fabrisse

How seriously anyone can take this from someone who's admitted that most of what she's read in the past year has been fanfiction, I don't know. For what it's worth though, here's my theory of literature.

There is such a thing as great literature. And much of it is the stuff that our English teachers force down our throats like bitter medicine, some of it is by the same authors, and more of it is probably lost only existing in some modern Library of Alexandria where all great works are preserved.

The ones that English teachers make us choke on are the ones that I have the hardest time with. "Huckleberry Finn" may well be Mark Twain's greatest work, but I'll never be able to divorce it from butting heads with my intellectually pretentious 10th grade English teacher. On the other hand, I adore Twain's short stories, his travel writing, and "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."

That book was my first introduction to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It was the basis for my lifelong fascination with medieval history. It was the secret book I found one rainy day at summer camp when I was 13 and read three times in one summer. (For the record that was also the summer that I first attempted, unsuccessfully, "Anna Karenina" and read "The Exorcist," "Gone with the Wind," "To Kill a Mockingbird," and every Nancy Drew mystery I could get my hands on. Summer camp reading was highly eclectic.) "Huckleberry Finn" may deal with great themes, but I can't get through the jarring dialect writing to find out.

In 1999 there were all sorts of lists, greatest books of the millennium, greatest books of the century. Some were British and some were American, and I was surprised, in comparing the two, at how little overlap there was (about 50% on the greatest books of the century). Where there was overlap the rankings tended to be wildly different ("Lord of the Rings" came in at #1 on The Guardian's list, it was toward the bottom of The New York Times' list.). The great fascination for me though was the fact that I'd read less than 20 of the great hundred on each list. However, if I went by the author, not the work I'd read something by about 88%.

Literature is a personal taste. I prefer Anne Bronte to Emily or Charlotte. I couldn't stand the one Trollope I read, but adored Disraeli's "Sybil." All of which is putting me into the unbearably pretentious category referred to above.

So. Great literature exists. Sometimes it's one book by an author who never manages the feat again. Sometimes it's an entire oeuvre.

This isn't the interesting literature though. My favorite books are the second-rate literature. I'm not talking about the equivalent of magazine stories or dime novels; I'm referring to the pieces that everyone loved at the time and then fell from grace. Literature that didn't quite have the timeless appeal that lifts it above its period and its origins.

These works are the ones that give you a feeling for history. Up close and personal. Why was a certain type of romantic novel prevalent in the the 1950s? What does it say about its mostly female readership? Or the little details that are found in 1920s and 30s mystery novels that tell you how profound the impact of World War I was on the Jazz Age or how biting the Great Depression was.

Great literature shows us that human longings and consequences are the same, but second-rate literature lets you know that the manifestations of both differ from age to age.

If I ever teach, my goal is to teach a class on the 'shockers' of John Buchan. The style is overwritten, but more than any other author during World War I, he captured the spirit of the British home front. This may have been due to his speculated connections to British intelligence, but some of his statements in later works are positively prescient. (An example: In "A Prince in Captivity" Buchan talks about the rise of German fascism and states that within six years Europe would be at war. More, it says that Britain would have to fight alone and would lose unless the Americans recognize that the interests of freedom lie in helping out the mother country. The book was published in early 1932 *before* Hitler won the Chancellory; before the Nazi party won its victory in the German parliament.)

I love to read.