An Author Interview from Books At a Glance
This highly acclaimed new book by Karen Swallow Prior just may convince you that she is the literature professor you wish you could have had! I’m Fred Zaspel, executive editor here at Books At a Glance, and today we’re talking to Dr. Prior about her new book, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books.
Karen, welcome, and congratulations on your new book!
Prior:
Thank you so much, and thank you for hosting this conversation.
Zaspel:
Explain your title: On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books. What is your book all about?
Prior:
Well, of course, as the title most obviously suggests, it is about reading well and I’ll unpack that a little bit later; but the subtitle I think is one that needs a little explaining. The phrase “the good life” actually comes from Aristotle. It’s sometimes actually translated to mean happiness and Aristotle, basically, believed that the good life for every human being, or happiness, is obtained, not by the way we might use the phrase today through mercurial or financial or career success, but through good character or virtue. Aristotle believed and many of the early church fathers expanded on his ideas that wove biblical principles into this idea that the good life is the one that is defined by good character. These came to be called the virtues, and so I focus on reading literature well; but reading it in order to learn about and practice these virtues.
Zaspel:
Okay, to the point, just how is it that reading well is an act of virtue, and what is it about great books that can be character-building, life-changing, and life-shaping? How do they make such impact?
Prior:
Well, I think a lot of us read a lot every day, whether we are reading on our phones or reading emails at work or memos, but that kind of reading actually is generally not reading well. We’re just quickly scanning something, getting the information we need. We even do that with the news, I think. And I think we’re actually losing the skill of reading well, which requires reading slowly, deeply, maybe even backing up to re-read something, to appreciate the craft of the language that’s used in the story or the image that might be conveyed. And that’s the kind of reading we have to do, actually, in order to read any great literary works well. It’s a skill that, I think, not only are we not cultivating, we are actually losing because of the other kind of fast skimming that we do so often. Reading well on that one level just means developing our skills to read deeply and comprehensively. But, then, I have another layer of meaning in this book which is to not only read skillfully but read in order to cultivate virtue. Reading with patience and diligence and humility, which is required when we read more difficult works that make demands on us, that is a practice in virtue in itself, because we are practicing patience and diligence and attentiveness. And then when we read works that can give us lessons about those virtues and others, then we’re learning more about virtue in that way, too.
Zaspel:
Give us a brief overview of the book so our listeners can have a picture of how you carry out your agenda.
Prior:
Well, the introductory chapter just expands on these ideas I talked about, about what’s the difference between just reading for information and reading deeply and well. I really wrote that with readers in mind who might not feel like they are good readers. Maybe they weren’t an English major, or feel intimidated by reading literature, and I really want to encourage them and help them to feel confident and gain skills in reading well.
Then, the rest of the book consists of twelve chapters, each one focusing on one of the twelve classical virtues. There are many, many virtues out there, but I narrow the list down to twelve: the Cardinal Virtues, the Theological Virtues, and the Heavenly Virtues. And for each of them, I picked a work of literature that I think exemplifies, both in its story and the way the story is told, something about that virtue.
Zaspel:
That’s really a great idea. Can you give us some brief samples?
Prior:
I think one of the works that most people might be familiar with is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a great American classic. In discussing that story, I focus on the virtue of courage, which, with all of the virtues, actually, for myself, I thought I knew what courage was, what some of the other virtues were. But when you really dig in deeply and see what Aristotle and Augustine and Aquinas and other theologians and philosophers had to say about it, the definition of each of these virtues is a little bit different from what I thought it was, so I unpack that in the chapter. For example, courage, like all of the other virtues, is a medium or a moderation or a mean between an extreme of too much of something and the other extreme of too little of something. So, virtuous courage isn’t just being gutsy or brave, because too much of that results in recklessness. Courage is the medium, the happy or the golden mean, as Aristotle would call it, between recklessness on the one hand and cowardice on the other. In Huckleberry Finn, of course, we have the hero of the story, the young boy who decides to help the runaway slave, Jim, and has to turn against the values that he’s been raised by in order to recognize the humanity of the slave. I talk about how he is courageous and his ne’er-do-well friend, Tom Sawyer, is not quite so courageous. But also, ultimately, that it’s the slave, Jim, who exemplifies most virtuous courage because he sacrifices his freedom, or thinks that he will be sacrificing his freedom, in order to save the life of the reckless Tom Sawyer.
Zaspel:
Fascinating! How about another example?
Prior:
My specialty is British literature, but I wrote about some American works, as well, because I know they are more familiar, and so another novel I write about that I think many would be familiar with is The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In that book I talk about the virtue of temperance. Temperance is really an interesting virtue because it’s the only one that is completely interior, or inner, and that no one watching us can see from the outside whether we are practicing temperance or not, because temperance is not just restraint. It’s not just not doing something. Temperance actually has to do with ordering our desires so that they are in proper order and proportion. The virtue of temperance, again, we use them differently these days, but if I’m sitting at the dinner table and I see dessert and I really want it, but I resist it, that’s good. But that’s actually not virtuous temperance, because the virtue of temperance is actually having just the right amount of desire anyway – not too much, or not too little. So I would just simply not desire something if I’d already had enough sweets for the week or for the day and I simply would not want it. How hard is that? So, of course, The Great Gatsby is the story of the opposite of temperance. There’s just so much excess – excess drinking, and sex, and materialism, and just so much waste. That is what the story is about, but by examining all of those things I try to show what true temperance is.
Zaspel:
Let’s talk about great books. What are some of the qualities that make a great book great?
Prior:
Well, you know, I teach a whole graduate course on that question alone; and my students have to answer it in their final papers. So, it’s a very tough question to answer, but it is actually the right question to ask, even if we can’t come up with one final definitive answer. I think we all know that there’s something about great literature that passes the test of time because it addresses universal themes and concerns. But, within that, there are lots of possibilities. The other thing is not just the content of the story, but even the form of the story. Great literature is more than just entertaining literature or informative essays because literature treats its medium, the medium it uses, which is language, it treats it like an art. It uses language in an artful or artistic way in order to help re-create that experience that the story is conveying. In other words, if we look at a painting of a bowl of fruit, the point isn’t to see what a bowl of fruit looks like; the point is to see how the artist uses his medium, paint, to re-create that thing. And so literary writers have to use words in such a way, in order for them to be great, that those words re-create an experience. They don’t just inform us, but they help us feel like we’re there; and they help us want to answer those same questions or struggle with those same dilemmas. So I think, in general, just those two things. The content deals with things that are universal and applicable to everyone, even if it’s in a specific time or place very different from ours. And the form uses language artistically in a way that helps us feel like we are there struggling with that same question or facing that same experience.
Zaspel:
What are the best books? And how do we know ahead of time? Can you give us some direction for selecting the best books first?
Prior:
Well, I do believe in using critics, turning to those who are more knowledgeable, who have read more. Looking at the books that are worthy and of good report and have been praised, to invoke some biblical qualifications for the things we ought to think about. If they are part of the Great Books tradition; and if it’s a newer book, we can look at what critics are saying about it. Not that we always agree with them, or that even that critics agree with one another, but we can just simply look at those books that are pretty universally praised. There are so many of them that when I’m making book recommendations for people who often ask me about what to read, I actually like to know a little bit more about what they like and their preferences, because there are so many good books out there. It’s really best to read one that you will enjoy and be interested in because there are so many out there.
Zaspel:
That happens to me a lot here. People ask what’s the best book on X? And before I can answer I really need to know something about the reader.
Prior:
Yes, absolutely.
Zaspel:
What are some qualities and perhaps some habits that the reader must develop in order to read well?
Prior:
Oh, that’s a good question. I think we are all struggling. I talk about this a little bit in the book. We’re all struggling with attention span, today, especially if we are, in our line of work, having to read a lot of emails, or are using our smart phones to tweet and get on Facebook or send quick messages. There are actually studies and participants in the industry who’ve come out and stated that they actually designed these devices and these apps in such a way that they are trying to get our brains addicted to the dinging and the beeping and to keep coming back for more. So, if anyone out there feels like their attention span has gotten shorter, it probably has. We have to be intentional in fighting against this digital age that we exist in. I think, for many of us, that means putting the laptop away, putting the phone away, for an hour, or 20 minutes, or even 10 minutes, so that we can give some sustained attention to a work. That’s number one – to immerse yourself for whatever period of time seems long. And that can be as short as 10 minutes. But also, to really be attentive and to read slowly. So much of what we do is just to get done, and to be practical, and to get to the endpoint; and that is not what literary reading is about. We need to read slowly, and pause, maybe go back and re-read a sentence. And, of course, I am a big advocate, and I talked about this in the book, of marking a book. Underlining, making a star, noting something of your own, really interacting and engaging with the book, I think that’s what helps us to keep our attention and it also helps us to remember more of what we’ve read later. I think those are some basic skills, but ones that I think require a lot more effort on our part then maybe they would have 20 or 30 years ago.
Zaspel:
This has really been good.
We’re talking to Dr. Karen Swallow Prior about her new book, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books. It will not only help you read better books – it will make you want to read more!
Karen, great to have you with us – thanks so much.
Prior:
It was good to be with you. Thank you.
