Classics Read Aloud

“There was nothing terrible in what Mr. Hooper said; at least, no violence; and yet, with every tremor of his melancholy voice, the hearers quaked.”Many look to religious faith for security and comfort. During times of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, the presence of a spiritual leader often proves a most potent antidote for the emotions that ail us. However, is that always what we truly need from our holy men and women? Might it sometimes be better for preaching to disturb the comfortable, even if we find it unpleasant in the moment?Nathaniel Hawthorne puts these questions to a small Puritan New England town in “The Minister’s Black Veil.” Mr. Hooper, the town’s mild-mannered and assuring minister, suddenly begins appearing before his congregation in a black veil that inspires fear and mortification in all who look upon it. Although his actual demeanor has not changed, the once-beloved figure is now regarded with curiosity and suspicion by all. What could possibly be driving him to wear such a thing?Intriguingly, although the veil does tremendous damage to Mr. Hooper’s personal life, it enhances his preaching in equal measure. Town residents refuse to die without him by their side, and he acquires a considerable reputation among New England churches. Perhaps this is Hawthorne’s way of expressing what he feels preachers need to be, even if it is not what others want them to be.“The Minister’s Black Veil” was published early in Hawthorne’s career, before he had much of a literary reputation to speak of, but it deals with subjects that would recur in much of his later work: sin, guilt, and repentance in Puritan America. Of course, in the decades and centuries since its release, Hawthorne has come to be recognized as one of the nation’s greatest and most important writers, with this particular story having praise lavished upon it by, among many others, Edgar Allen Poe. Perhaps this reputation can be attributed to the fact that, although his work focuses on communities that were quite old even in his era, characters like Mr. Hooper continue to speak to the towering issues of our own time.Please enjoy…Subscribe to Classics Read Aloud to receive future readings, including commentary and interesting “et cetera” tangent links, right to your inbox: https://classicsreadaloud.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

“There must be more money! There must be more money!”I can’t say I’ve read a story quite like “The Rocking-Horse Winner” before. It took me by surprise; it took my breath away, really. In it, D. H. Lawrence tackles a number of taboo themes unapologetically—social striving, maternal loathing, failures of masculinity—and wraps them in a parcel carried earnestly by a clever boy.As in Willa Cather’s “Double Birthday,” Lawrence frames his story in the post-World War I era, a tumultuous time of economic and social strain. Traditional ways of life were at once irretrievably altered, wistfully yearned for, and increasingly dear to achieve. Unlike Cather’s subjects, who were found moving into the new age with certain stoicism, the family in Lawrence’s vision is led by a handsome father who “has no luck” and a mother who resents the unlucky fate befallen her in this love match. It is a fairy tale gone wrong.Children are like sponges, absorbing the unspoken tensions, opinions, hopes, and worries of the adults around them. In “The Rocking-Horse Winner,” Lawrence shows what happens when one of these little sponges decides to soak up all the drenching anxieties of the adults around him, painting for us an allegory of material want.Please enjoy…Add to Podcast Show Notes: Subscribe to Classics Read Aloud to receive future readings, including commentary and interesting “et cetera” tangent links, right to your inbox: https://classicsreadaloud.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

“I was something that lay under the sun and felt it … and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”When Willa Cather was only a child, her parents picked her up and headed west, along with her six siblings, to follow in the footsteps of her father’s family. They left behind a large and prosperous estate amongst the rolling, verdant hills of Virginia for the vast, treeless expanse of the plains. Their destination, Red Cloud, Nebraska, claimed only 1,000 residents at the time.While My Ántonia is not strictly autobiographical, it plays the tune of a song written in her mind during those years of transition. Having already published two novels, Alexander’s Bridge and O Pioneers!, both to critical acclaim, she followed Sarah Orne Jewett’s urging to pour her childhood experience in Nebraska onto the page. This was the right advice at the right time, for, as H.L. Mencken observed, “[Cather] has got such a grip upon her materials—upon the people she sets before us and the background she displays behind them—that both take on an extraordinary reality. I know of no novel that makes the remote folk of the western prairies more real than My Ántonia makes them, and I know of none that makes them seem better worth knowing.”The novel centers on the lives of Jim Burden and Ántonia Shimerda, two young people who find a natural friendship as they adjust to new lives: Jim, having arrived on the plains to live with his grandparents after the death of his parents; and Ántonia, who arrived as an immigrant with her family, ill-equipped to manage the hardness of frontier life. The story is told through Jim’s eyes, and one is struck with the steady interplay of comfort (his grandmother’s care, the sturdiness of his new home) and uncertainty (the risk of rattlesnakes, the expanse of tall grasses to the horizon that feel like the edge of the earth) of his situation. And so it is with life.“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.” Cather selected this line from My Ántonia as her epitaph, to be carved onto the face of her tombstone as a representation of her truest sentiment and the lasting claim that the region held on her soul.Please enjoy…Headline Image: Sunset of the Prairies | Albert Bierstadt, c. 1860-1880] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

“Rapid motion through space elates one; so does notoriety; so does the possession of money.”Although the short stories that comprise James Joyce’s Dubliners are now regarded as among the finest in the English language, Joyce had tremendous difficulty finding a publisher for them at the time: They were complete by 1907, but the full collection did not appear in print for another seven years. Joyce spent the intervening period dealing with over a dozen rejections, including a printer who burned all but one copy of the manuscript, which he had to re-obtain from them via subterfuge. It is a minor miracle that the collection survived long enough to see publication at all.Given the harsh and sometimes violent reactions, one might expect a collection full of obscenity and vulgarity, of the sort that resulted in the censorship of Joyce’s later novel, Ulysses. However, Dubliners is never crude or gratuitous, even when it deals with the underbelly of Dublin society. What, then, explains the backlash? What could have so enraged the earliest members of Joyce’s public?We may find part of the answer in “After the Race,” one of the collection’s earlier stories. Along with a few other early works, it saw initial publication in the Irish Homestead, a journal associated with the Irish Home Rule movement. They were soon pulled, however, after being deemed unsuitable for the paper’s readers. Perhaps the publication’s editors could sense Joyce’s disapproval of the strain of nationalism that was popular with his contemporaries, even through the subtlety of his writing.“After the Race” centers on Jimmy Doyle, a young Irish man afforded the privilege of speeding around in luxurious cars with wealthy friends from the European continent. Although he feels elated to be seen among such elite company, he is soon in over his head and, in his longing to fit in amongst the heavy-hitters, is taken for the proverbial ride. Many have speculated that Joyce was projecting his own concerns over the Continent’s treatment of his homeland as the suckers at the poker table.Political critique aside, Joyce’s writing is as rich and vivid as ever, making this story a delight for any reader, regardless of time or place.Please enjoy...Subscribe to Classics Read Aloud to receive future readings, including commentary and interesting “et cetera” tangent links, right to your inbox: https://classicsreadaloud.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

“The great Mississippi River seemed forever flowing, flowing through his speech, through the shadowless white sands of thought. His voice seemed to say like the river, ‘Why hurry? Eternity is long; the ocean can wait.’”Many societies are in the habit of elevating important cultural figures to the status of near-mythical heroes, and the United States is certainly no exception. So deep is the reverence for our great politicians, athletes, and artists that it can be easy to forget that they were human beings, complete with just as many complexities and nuances as anybody else. Understanding them as people often requires a considerable amount of investigation.Such is very much the case for Mark Twain, who was already being lauded as one of the nation’s greatest writers and satirists during his lifetime and has only become more so since his death (find one of his short stories, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” read aloud here). Perhaps it was in an effort to escape this towering image that he built Stormfield, the remote Connecticut mansion where he lived for the last two years of his life, which he initially called “Autobiography House.” As if in recognition of the fact that his public image had become something apart from who he was, he decorated one of the rooms with caricatures of himself.One of the most insightful looks at the man behind the mythology comes from a similarly valorized figure in American culture: Helen Keller. Ironically, “Our Mark Twain,” an account of their friendship that she wrote for The American Magazine, deals not with the popular image of Twain but with “Mr. Clemens” as he appeared to those with whom he shared his final home. The result is more than a little melancholy, which may come as a surprise to those who are only familiar with Twain as the great humorist, but therein lies much of its value.Stormfield burned to the ground some time after Twain’s death, leaving only a single stone wall behind, but Keller’s vivid writing preserves not only the estate itself but, more importantly, the human being who lived there.Please enjoy…Headline Image: Connecticut Landscape by John Henry Twachtman, c. 1890An excerpt from My Ántonia by Willa Cather, 1918“After the Race” by James Joyce, 1904 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

Just as the joyful exuberance of spring eventually gives way to the trying heat of summer, the innocent enchantments of childhood give way to the formative trials of adult life. Émile Zola was intimately familiar with such tests: Over 20 years after Jean Gourdon’s Four Days, he published J’Accuse...!, an open letter defending French army officer Alfred Dreyfus from charges of treason and accusing his persecutors of antisemitism, risking his career and personal safety in the process. He was charged with libel and had to spend over a year in England to avoid imprisonment.Like Dreyfus, Jean Gourdon finds himself serving in the army in the second chapter of his story, though his tribulations come on the battlefield instead of in the courtroom. Courtesy of Zola’s vivid descriptions, one feels the sweltering summer heat almost as powerfully as the carnage of warfare. A trial by fire, indeed.Perhaps, even decades before he felt called to live by such principles himself, Zola understood the importance of doing one’s duty in the face of any kind of danger the world can summon. Perhaps Gourdon, who remains faithful to the family he is building back home through all of his experiences, served as an unattainable ideal for his creator, who would go on to father multiple children out of wedlock. That would help to explain the novella’s dream-like, poetic style, which stands in stark contrast to the author’s usual approach.Whatever the case may be, Zola’s deep understanding of the human condition and transportive powers of language are sure to make this chapter a moving experience no matter where and when it is experienced.Please enjoy...Subscribe to Classics Read Aloud to receive future readings, including commentary and interesting “et cetera” tangent links, right to your inbox: https://classicsreadaloud.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

I am just settling back in after walking the Camino de Santiago with my family. A new reading will be published next week. In the meatime, please enjoy a gem from the archives. Anton Chekhov’s “The Kiss” remains my favorite reading to date.If you missed these stories the first time around, now is a great time to listen or explore the archives on your own (searchable by date recorded, by author, and by theme).The writer Anton Chekhov was also the doctor Anton Chekhov. Between these two worlds, he supported his extended family with the practice of medicine and supported his artistic passions with the pen, declaring, “Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress.”Anyone can guess which one he found more alluring.In his short story “The Kiss,” Chekhov aligns our attention with a rather lonely, insecure Russian officer named Ryabovitch. In today’s parlance, you could say the poor guy suffers from “low T.” Through an unorthodox chance encounter, Ryabovitch’s sleeping imagination is sparked, igniting a dormant verve. He suddenly discovers a confidence, albeit fleeting, that he may not, after all, be left out of a normal sort of life. This awakening of the spirit is reflected in a number of small details—the trilling of a nightingale, the tingling sensation, almost of peppermint, on the cheek, the sense of time folding in on itself. That is the very allure of Chekhov’s style…the creative moment emerges from the mundane.The playwright and critic Maurice Valency remarked of Chekhov, “His great talent lay in his sensitive depiction of life around him, the physical and psychic landscape in which he lived.” While Valency made this remark after, rather derogatorily, declaring Chekhov to have no philosophical point of view, the description is apt. (Although it must be said that Valency himself was known best for his stage adaptations of the work of others…how’s that for a point of view?)Chekhov certainly had an angle. Once one reads but a handful of his short stories, it becomes abundantly clear that he was burdened with realism and buoyed by romanticism. Indeed, in reaction to seeing his plays continually brought to life as tragedies, he protested with his philosophical prod towards optimism:“All I wanted was to say honestly to people: ‘Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!’ The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves.”I think you’ll agree that “The Kiss” delivers exactly that…a beckoning towards a better life, a more enduring happiness.Please enjoy…Headline Image: Blue Landscape by Marc Chagall, 1949 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

I am currently walking 162 miles of the Camino de Santiago with my family. While on this pilgrimage, I am republishing some of my favorites from the archives. Willa Cather’s “Double Birthday” was the very first reading I published on Substack.If you missed these stories the first time around, now is a great time to listen or explore the archives on your own (searchable by date recorded, by author, and by theme).By the time the short story “Double Birthday” appeared in the pages of The Forum in February of 1929, Willa Cather was already well-known and widely published. One of Ours had earned the author a Pulitzer in 1923, and her novel Death Comes for the Archbishop was released in serial form in The Forum in 1927.In many respects, Cather was approaching the zenith of her career that year, having been awarded an honorary degree from Yale University and elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1931, she appeared on the cover of Time Magazine.Accomplishment can give one a certain level of freedom to move about. It was at this time that Cather departed from the prairie themes found in earlier works (My Ántonia and O Pioneer), preferring to explore the complications of more cosmopolitan settings. She began using her writing to examine culture, nostalgia, memory, and spirituality.It is no wonder, then, that “Double Birthday” found its way to the public via The Forum. For this story, Cather chose not a literary magazine per se, but rather one that was a hub for cultural and political debate.Willa Cather here writes of the years after World War I; a time of necessary transitions as the formalities of life before the war became off-putting, excessive, and flat after so much destruction. Previously cherished traditions (“full of chests of linen like this”) teetered in purgatory, awaiting a new place to land. In this vein, the thrust of Cather’s narrative leans towards an acceptance of time’s arrow. Known as a pragmatist in her personal life, Cather’s tone is congruent with her likely approach to this phase of her life and to society at large.Dour though the topic may be, Cather executes her tableau with terrific pace and scintillating wit. Please enjoy…Headline Image: Luncheon at Antino by Peder Severin Kroyer, c. 1890 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

The World Cup is making its way across the United States this summer, and with it, there is a newfound international appreciation for all things American. While the mass media is fond of highlighting the broad European fascination, nay, envy, of our humming temperature-controlled interiors; our giant Buckee’s, Wal-Marts, and refrigerated meat departments; and our ubiquitous “ranch sauce,” I hope there is something more brewing amidst the fervor that infects those within her borders.America is as divided as it is majestic. It is today, as it was in the 1970s, as it was in the 1860s, as it will be again. I, for one, find the tendency towards eyebrow-raising and cynical observation an all-too-alluring siren song, and I don’t think such dispositions deliver any worthy outcomes. Rather, I aim to focus my energy on what Helen Keller named, in 1929, “the pioneer qualities” of the country, “the large, free, unconventional, humorous point of view of men who sail new seas and blaze new trails through the wilderness.”These admirable, creative pioneer qualities are what have lifted up generations of ambitious, hard-working, determined families. They have also given birth to, quite naturally, a host of equally damaging proclivities. In a letter to his wife on the eve of signing the Declaration of Independence, John Adams worries over these tendencies. He confides in her that our many “Errors, Follies, and Vices…threaten to disturb, dishonour, and destroy Us.” He, along with his fellow signatories, knew of the risks they were taking in striking out from the crown, for human nature is predictable, especially when ordained with “unbounded Power.”And yet, they went forward with their great ambition, and we are here, two hundred and fifty years later, finding new ways to exercise our inclination to sail new seas and blaze new trails through the wilderness.Magnificence aplenty.Please enjoy this reading of John Adams’ letter, as well as the Declaration of Independence itself. When was the last time you connected with it directly? For most of us, it has been far too long.Headline Image: Afterglow by Jonas Lie, c. 1913 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

I am currently walking 162 miles of the Camino de Santiago with my family. While on this pilgrimage, I am republishing some of my favorites from the archives. Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River,” released in September of last year, remains one of my most popular recordings.If you missed these stories the first time around, now is a great time to listen or explore the archives on your own (searchable by date recorded, by author, and by theme).___Every day, dozens of outdoorsmen head out into nature, armed with video cameras, battery packs, and oh-so-many envelopes of instant oatmeal, to capture their communion with nature. And every day, tens of thousands of would-be outdoorsmen tune into YouTube to watch the newest videos coming from the field.The outdoor genre is booming, with estimates easily topping more than 1 billion views per year.One can’t help but wonder if that concentrated energy isn’t chasing just a small taste of what Hemingway offers us with “Big Two-Hearted River.” His short story, published in May of 1925 in the inaugural issue of This Quarter, presents a semi-autobiographical sojourn to the waters of Upper Peninsula, Michigan, where the main character, Nick Adams, goes trout fishing and reminds the reader what a conversation with Mother Nature really sounds like.If you want an example of true mindfulness, this is it. Hemingway doesn’t allow Nick’s thoughts to wander towards the depths of worry, despair, or even hope that are surely there (as they are with all of us). Rather, he reverently savors the doing of this overnight fishing trip and the peaceful, almost gluttonous solitude it affords.“While he waited for the coffee to boil, he opened a small can of apricots. He liked to open cans. He emptied the can of apricots out into a tin cup. While he watched the coffee on the fire, he drank the juice syrup of the apricots, carefully at first to keep from spilling, then meditatively, sucking the apricots down. They were better than fresh apricots.”“Big Two-Hearted River” became the foundation upon which Hemingway built his first collection of short stories, In Our Time. Please enjoy…Headline Image: The Brook by Robert Lewis Reid, c. 1915 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com