Tips for readers: Getting through hard books

Earlier this summer when Cindy Rollins and Angelina Stanford were interviewing me for their Literary Life podcast, I mentioned that I didn’t start reading books that were hard for me till I was in my thirties. They asked me how I pushed through when reading something like that, so I mentioned a fairly recent experience with Charles Williams’ poem Taliessin Through Logres. In that case, I just kept looking for things I was already familiar with, which helped me keep going till I’d become familiar with Williams’ style and the general flow of the story.

I’d like to share some other strategies I’ve used over the years.

About a decade ago I decided to get better acquainted with Flannery O’Connor’s stories. Up until then I’d only read her short story, “Revelation,” but I’d read it many times, first in high school and then again every few years to see if it turned out any better, by which I mean, to see whether I could get to the end of the story without the bad guy turning out to be ME. Our library had the huge Collected Works of Flannery O’Connor—short stories, novels, essays, letters—so I started reading the fiction, and when it got too dark and difficult, I’d take a break by reading the non-fiction. Her essays are so thoughtful and her letters are delightful, sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic, and I found that getting to know the author as a person made reading her stories easier.

Another thing that has made it easier to persevere though hard books is reading and discussing them with friends, whether this happens in person or over the internet. I read Homer and Virgil and Ovid this way, and am currently working through Plato’s Republic with friends. Knowing we’re going to meet on a certain day, and that my friends will have read the next section, and that they will definitely have interesting things to share about it is very motivating for me!

This one may come as a surprise, but reading aloud to my children has gotten me through some hard things that I had tried and failed to read alone. William Langland’s Piers Plowman, and Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene fall into this category. I read Langland to my older set when they were in high school, but I started Spenser with my younger set much earlier, so I had to do some groundwork before reading the unabridged poem, but knowing that they loved the story and were waiting for the next canto, and sharing their delight in the story, helped me keep doing my part.

This next example is kind of hard to categorize, but maybe I should call it comparing the hard book to something else I already know and love. C.S. Lewis’s Abolition of Man was like this for me. I tried several times to read it and just could not comprehend what he was talking about, and always gave up before I’d gotten even half way through it. But one day when I picked up That Hideous Strength to read for the umpteenth time, I happened to notice the words “Abolition of Man” in the Preface. I don’t think I’d ever read the Preface before, and I was surprised to read, “This is a ‘tall story’ about devilry, though it has behind it a serious ‘point’ which I have tried to make in my Abolition of Man.” This drove me back into that book and finally I could see what he was talking about in there, since I already knew what it looked like from That Hideous Strength.

How about you? How do you manage to read hard books?

In which Spenser talks back to Lull

Britomart, Walter Crane (1900)

In Book III of The Faerie Queene, Spenser tells the story of Britomart, the knight of Chastity. Britomart is the only child and heir of a king so she has been training in arms since girlhood. One day she looks into a magic mirror and sees the noblest knight in Faerieland and falls in love with him. She is so sick with love that her nurse takes her to Merlin for a cure, but Merlin tells her that this most noble knight is Artegall, who will be her husband. Together they will be the ancestors of generations of kings. He shows her the future and it’s glorious in many ways, but also tragic and heartbreaking.

Merlin tells her that Artegall will die young, but her comfort will be their son. He also tells her that Artegall needs her help and she must go find him. Britomart puts on armor, dresses her nurse as a squire, and sets out to find her future husband, having many adventures (including rescuing damsels in distress) along the way.

It’s a beautiful book and we meet many other characters who also embody the virtue of Chastity, though they are all very different. Spenser doesn’t ever have a one-size-fits-all idea of what the virtues look like, or how they should be embodied.

Are you surprised that Spenser gave us a lady knight? He’s following the classical tradition. There’s Camilla, the warrior maiden in The Aeneid, and Hippolyta, daughter of Ares and queen of the Amazons in The Iliad.

So, I had to laugh and wonder whether Spenser was refuting Ramon Lull at one point of his Book of Knighthood and Chivalry. Lull says that women “who have often the mirror in the hand,” aren’t fit to be knights, and that “only vile women or only villainy of heart” would want to be, or agree to accept a woman as, a knight.

Hah! I love Spenser so much.

And no, I don’t want to be a knight, myself. Not my calling at all.

Current reading and a plea for help

Active:

C.S. Lewis
Prince Caspian*
Preface to Paradise Lost
The Discarded Image*

Plato, Republic

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Ramon Lull, Book of Knighthood and Chivalry

Eugene Vodolazkin, Laurus

Mary Jo Tate, Flourish



Sidelined (it’s been a few weeks, but they’re still sitting out):

Dorothy Sayers, all the Lord Peter novels and short stories in chronological order*

Ariosto, Orlando Furioso



Reference (cluttering up my desk area because I keep dipping into them):

Lewis, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature

Northrup Frye, The Secular Scripture

E.M.W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture

Stratford Caldecott, Beauty for Truth’s Sake


To Be Read (too numerous to list)

[*denotes re-read]

Clearly I need to come up with some sort of a reading plan. I have a loose plan, in that I do my Bible reading when I first wake up, and read Ovid during breakfast. After that though, it’s as my whimsey takes me.

Also I need a decent system for keeping track of teaching/writing notes and ideas. Normally, everything is just in my head, or I’ll write down sketchy ideas on random pieces of paper, but then I don’t have a system and things get lost. If you have any advice, please share!

Of hermits and knights

Don’t you love it when you read one book and it reminds you of another book you love?

Recently, knowing what a medieval nerd I am, Angelina Stanford told me about a book on chivalry written in the 1200s, and translated into English by William Caxton in 1484. One of my first thoughts was, “I’ll bet Edmund Spenser read this book,” so of course I bought myself a copy of it (in updated English).

I have not been disappointed.

Ramon Lull’s Book of Knighthood and Chivalry opens with an aging knight who decides it is time to put knighthood behind him and begin to contemplate his death and the answer he will make to God when he faces him at the last day. He becomes a hermit and lives in a forest, subsisting off the fruit he can find.

In one part of the same woods was a fair meadow in which was a tree well-laden and charged with fruit, upon which the knight of the forest lived. And under the same tree was a fountain fair and clear that quenched and moistened the entire meadow. In that same place was the knight accustomed to come every day to pray and to adore God Almighty . . . .

One day, while sitting beside the fountain saying his daily prayers, a squire on horseback wanders into the meadow.

And then to him came the knight who was very old and had a great beard, long hair and a feeble gown worn and broken from overlong wearing. And by the penance that he daily made was discolored and very lean. By the tears that he had wept were his eyes wasted and had the regard and countenance of a very holy life. Each marveled at the other, for the knight who had been so long in his hermitage had seen no man since he had left the world.

The two men observe one another quietly for some time before the hermit speaks, knowing that “the squire would not speak first out of his reverence.”

“Fair friend, what is your intent and why have you come hither to this place?”

The squire says that he was on his way to the king’s court to be knighted, “But my travel and journey have been long, and while I dozed my palfrey went out of her right way, and has brought me to this place.”

At the mention of knighthood, the hermit grows quiet and pensive, remembering the old days. When the squire asks him what he is thinking about and learns that this old hermit used to be knight, he asks the old knight to teach him what he needs to know in order live honorably as a knight “after the ordinances of God.” The rest of the book is the knight’s lessons on chivalry.

I’m thinking of a scene that closely parallels this one, only with notable differences.

In Book I, Canto I of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the Redcrosse knight also encounters a hermit in the woods.

At length they chaunst to meet upon the way
   An aged Sire, in long black weedes yclad,
   His feete all bare, his beard all hoarie gray,
   And by his belt his booke he hanging had;
   Sober he seemde, and very sagely sad,
   And to the ground his eyes were lowly bent,
   Simple in shew, and voide of malice bad,
   And all the way he prayed as he went,
And often knockt his brest, as one that did repent.

The hermit greets Redcrosse with a low bow, and Redcrosse eagerly asks the old man whether he knows of any “straunge adventures, which abroad did pas.”

   “Ah, my dear Sonne” (quoth he) “how should, alas,
   Silly old man, that lives in hidden cell,
   Bidding his beades all day for his trespas,
   Tydings of warre and worldly trouble tell?
With holy father sits not with such thinges to mell.”

But in the very next line he contradicts himself by telling Redcrosse of some strange goings on nearby that the young knight will surely be interested in. This is still early in his career and Redcrosse has not yet learned to tell the difference between the seeming and the reality—he listens to the words spoken but doesn’t realize when the speakers behavior or previous words contradict what he’s hearing, so he’s taken in by this “hermit” who is really the evil magician Archimago.

Of course, the obvious difference is that Lull’s hermit is an honorable man, living honestly, who offers help to one who seeks it, while Spenser’s is an enemy to Redcrosse and is bent on destroying him. Archimago can put on the clothes of a hermit and mimic his speech to an extent, but he can’t disguise who he truly is for long.

Another difference is in the way the squire and Redcrosse interact with the hermits. The squire is humble, considerate of the hermit, and asks him for wisdom and guidance. Redcrosse is hasty, rushing straight from a perfunctory greeting to asking the hermit to tell him where to go for adventure, something he really should not have expected a true hermit to know about.