Mark Twain's Quote on Literature: Beyond the Hype

Mark Twain, the renowned American author, once said, 'Classic literature is not the catch-phrase of the day, but the echo of the days.' This quote beautifully encapsulates the tension between the cultural prestige of classics and the realistic challenges of engaging with them.

Cultural Prestige of Literature

Cultural prestige often associates classics with essential reading in literary culture. These works are celebrated for their artistic merit, historical significance, and the profound insights they offer into the human condition. They are the echoes of the days, resonating with generations and offering timeless lessons. However, public pressure to familiarize oneself with these works—either to impress others or to be perceived as educated—often overshadows the reality of the reading experience.

Desire vs. Reality

Twain's quote suggests that many people feel a societal pressure or a desire to claim familiarity with these works to enhance their social standing. However, the actual experience of reading classics can be daunting. These works are often lengthy, complex, and require a significant investment of time and effort to fully grasp.

Accessibility and Challenging Texts

Despite their value, the language, themes, and contexts of many classics can be challenging. This creates a gap between the desire to be well-read and the practical enjoyment of reading. Twain, known for his wit, uses this quote to poke fun at the pretensions of literary culture, reflecting a common human experience: the desire to be perceived as knowledgeable while struggling with the realities of engaging with challenging texts.

Personal Experiences and Literary Insights

Unlike the other answerers, I resonate with Twain's perspective because I have personal experiences similar to his observations. For example, reading Norman Davies's God's Playground: Volume I is not a particularly fun read, but it contains a wealth of knowledge that post-hundreds of pages of reading and indigestion makes you understand more about the country, period involved, and the author's argument. This type of literature serves as a building block, helping to elucidate other works in their genres.

Reading Non-Fiction for Depth and Understanding

For an American example, I slogged through James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, perhaps the book on the American Civil War. Now, I am reading David Goldfield's America Aflame, which, possibly the book on the Civil War post-McPherson. The information Goldfield omits, which I think substantially weakens some of his arguments, I only know because I read McPherson. The more I read, the more I understand subsequent books on the same topic.

I have referred exclusively to non-fiction here, but fiction can help you in similar ways. Reading Robert Chambers's The King in Yellow explains what inspired all that "weird" fiction 30 years later. A novel like Lyndon Hardy's Master of the Five Magics influenced so many later fantasy novels in terms of the idea of systematizing magic that it's like an instruction manual. These are great books, and I loved reading them, but definitely 'having read them' informed my future reading pursuits.

Thus, Mark Twain's observation captures the tension between cultural ideals and personal reading habits, emphasizing the complex interplay between our desire for knowledge and the reality of engaging with challenging literary works.