The Great Perspective
A Case For The Classics
I first read Middlemarch in college about thirty years ago. I remember being handed this immensely long novel that I knew nothing about. That’s one reason you go to college—you read books you’re told to read. Middlemarch seemed important—it was a Penguin Classic and impressively dense—but I couldn’t get any context other than a cover painting of two brooding figures in a stately room. Forget any help from the internet, which barely existed in any event.
Unlike most people in the class I became obsessed with the book. I felt sympathy with Will Ladislaw, Dorothea and the comings and goings of town. I remember thinking what a pleasure it was to be in that world. And crucially to novels: I wanted to find out what happened. That's what happens when a writer creates characters people care about.
I just re-read the book and it’s better than I remember. Now I’m not telling you to read Middlemarch, but if you’re partial to that sort of thing I highly recommend it. I do recommend reading a really big book every year that is set far from our current era.
It’s a great feelings to read something people have been connected to for a hundred and fifty years. You’re part of culture that has endured—not a viral moment, not some nonsense micro-trend. This book has mattered to generations before you and now it’s your turn. That’s a rare legacy and one that’s worth appreciating.
But I’ll say something else in defense of English majors and reading books by dead people. You’d be surprised how much you can learn from a book where the main character wears a bonnet. In Middlemarch there are brilliant considerations of marriage, ambition, financial misdeeds, social aspirations, land speculation, professional ethics, medical quackery and plenty else that directly relates to our lives. The fact that it’s brilliantly and lightly dealt with by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, to her friends) makes it no less impressive
Humanities are trending down in colleges. Students (and the parents who bankroll them) want to learn hard skills that the work place needs. Put that computer engineering seminar right onto the resume. If you’re afraid of facing a serious novel, sitting down at an opera, going to a play where somebody speaks in verse, then you’re missing out on some of the great joys in life. Beyond the pleasure, you’ll have a sense of your place in the world and how that world came to be.
