58. GREAT BOOKS
Greatness in books cannot be defined, any more than beauty in people or nature can. But surely we can understand beauty in anything - though it takes a bit of time and experience/exposure.It is not necessarily in the grand spectacles, but in the small things of life that we see real beauty. Ben Jonson wrote:
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.
As if echoing this, our own Shailendra wrote:
Dil ki zuban apni hai, dil ki nazar bhi apni
Palbar me anjane se pehchan bhi ho jaaye
Pehchan do ghadi ki ban pyar muskuraaye
Do din ki zindagi rang laye re
In like manner, we can understand what a great book is- though it often involves reading through mountains of plain muck.
As a regular and serious reader of books for 60 years, I swear by books- to the exclusion of movies, TV and other forms of current diversions and distractions. A good book is multi-layered and that experience cannot be gained from any other media- with the exception perhaps of old-style story telling/ religious discourse. And by books I mean the hard copy, not some electronic version.
There are many ways a book is considered great. Most people would regard a book by a Nobel Laureate to be great,ipso facto.. But I find most such works to be just trash. I include in this most books by the famous modern authors like Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck. Read their books from a copy where their name is not written, and you would wonder what is so great about them. So much is the hype about them. The modern publishing industry is without ethics or scruples and they would do anything to promote something just to make money. The recent episode about Harper Lee's second book is a stunning example. I will come to that later.
Some books are considered great because of the ideas they promote. Books by Darwin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith, Freud belong to this category. I found that most people who talked about their greatness had not read them, really! But they continue to be so regarded even after their limitations are exposed, because of vested interests. Their ideas have been modified in a hundred thousand ways, but still our media would write about them as if they were still authoritative and infallible.
TWO GREAT MODERN BOOKS
If I have to mention only two works of non-fiction which have really revolutionised our thinking in the last 50 years, and which are struggling to revolutionise our living, I would point out these:
Silent Spring: By Rachel Carson. 1962
Copyright: RadioGreenEarth.
Rachel Carson is the one who showed us scientifically the dangers of worldwide pollution inherent in modern civilization.Today,this is axiomatic. When she wrote the book, she was almost considered "hysterical", an outcaste by the science-industry nexus.
Small is Beautiful by E.F.Schumacher, 1972.
Shown here for purely educational purposes.
Schumacher showed that our modern way of economic organisation is unsustainable. It is like living on one's capital. Measures like GDP are really instruments invented by intelligent men, lacking in wisdom, to effect the economic ruin of nations.
Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University
Everyday is proving the wisdom of these writers, but both the science mainstream (which is like the mafia) and the economics mainstream (which at best is pseudo-science) behave as if nothing has happened.
THE FORERUNNERS
It is not as if no one else thought of these matters. Concern with Nature or Environment can be traced to such great thinkers as Thoreau or John Muir or Aldo Leopold.
edition, 1968. He talked of the "land ethic"- the responsibility of man to maintain biotic balance- harmony with land, water, air.
www.gohunt.com
Ruskin, Carlyle,Tolstoy and Gandhi had expressed doubts about the modern economic system. But these were considered to be romantic or fanciful notions, fads of individuals. It was only a Carson or Schumacher who could establish it on strictly scientific terms.
[I feel E.J.Mishan came very near to anticipating some of the conclusions of Schumacher. Later, he strayed on to other areas. But these insights were ignored by the academic economic community, which always seeks to butter its bread, no matter the truth.]
Mishan argued that:
" there are significant downsides to economic growth. His book The Costs of Economic Growth (1966) maintained that increases in GDP and real income were compatible with declines in happiness and social welfare. In fact, he found that growth often brought less of the non-material things that make us happy: peace of mind, space, greenery and clean air, for example. More controversially, Mishan argued that growth led to more hedonism and a permissive society, which he saw as detrimental to welfare."
Both the above quote and the photo are from www.theguardian.co/books. 7th November, 2014.
This was what Goldsmith had declared in 1770:
Ill fares the land,to hastening ills a prey
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
This was what Goldsmith had declared in 1770:
Ill fares the land,to hastening ills a prey
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
However. Schumacher soared far above, showing how continuous growth was not possible!
Humanity is yet to show full awareness of the real implications of these books.
SECRET OF GREAT BOOKS
These two books reveal the secret of all great books: a book is great not because it is timely,or topical, but because it is timeless! It addresses issues whose relevance is not dimmed or erased by time.
These books are great because they raise issues of permanent interest to mankind as a whole,no matter what fancy ideology rules the day. They are great because they remind us of our humanity- our responsibility living in a finite world. Our scientific greatness is also our ecological undoing! We can't survive unless we become simple!
Every serious book on these subjects that have since been written is either a spin off from them, or their refutation, based on 19th century reductionist science- which is the real culprit in the first place!
GREAT LITERATURE- FICTION
Some American writers- Known and not well known
In respect of literature, which is mainly fiction, it is difficult to talk of a really great book, because so much is being written, and so many norms are there to judge them by. But the marks of true greatness are straight: does the book make us better persons than we were before reading it ? Does it offer hope? Does it make the world a better place to live? Does it promote understanding?
The world is so full of suffering and sorrow; struggle and disappointment; pain and penury; violence and prejudice. What is the point if a writer merely harps on these factors- like a gutter inspector? This is what some of the famous American writers have done- like Hemingway and Faulkner. That is why I consider their writing to be trash. Contrast their writings to those of an Emerson, Thoreau , Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and we realise where lies the real mind, heart and soul of America! The modern American writers have made a fashion of vulgarity and violence as the standard element of literature.
There was another class of writers- almost unnoticed by the world at large. They too wrote about the hardships of life- but they also taught us how they coped with them and triumphed. The books of Ralph Moody. Frank G.Slaughter, Frank C.Robertson dealt with how men overcame their trials.
A.J.Cronin and Nevil Shute
To such galaxy I will also add the names of A.J.Cronin and Nevil Shute. Cronin's writings led to the formation of the British public health services. Nevil Shute's book 'On the Beach' made people aware of the dangers of nuclear war and radiation, and could be said to have initiated the nuclear disarmament movement. That way both these writers are significant. There is a quality of quiet dignity in their writing.
HARPER LEE- STANDS ALONE!
However, if there is one writer who stands out in the last half century as truly outstanding, it is Harper Lee. And that on the strength of just one book which has sold 60 million copies and been translated into 40 languages! [ Margaret Mitchell also became famous on the strength of one book: Gone With The Wind ]. It is still studied as part of the school curriculum; strangely, it has escaped the stupid criticism by modern academic 'scholars'.
The book is "To Kill a Mocking Bird", first published in 1960.
The core story is that of how a young African American is falsely accused of raping a white girl in a Southern town, and how he is condemned to death by the jury, without one shred of medical or other evidence. He is defended by a White lawyer, Atticus Finch,who is promptly termed 'nigger lover' by the white crowd. Even those who do not call him so, do share that feeling and are uneasy. The boy gets killed supposedly while trying to escape, before the case could go on appeal.
But this hardly covers one fourth of the book, directly. The book is full of other things.The events are seen and narrated by the eight-nine year old girl of the widowed lawyer, who along with her elder brother four years her senior has to interact with the townspeople. The story is thus also about how they grow up in that small township, interacting with other children and adults.
The book deals with how ordinary people go about with their various prejudices- whites' prejudice about the coloured, the prejudice of some whites about another white who defends the coloured, the prejudice of people against people who behave differently, etc. It is a small place, everyone is known to everyone else and that itself becomes the source of some prejudice!
The book is about an instance of alleged rape- but there is no single word of vulgarity or violence.
It is basically a tragedy- an innocent man is hanged. But there is so much of slender humour and lighthearted mirth. The school scenes are particularly amusing- and revealing!
Why does such injustice take place? Why can't we prevent them? What can we do about them? Why do reasonable people become blind to some issues? And insensitive? Well, so long as we remain "folks" such things will keep happening! And we are all "folks".
The Finch bunch is not ordinary. Atticus treats them as adults, reasoning with them, explaining things, rather than giving plain orders. And the children are precocious- which itself shows the idealistic way the lawyer has brought them up. The lawyer's character is shown as realistic: he is not a reformer, but he stands for normal human decency and plain Christian virtues.
The author does not sermonise. She deals with life as it is lived in a small Southern township, and shows us how things are. Everyone is an inheritor of an environment, and hence of its prejudices and unspoken understandings. Reform or revolution cannot cure them; education will, though only in the long run- very long run! But the heart can be touched before the mind opens up!
The beauty of the novel is that it makes each one of us examine our own attitudes to many things! Are we really without prejudices? On whom or where do we dump them? We feel that much of the advice Atticus gives his children is really addressed to us!
sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down...
before I can live with other folks I have got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
simply by the nature of the work, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally.Not only the lawyer- every one in any profession gets a case in his lifetime which not only affects him, but changes him!
Growing up in small towns!
The children grow up in a small town in the south of America noted for its racial prejudice. But apart from this , there are other kinds of prejudices and quirks. Those of us who grew up in small towns in the 40s and early 50s can readily feel an instinctive allegiance to many of the situations the children face. When I was in school, two cases shook the whole state: Lakshmikanthan murder case,[in which prominent film personalities were involved ] and the Alavandar murder case! We did not know the details, and were not allowed to read about them. But on the way to school, we could not escape seeing the big posters on the newsstands! I can readily appreciate a boy of 12 and his sister 9, along with a friend of 12 or 13 attending the court, just to see their father arguing the case! My grandfather was a Vakil's clerk and I have sat with him on many days on the court floor, when I was not fully 10, observing things, when I took his food or medicine to him!
At one level, the mockingbird is an allegory. It is actually a kind of bird that mimics the sounds of other birds and insects and thus spreads pure joy and innocent fun. What kind of man will kill such a bird? That is why Atticus tells his children when he gives them the air gun:
Shoot all the bluejays you want if you can hit them, but remember, it is a sin to kill a mockingbird.
From the US Fish and Wildlife Service.Ryan Hagerty.
Public Domain.
Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. – Harper LeeThis book is our moral watchman- our conscience keeper.In the world of literature Keats sang of the Nightingale, and Edgar Allan Poe of the Raven. They are justly famous. But the mockingbird is a world phenomenon. It is part of our consciousness, part of us. We are not American, but human and so it fits us too! There are many innocent mockingbirds which we are ready to kill for our prejudices!
Such a powerful story cannot be pure fiction. There is indeed a base for it in truth, which Lee observed and absorbed as a child growing up in a small southern town, with her father who was a lawyer. So, there is an element of hard truth behind the story, and it is this depth of truth that makes the story a legend, a powerful legend!
A Sequel? Nonsense.
Random House published a novel "Go Set a Watchman" also by Harper Lee, in July 2015 claiming it to be a sequel to Lee's earlier one. On examination, it has has been shown to be an earlier draft of the first novel! And the timing of its publication also raised many questions. Lee had declined to write another book for 50 years. Lee had been infirm, after a stroke in 2007,was almost totally deaf and had difficulty seeing, needing live-in assistance. Her sister who took care of her and handled all her affairs had passed away just a few months earlier. So, the publisher had taken advantage and tried to make quick money using her name, when she was not in a position to prevent it! [Earlier, an attempt had been made to rob her of her copyright to the novel, which she had to fight legally!] That a publisher like Random House could do it for money shows how hollow and unethical and rotten is American Capitalism at the core! Obviously, they won't mind shooting down not only thousand mockingbirds , but also its author for the sake of dirty dollars! What a way to deal with a literary icon and legend! Who will watch the publishers?
Alas! After all, we are just folks!
NOTE:
Though the book is read in the high schools in the US, it would not be easy reading for most of us because of the American usages. I first read it in the "Imprint" magazine in 60 or 61, soon as it came out. But I could not understand many things, even with the aid of the Concise Oxford dictionary we had then! Indian readers would need an annotated edition, or notes to know the significance of many things, not just the meaning of words. Once we understand, we realise how universal are certain traits and habits! Small town mores are universal: friendship lasting generations, as also rivalries, grudges, and enmity; lack of real secrecy or confidentiality in most matters- things could not really be hidden for long; certain things 'running in families'; ready generation of rumors; close supervision over children; extra restrictions on girls after a certain age; a girl in boy-dominated households becoming a tomboy etc! Atticus is only 50, but already he feels 'old'- a typical small town way! In that light, the book is a chunk of American social history, shorn of the usual academic jargon and junk! Read and enjoy!
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