Books as a backdrop in a portrait or an interview lend gravitas. They stand for literacy, for education, for a way to open the mind, develop the imagination and get on in life. But not all books are considered to convey such benefits.
Opinions about which books are worthy and which are not have dogged fiction. Which are frivolous nonsense, sure to pollute the mind, and which are worthy intellectual pursuits? Also, are there books which are just too dangerous to read?
Is Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye sure to influence unwanted behaviour? Are there those who can read a book like Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince and not see it as real advice of how any immoral act is justified if they lead to power and glory?
In short, are there bad books, or are there just bad readers?
The theme of bad books versus bad readers runs through my recent publication Books, Reading and Libraries in Fiction, which I wrote with Institute of English Studies Reader Andrew Nash. It starts with Don Quixote (1605), which is considered the first modern novel in Europe and an enduring classic of world literature.
By the beginning of the 17th century, medieval chivalric romances about knights riding around the countryside seeking adventures and saving damsels in distress were distinctly old-fashioned. Don Quixote did not realise that. He spent all his time reading such romances, neglecting all other duties, to the extent that he went mad.
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Believing the stories implicitly, he set off in search of knightly adventures. Don Quixote is the quintessential bad reader who takes fiction literally and who focuses on the activity of fighting instead of the metaphorical value of striving for good against evil. It’s the uncritical way children may read, but not the way we expect adults to.
It is because he was a man that Don Quixote had the purchasing power to surround himself with books (there were no public libraries in those days) and travel around. So, it has more often been women who have typically been portrayed as poor readers, over-identifying with the heroines of novels, reading books that are bad for them, or reading when they should be doing something else.
The Female Quixote, a little-known novel by Charlotte Lennox (1752), draws consciously on Don Quixote as heroine Arabella expects life to reflect the French novels she has read. At the end a doctor must explain to her the difference between fiction and reality. The reader of The Female Quixote is expected to have a lot more sense and distance than the reader within the novel. They are supposed to learn from Arabella’s silliness.
Jane Austen, who we know loved reading novels, has most to say about relegating fiction to its place. She does it famously in a gentle, high-spirited way through her heroine in Northanger Abbey (1817), Catherine Morland. This young woman gorges on sensational gothic romances and this fiction starts to seep into her perception of reality.
On one particularly stormy gothic night in a strange country house, she finds a roll of paper in a drawer. “What is it?” she thinks. Her candle goes out and she tosses and turns until early morning, her imagination leading her to terrifying conclusions. In the cold light of morning, she discovers that the paper is only an old laundry bill.
The worst case of “bad reading” in our book occurred in a 1855 novella Faust by Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev. The story deals with a young woman whose mother had banned the reading of fiction. The young male narrator introduces her to the first part of Goethe’s drama Faust. Overwhelmed by the emotions it arouses, unequipped to deal with them from any former contact with imaginative literature, the heroine falls ill and dies.
Like her fictitious predecessors, she over-identifies with fiction. In her case she suffers because, had she read fiction when she was younger, she would have been more robust now. Typically in fiction of the past, fortunate women had wise men to guide them and their reading. Vera in Turgenev’s tale is rather unfortunate in her guide’s lack of discrimination.
Does it mean that Faust, considered by many the pinnacle of German literature, is a “bad” book? No. Neither are gothic romances. We know from her letters that Jane Austen devoured novels, and that she liked Ann Radcliffe, one of the most prominent Gothic writers. Also, medieval chivalric romances can be inspiring.
The challenge for characters in fiction, as for us, is to read with distance and discernment. It helps to start young, unlike Turgenev’s Vera. We must read to understand and follow worthy principles, rather than blindly imitating the behaviour of characters in novels. But most of all, we must read all sorts of fiction. And then we shall be reading thoughtfully, wisely and well.
Karen Attar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
