivity and economy. Moore's language is direct and to the point, and that precision is what allows the story to flow in a way that would be impossible with language encumbered by dense Victorian style. This is also a novel that manages to bring itself full circle from beginning to end without capitulating to public taste for a happy ending. And yet, we get closure. That's good writing, and this book is worth reading.
Download Esther Waters from Project Gutenberg
Sister Carrie (1900) by Theodore Dreiser
In contrast to the Englishness of Esther Waters, Sister Carrie is a decidedly American story. Carrie is a middle class girl from rural Wisconsin who goes to Chicago with vague visions of wealth and status, uses men she meets as the stepping stones to sophistication and material success, and becomes a renowned actress in New York. The second of these men, George Hurstwood, is a married manager of a private Chicago dining club who leaves his wife and children, steals ten thousand dollars from the company safe and flees with Carrie, eventually settling in New York where, under an assumed name, they are married, albeit illegally.
As Carrie's star rises, Hurstwood finds it difficult to regain the status and wealth he once enjoyed in Chicago. As she becomes more confident and independent, Hurstwood sinks into depression and despair, increasingly relying on Carrie's new found success to support the household. He also gets a glimpse into the reality of the urban poor when he attempts to take a job as a scab streetcar driver during a labor strike. The two undergo a complete role reversal, and their contrasting experiences reflect the reality of millions trying to claw their way to the top or to regain the lives of status and leisure that have somehow slipped through their fingers.
Theodore Dreiser, once considered the premiere man of American letters in the early twentieth century, has fallen out of style. His writing is notoriously turgid, his dialogue can be stiff and unnatural. and his plots are generally underdeveloped and relentlessly linear. Yet this, along with his greatest novel, An American Tragedy (1925), are still read by American high school and college students. Why? Because he pulls no punches about the living and working conditions of the urban poor and the practical and moral dilemmas they faced. Sister Carrie breaks new ground, pitting the optimistic American cultural ideal of material reward for hard work and industry against the gritty, realistic urban backdrop of toil, poverty and degradation that existed at the turn of the twentieth century. Social mobility was--or was at least believed to be--achievable in America, where the ascribed status of family and rank had less meaning. Dreiser sees the pursuit of the American dream as an obsession that sacrifices moral reasoning for material gain in the name of virtue.
Sister Carrie is a novel that is very much of its time, and while it may not have aged well in some respects, it still has something to teach us. The American argument of self reliance versus social conscience still rages more than a century later, and along with the novels of Sinclair Lewis, Dreiser's work serves as a fairly accurate map of American cultural DNA. George Moore goes even further in Esther Waters by examining the incongruent demands of the Protestant work ethic--a doctrine at the core of American values--in light of the grim reality of those without the necessary breeding or education to escape their situation.
Download Sister Carrie from Project Gutenberg
Here are a few other good ones:
McTeague (1899) by Frank Norris
An odd, dark story about greed and animal instinct run amok. This novel has perhaps the greatest ending of all time. This book was adapted for the screen by Erich von Stroheim in the notorious Hollywood epic, Greed (1924), a film widely considered to be one of the greatest silent movies ever made. I can take or leave this novel, but that ending really does pack a wallop.
Download McTeague from Project Gutenberg
The Jungle (1909) by Upton Sinclair
This novel depicts the plight of immigrant workers in the Chicago meat packing industry, the inhuman nightmare of wage slavery and corrupt politics. The reading public's attention was more focused on the unsanitary conditions of food processing rather than the dire living conditions of those who had to work those awful jobs, so while a success, it kind of backfired. Like many Americans, I was forced to read this book in high school. Not for the squeamish.
Download The Jungle from Project Gutenberg
The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London
A story about a domesticated dog who is captured to serve as a sled dog in the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush. This is a truly timeless story of instinct and survival that is a fabulous read. It's also another book that American students are familiar with. Funny how many naturalist novels have become staples of American education, if indeed American school children are even required to read books anymore.
Download The Call of the Wild from Project Gutenberg
The free and easy availability of eBooks has pushed a few forgotten classics back into the spotlight. Unlike many, this one has remained more or less in print since its publication, largely because students of economics, history and sociology still read it, or at least parts of it. While it has mostly remained in print, it was not something the average bookseller was likely to stock on a regular basis. Like all of the books on The Overleaf, its public domain status means anyone who wants it can have it. That's a very good thing indeed, because it is a book well ahead of its time--one of those rare works that brings together elements of an original concept, cited research, accessible writing and adept storytelling. How does one begin to describe a book that is so wide ranging? I guess we're about to find out…
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) by Charles MacKay
Scottish journalist and author Charles MacKay makes a compelling case for nonconformity in a comprehensive skeptic's almanac that spotlights human gullibility and its widespread effects on the reason and sanity of populations and cultures. MacKay writes, "Three
causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by
impelling us to seek for remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered
us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and ignorance
of the future—the doom of man upon this sphere, and for which he shews
his antipathy by his love of life, his longing for abundance, and his
craving curiosity to pierce the secrets of the days to come."
This passage sums up the book's scope. All of the manias, crises, wars, fads and trends seem to fall into
one or more of these categories. He avoids matters of religion, wryly
commenting in his introduction that questions of religion and mass
delusion would provide enough material "sufficient to occupy a volume"
of its own. Indeed. Apart from the Crusades and the craze for relics in
the Catholic church, he largely stays away from confronting religion
outright.
In the most famous section of this book, he examines two financial booms in England and France in the early eighteenth century that were in both cases quelled by the rampant insider trading of an impossibly corrupt aristocracy driven by their zeal to get rich quick. These two case studies are still read by students of economics, and anyone who lived
through the real estate bubble that led to the world economic crisis of
2008 will find it hard to suppress a knowing smirk. He also touches on The Netherlands' Tulip Mania crisis, although the astronomical rise in the price of tulips is now believed by modern historians to have been substantially less disruptive to the Dutch economy than previously thought.
Historically, claiming to circumvent the time-honored existential ills of death, toil and the mystery of the future has proven to be highly lucrative, and there was never a shortage of charlatans who sought to profit from any eager seekers they could dupe. Scores of anecdotes are offered of the men and women who were driven to madness and/or destitution in the desire to manufacture gold, talk to the dead and see into the future. But the most fascinating sketches MacKay draws are those of the world's most accomplished quacks, tricksters and schemers who found ingenious ways to seduce people in high and low places to part with their money for unrealized promises. The intrigues and adventures of rogues and rubes make for some great reading.
As MacKay merrily debunks soothsayers and prophets like Nostradamus, "magnetizers" who sound eerily like bogus New Age "healers", witch hunting, haunted houses, dream interpreters and the insane pastime of deuling to settle petty differences, one begins to see hints of the then emerging discipline of sociology via the work of Auguste Comte, Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer. Unlike the works of those three heavy hitters, MacKay's book was written to entertain, and his language is lively and accessible to modern readers.
The extensive piece that depicts the Crusades as a humanitarian crisis caused by a mass delusion is an excellent piece of writing that is well ahead of its time. Errors in collective judgement often lead to ridiculous, painfully comic results, but MacKay was clearly dismayed and appalled by senseless human suffering and envisioned a day when society would grow beyond its tendency to rashly embrace spurious truths and its capacity to destroy each other in the process. Well, it's 2013 and we're still waiting, Chuck. I feel you, man.
MacKay's anecdotal style means that you don't have to swallow this book whole; it can be read piecemeal without any loss of context or continuity. Truth is, you're better off taking it bit by bit. It's as dense as a cheesecake, touching on many subjects over roughly two thousand years of history--so much good stuff, in fact, that I'm probably not doing this book justice in writing about it. But believe me, It's endlessly fascinating and lots of fun. A chapter of this book can cleanse your literary palette between novels or provide a diversion while riding the train to work or waiting for your plane to land. It's much more fun than the in-flight magazine.
A note on the digital edition: The lack of illustrations in the eBook edition is a bit unsettling, since the captions describing them remain, taunting and frustrating readers with the ghosts of rich and compelling images unseen. Project Gutenberg has done a great job of going back into their catalog to refurbish titles to make them play nice with today's eReader devices, often including complete texts with images. This book is a prime candidate for an overhaul. I want to see those pictures!
Next time, I'll get back to writing about novels.
Download Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds from Project Gutenberg
Twenty-first century writers have it far, far too easy.
They might think that the critics for the New York Review of Books are difficult to please, but the jibes and barbs of critics are nothing compared to what writers faced in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when publishing a new work often meant taking your life into your own hands. Writers who challenged
the status quo faced fates far worse, such as torture, burning, boiling,
having various bits hacked off or, in the case of seditious libel, being
subjected to a red hot branded "SL" on the cheek--surely a far cry from the cozy world of academia where the worst that could happen is a rejection letter from the Journal Science or a C-minus on your short story for your writer's workshop about your dysfunctional family. Writing used to be serious business, and publishing was not for the faint of heart.
Books Fatal to Their Authors (1895) by P. H. Ditchfield
In modern times, pitching a book that catalogs the demise of dozens of authors and publishers who ran afoul of Papal and civil authorities and were chased, hounded and ultimately put to death for their efforts might be a tough sell for the big publishers, but Ditchfield does a good job of making his subject matter engaging and even entertaining. This is essentially a book of anecdotes that tell of the trials of rogue theologians, historians, political and social critics, fanatics, astrologers, poets, dramatists and publishers. However, this anecdotal approach to the material can be a little repetitive, so this is a book that one might read a little at a time. All in all, this is a merry, dry witted but scholarly romp through lives ruined by censorship.
Consider Polish theologian Cazimir Lisznski, whose claim that "God is not the creator of man, but man is the creator of God" got him executed by order of the Bishop of Potsdam in 1689 and whose ashes were shot out of a cannon. Or Galileo, whose confirmation of Copernicus' theory that the earth revolves around the sun earned him a visit from the Spanish Inquisition--a body whose henchmen were too stupid to even understand his work ("Are these then my judges?" he asked). Or Italian satirist Trajan Boccalini, whose Pietra del paragone politico (1615), a withering criticism of Spanish misrule in Italy, bought him a visit from four big guys who held him down on a couch and beat him to death with sand bags.
Riveting stuff, indeed. Ditchfield isn't above expressing his own opinions or displaying a few sparks of wit, either. "Whether to burn a man is the surest way to convert him," he writes, "is a question open to argument. " The infamous Bastille is referred to as a proven "reformatory for audacious writers". His off-the-cuff critiques of religious works and theological tracts reveal his bias as a minister in the Church of England, proclaiming some authors and works as ridiculous (in all fairness, some of them were ridiculous), but strongly arguing against censorship. He was a man of his time.
Ditchfield presents authors and works both well known and extremely obscure, preferring to cite the original titles in Latin, French and Italian and sometimes quoting these works at length in their original language, but readers can get through the rough spots in context easily enough. And it's okay to skip longish passages of Latin, French and Italian without feeling as though you're cheating. Good bathroom reading.
Download Books Fatal to Their Authors from Project Gutenberg
"So these two Guys walk into a castle…"
Sir Walter Scott pioneered the historical novel, writing dozens of books centered around his native Scotland that enjoyed a worldwide audience and the acclaim of his peers. William Harrison Ainsworth also wrote historical novels, and while he was a lesser writer than Scott and the flame of his popular and critical notoriety burned out much more quickly, both of these authors have found parity in the degree to which their works have been neglected by readers and academics. Scott's Ivanhoe and Ainsworth's The Tower of London are the most famous works by these two men that are still read (the former considerably more than the latter).
But both of these guys wrote novels that were fun to read: Scott wrote richly plotted, lush romantic tales of his native land with the skill and grace of the poet he was, and Ainsworth wrote action-packed tales plucked from English history with a sharp eye for historical detail and the broad popular appeal of Hollywood blockbuster movies.
For our purposes, what both of these guys really did was to write novels about guys named Guy.
Guy Mannering (1815) by Sir Walter Scott
Despite what the title might suggest, this is not an etiquette guide for bachelors. This was Scott's second novel, the follow up to the enormously successful Waverley--a difficult act to follow, as first novels often are. While Waverley focused on the Jacobite uprising of 1745, this novel takes place a few decades later, roughly between 1760 and 1780, in southwest Scotland.
Guy Mannering, a Colonel in the British army who dabbled in astrology as a young man, drew a horoscope that boded ill tidings for Harry Bertram, the newborn son and rightful heir of a Scottish magistrate whose estate Mannering happened to visit on a trip to Scotland. The five-year-old Bertram becomes the victim of a kidnapping plot that contributes to the downfall of his family's fortunes. The heir's return does not bode well for those who seek to gain from keeping his true identity a secret. But that's not even the half of it. This is a very difficult novel to synopsize for all its layers of plot and characterization. Bertram's troubles spring from a power struggle between magistrates, lawyers and smugglers. Add to all this the haunting presence of the gipsy Meg Merrilies, one of the most striking and evocative characters in all of English literature and the only character in the novel who sees through the deceptions and lies that keep Bertram from assuming his rightful position as head of his family estate.
This is a fine novel, and for what it lacks in the sheer emotional power that made Waverley such a gem, it makes up for with an intriguing story and unforgettable characters. If you like inventively plotted, exciting and mysterious tales, Guy Mannering is for you. As usual, there's lots of authentic Scottish dialect used here, but you'll get the hang of it if you can give it a chance.
Download Guy Mannering from Project Gutenberg
Guy Fawkes (1841) by William Harrison Ainsworth
The first of Ainsworth's series of very successful historical novels, this is the story of the famed Gunpowder Plot in which the notorious Guy Fawkes and a group of English Catholics tried and failed to blow up Parliament in 1605--an event celebrated with bonfires every year in England on the fifth of November.
Ainsworth was a meticulous researcher whose attention to accurate historical detail in matters of dress, custom and architecture gave his readers an uncanny, vivid sense of time and place. But he was also equally reckless with the details of the real life events he portrayed, and gleefully rearranged the facts and characters to create a compelling story that would appeal to his readers--largely middle class folks who read for pleasure rather than intellectual stimulation. Purists may scoff and titter at Ainsworth's tinkering, but mixing fact and fiction in this way is precisely how legends have been created in nearly all cultures for centuries. Ainsworth's historical novels are part of a time honored tradition of storytelling.
The Gothic and supernatural touches he adds make this novel read like a lushly illustrated comic book. The action moves well and the pages turn of their own volition, but don't look too deeply or you won't enjoy the ride. Though this is probably not "great literature" in the strictest sense, I have much affection for Ainsworth. Historical novels superimpose the values and prejudices of the eras in which they were written upon the eras that they portray, and like all of his historical romances, Guy Fawkes mythologizes English historical events in a decidedly Victorian way that reveals much about how the people of the nineteenth century viewed their own collective past. A modern-day novel of the Guy Fawkes legend would reflect our own times, and the results would be markedly different. Something to ponder, anyway.
Download Guy Fawkes from Project Gutenberg
Here, you can watch an amusing BBC documentary about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot.
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Happy New Year, everyone!
I love books. I always have. There's something about completely losing yourself in the pages of a book, immersing yourself in a parallel universe, real or imagined, shedding your ego and replacing the chatter in your head with an alternative narrative in a way that just isn't possible in any way other than reading. The process of reading focuses your attention, expands your imagination, and exercises your critical thinking skills. Reading can evoke strong emotional responses, allow us to entertain new perspectives and, through a combination of all of these effects, broaden our understanding of the world and ourselves.
I started to read when I was two, which was no mean feat because I was born with impaired vision. But I really wanted to read, so I did anything I could to make that happen, like using magnifiers and large print books (when and if I could get them). I became a voracious reader, gobbling up books as fast as I could find them. I could keep up with and sometimes outpace my peers in speed and volume. In 2010, after nearly forty years of doing it the hard way, my girlfriend bought me an eReader for my birthday.
That was a game changer for me. Suddenly, I could change the print size so I could read at a comfortable distance. My eyes didn't tire as easily and the neck and upper back pain I experienced from excessive reading was suddenly only a memory. This was the Golden Fleece I had been in searching for. As if that wasn't enough, I was also delighted to learn that the majority of books I was interested in--mostly written before 1925--were available for FREE!
So I began to read my way through an awful lot of books I hadn't encountered before via websites like Project Gutenberg. I found it to be much better than a bookstore because the selection was invariably larger than any store could hold. Because everything was free, I indulged myself by selecting titles I might not have otherwise picked, much less even find. I was in Literary Hog Heaven.
After two years of going crazy with eBooks, it occurred to me that it might be nice to have something to show for all this reading I was doing. Maybe a blog! But not a blog that sought just to show how cool and smart I was by reading all these big books. I thought it would be great to encourage people to take advantage of the availability of all this great stuff, especially those who might be a little intimidated by the sheer amount and breadth of the material available for free. I think books are for everybody and that nothing should stand between you and the great (and, if not so great, at least fun and interesting) books. Most of those works aren't as impenetrable and inaccessible as you might think. If you have a curious mind and a desire to read something new, you'll do just fine.
The Internet has given us access to vast libraries of human knowledge and expression on a scale never even dreamed of at any time in our history. The eReader has made those books easier to access for unprecedented numbers of people. I know there are some out there who scoff at eBooks, claiming that nothing beats the feel of a book in your hand and that reading eBooks is a profane, despicable practice that they wouldn't be caught dead engaging in.
You know what? Here's the official position of The Overleaf: Screw them. They can do what they like. Books are nice, but it's what's inside them that counts. And that's what eBooks deliver--the important part. And that's what this blog will concentrate on exclusively.
So, you may ask, "Who is this guy? What are his qualifications?" I am someone who loves to read. I tried studying literature when I first entered college, but I absolutely hated it. My professors reduced literature to disembodied theories that contained none of the blood and sweat and guts of great literature. They sought to break things down into neat little formulas that took all the fun out of reading. In fact, I didn't read for a few years after that, so bad was the taste in my mouth. I even became…God save us...a communication major!
But hey, professors have a job to do, and I believe that academics do valuable work. They are, after all, the curates of our collective cultural memory. But for centuries, they have also been our culture's appointed gatekeepers who ultimately decide which works, authors and eras are to be studied. Book publishers tend to keep in print only those titles that they can sell, causing many worthy books to fall by the wayside. So the availability of a growing digital library of works, including many long out of print and out of reach to readers and scholars for generations, allows us to reevaluate works that have fallen through the cracks. This development may, in turn, change the way we look at our own past. It will certainly make for interesting reading.
I humbly confess that I would rather read an actual book than a volume of literary criticism about a book any day of the week. The men and women who write books are trying to communicate with us, to tell us something that they know about the world and feel passionate about. Most of them don't write books to further a theory or a school of expression. They just write. And they write for us to read. And anyone with access to a computer can explore centuries worth of human thought, science, literature, history, philosophy--all for free.
So I started The Overleaf. Here are some basic guidelines I pledge to abide by:
1. I won't talk down to my readers. I'm here to help people learn about books, not make them feel inadequate because they don't know something.
2. I will only provide links to free eBooks from non-profit organizations.
3. I won't accept any advertising from any commercial entity in exchange for links to their websites. This site is for spreading the word about books, not for making money. If I mention a title that isn't available for free, I will always encourage readers to visit their local libraries or their favorite bookstores.
4. There are times when I might not know what I'm talking about. If you think I'm wrong about something, use the comments section or write me an email. I'll leave criticism up in the comments section as long as the comments are civil and constructive. If you're a jerk, then away goes your comment, and no snarky emails will be answered.
5. I'll try to post a new article about twice a month.
That's basically it. I'll read books and tell you about them. My greatest hope is that one of my readers will pick up on a book they learned about here and discover a whole new world they didn't even know they were waiting for. That's the ultimate pleasure of reading. If that happens, please write to me and let me know.
A dear friend of mine, after reading my first few posts, said to me, "I love that you're giving all these old books back to the world." That's the plan!
Happy Holidays, all! See you in 2013!
I was worried about how to approach the immense canon of Sir Walter Scott. He's an intimidating, towering literary figure, especially to those of us who don't know beans about Scotland. But before his novels became popular, practically no one outside of Scotland knew beans about Scotland. So, much like the worldwide audience that first encountered his work two hundred years ago, I would learn of the lore and customs of his native land as I explored his body of work. Unlike those readers of 1814, I have access to incredible amounts of information to aid my understanding.
My first exposure to Scott came when I was a just a kid via this very funny Monty Python sketch:
Sir Walter Scott
has an unjust reputation for turgid and inscrutable prose. While its
true that his syntax and sentence structure lends a different rhythm to
his writing that is most definitely of its time, a
willing reader can acclimate to Scott's style without too much trouble.
The Scotch dialect in the mouths of his characters can take a little
getting used to and may indeed blow a stiff breeze up your kilt, but
Scott provides some gentle contextual clues that help readers get the
hang of it fairly quickly.
These days, his work is long out of fashion among academics and the public. Ivanhoe and Rob Roy are still famous works, but other than that, the Scott section of your local library is likely covered in dust and strewn with plaid-colored cobwebs. It's a shame, because with a little effort, the average reader might find out firsthand how wonderful his books are.
Enjoying an historical novel hinges upon the fact that you know a few things about history in order to appreciate one. That tends to put people off, reinforcing an unfortunate stereotype about the inaccessibility of great literature to modern readers. This perception is precisely what this blog was intended to dispel. One can understand a novel in historical context easily enough if one is even moderately motivated. So I'll let you in on a little secret: When encountering a work with an unfamiliar historical context, I turn to Wikipedia.
There. Now you know. I feel better for telling you. Wikipedia is far from perfect, but it's a great place to start. Want to know about the Jacobite rebellions in the 18th century? Want to dabble in the feudal clan culture of the Highlands? Want to understand the socioeconomic concerns of the Lowland peasantry? I did. I wanted to unlock some of the secrets of Scott. And I followed the sources of the Wiki articles to find even more fascinating reading that I will never have time enough to read if I hope to continue to work and buy food. But you can wade through just enough background information to help enhance your understanding of an older text in maybe twenty minutes or so, whereas taking on research just to enjoy a new book used to mean a trip to the library with a lot of people in thick glasses shushing at each other. Now, not only do you have access to great works of literature in the form of eBooks for free from places like Project Gutenberg, but you don't have to work very hard to get the most out of a good book.
Waverley (1814)
What you need to know: The seeds of conflict date back to a royal succession dispute in 1688 which ended the reign of the House of Stuart as the ruling family. In 1745, The Jacobites, who supported Bonnie Prince Charlie of the House of Stuart as the legitimate heir to the British throne, attempted an armed rebellion against the sitting monarch, George II of the House of Hanover. Their march across the Scottish border into England to retake the crown was ill conceived, as they were massively outnumbered by the king's forces and quickly defeated.
The title character of Scott's first novel is a young, privileged English gentleman of romantic disposition. His uncle, despite being a Jacobite sympathizer and recognizing a need for the young man to find direction in life, encourages him to join the army under the reigning king, George II. Waverley becomes a captain and is stationed in Aberdeen. Before leaving, his uncle gives him a letter of introduction to Baron Bradwardine, an old friend in the lowlands with whom he fought in the Jacobite uprising of 1715. Waverley, upon obtaining an extended leave of absence from his command, spends several weeks on the Baron's estate where he is introduced to many key instigators in the upcoming rebellion. As his ties to his new friends deepen, a series of events (no spoilers) forces young Waverley to resign his commission and join their ill-fated cause.
As young Waverley's eyes are opened to the beauty and mystery of Scotland, its customs and its people, as his imagination is sparked by romantic tales and visions of gallantry, so is the reader transported to an impossibly beautiful place where the very breeze whispers ancient rhymes and the rugged landscape reflects the toil and character of a proud people. It's all pretty intoxicating. But the reality of Waverley's situation encroaches on this fantasy soon enough as a series of intrigues and misfortunes force the young soldier to make crucial decisions about his allegiances.
Scott had me from the very start with a trifecta of good writing: fluent prose, ingenious plotting and truly rich and engaging characters. This novel is a not-so-subtle plea for tolerance that still resonates two hundred years later. Waverley isn't the only one whose view of the world is significantly colored by his own ideals. The people he befriends see their relationship to the world and to each other through a veil of their own convictions and prejudices, and their subjectivity has dire consequences. Waverley emerges from his trials as a man transformed by his shattered illusions with a firmer grasp of himself and the world around him.
Great novels like this are accessible to us if we are adventurous enough to put aside our own prejudices about them. By making an effort to dispel our own preconceptions about the world, we can begin to see and understand it better, much in the same way Waverley does. And this is why I love literature so much. It parallels life. We are open to understand only if we are willing to do so, and what we gain by our efforts is immeasurable. Adventurous reading can enrich our understanding of ourselves. That is the transformative power of literature and that is why I share these books with you.
A note about this edition: For this eBook, Project Gutenberg used a very fancy deluxe edition from 1893 that is a reprint of the definitive 1829 edition. It has tons of introductory material, including a preface by the author and several examples of the author's false starts that he produced while trying to write his first novel, printed in full. Interesting stuff, but skip all of it until you've read the book. The actual novel begins at 15%. Oh, and the illustrations are wonderful.
Download Waverley from Project Gutenberg
