Reading Great Books

What makes a "Classic" a classic?

Reading Great Books

For schools, a central question they must decide upon is what books they’re going to have their children read. There are really two camps in trying to sort through this problem: in one camp, teachers just want their students to read, regardless of what they read—the student’s interest in reading is the focus; in the other camp, they want to make sure that what they read possesses real substance—here the books chosen are the focus. It’s likely the case that most schools try to strike a balance between the two camps.

Eventually, educators must try and answer the question: “what makes a book great?” Or, “what makes a book a ‘classic’?” Is it just that the book is really old? In one sense, yes. If a book was written long ago, and we still know about it, there are likely deep reasons why that books is still known and read. But when we peel back the layers of this question, we begin to uncover the truth that what makes a book a classic is not when it was written—it is the themes that it wrestles with. A book becomes ‘timeless’ because it deals with themes that are relevant in every time, every place, and every circumstance. A book becomes relevant in all those ways when it is a book that wrestles with central, universal themes of the human heart. A book becomes relevant in all those ways when it is a book that probes deeply into the common human condition.

We live in an era where the notion of “common human condition” is disputed by many. We live in an era where the “universal themes of the human heart” are doubted or outright rejected. Do we have a common human condition? Are there universal desires of the human heart? To answer this question briefly, we can simply note that the similarities between people vastly outweigh the differences. When a mother and a father give birth to a child, it’s not a question what will come out. It’s not like there’s a possibility it’s a bear or a tiger. A human is born. A human does certain things—even where there is much variability in the specifics of how it does this or that thing.

Our Catholic Church tells us that humans were made for the purpose of knowing and loving God. Even if we bracket out the part about [God], this begins to tell us everything we need to know to understand what humans are: we are creatures that seek to know and love things. And it also begins to tell us everything we need to know about the heart’s desire: it longs to love, and it longs to love without measure, for the only proper object of the heart is God—who is Himself infinite and inexhaustible.

“The heart is restless until it rests in You, O Lord.” -St. Augustine

A great book, then, will bring us into an encounter with the reality of that desire. It will lay out a circumstance in which characters are tested and proven for the love they possess. A book that doesn’t do this will never become a classic—though it may have an audience for a time. As we enter this school year, my questions to all of you are, “What books are you reading these days?” And, “Does it deepen your understanding of love?”