a.k.a. V.J.

Back in January, I took it upon myself to start reading some classic fiction, poetry, philosophy, or history every day for an undetermined period of time. I called the project “Classics Every Day.” Now, in this first week of June, I’m happy to report that Classics Every Day is still an ongoing project. I have been plugging away almost every day (I’ve missed three or four days due to illness and travel) since starting out.

Here is a list of the works that I have finished since January:

• The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• The Pathfinder, Or, the Inland Sea, James Fenimore Cooper
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• A Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Enchiridion, Epictetus
• Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey
• The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
• Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu
• The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
• Moby-Dick or, The Whale, Herman Melville
• Billy Budd, Sailor, Herman Melville
• Go Rin No Sho – The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi
• Meno, Plato
• Euthyphro, Plato
• The Republic, Plato
• Apology, Plato
• Ion, Plato
• Crito, Plato
• Critias, Plato
• Alcibiades, Plato
• Antony and Cleopatra, William Shakespeare
• Hamlet, William Shakespeare
• Macbeth, William Shakespeare
• Richard III, William Shakespeare
• Oedipus King of Thebes, Sophocles
• Antigone, Sophocles
• Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles
• The Art of War, Sun Tzu
• Germania, Tacitus
• Beowulf, Unknown
• The Sayings of Confucius, James A. Ware

In addition to these, there are a handful of works that I have taken a break from for various reasons but fully intend to finish, eventually. (In the case of War and Peace, “eventually” may mean 2027.)

Looking at my list, you might reasonably conclude that I love Plato. To be honest, though, I find most of his ideas patently ridiculous and concur with Nietzsche’s famous pronouncement that the man was a bore. Still, I find myself going back for more and I’m not sure why. The other repeat authors — Shakespeare, Sophocles, Conan Doyle, and Melville — have been much more enjoyable.

After tackling classics all these months, I’ve started asking myself what exactly I have gotten out of the exercise. What’s the point? The short answer is that I don’t know. Has doing this made me any smarter, wiser, or a more interesting conversationalist? No, no, and no. Have I fallen in love with these great works? A few; others have been a struggle. I haven’t enjoyed everything on my list, but I have pretty much respected all of it. Ultimately, I think that idea of respecting the art that I’m consuming is what has kept me reading.

We live in the age of cynical, corporate-produced “content” trying to pass itself off as entertainment. Hollywood insists on giving us sequels, prequels, and reboots of decades-old franchises. In the past week, the entertainment press was clutching at their pearls because the opening box office was really low for “Furiosa” and a Garfield animated movie. Some saw the weak turnout as a harbinger of doom for the American film industry. All I can say is if the best that industry can give us to open up their make-or-break summer season is a prequel to the nine-year-old reboot of a forty-year-old trilogy and an animated version of a relentlessly unfunny comic strip that peaked in popularity during Reagan’s first term, then it deserves to die. But I digress.

My wider point is that I can’t really respect most current-year entertainment because I know the makers of it don’t respect me. The corporations slinging content at us think we’re all morons who will unquestioningly eat up whatever is put in front of us. I never got that feeling from any of the classic books I’ve read this year. The works on my list were created by humans (not AI) who wanted to entertain, enlighten, persuade, inspire, educate, and delight other humans. The degree to which they succeed varies and is up to each reader to decide, but there’s something to be said for the fact that they at least gave a damn enough to try.

So, I intend to continue on with Classics Every Day for the foreseeable future. It’s been a positive experience and there are still a lot of great old books out there waiting to be read. Besides, if I don’t finish War and Peace, I’ll never know if Russia lived happily ever after.