TEN SECONDS OF HEART

Don't you sometimes feel like a stupid little kid, crawling around in the shadow of the giant masters? I do whenever I read the classics. They are--sometimes literally and always emotionally--huge books. The heart and memories of mankind are inside their pages, their tales of tragedy, hilarity, romance, loss, and hope. They make the bestselling and most awarded books of the last few years look like trashy rags.

But the books we have kept from our English-speaking heritage are a mixed bag. Some of Shakespeare's plays are forgotten for a reason. Scott wrote loads of tepid novels besides the three or four that made him famous. Even Jane Austen, that catty little perfectionist, had amazing flaws now and then, and as for Dickens--well, as Oscar Wilde once said so well, "that man must have a heart of stone if he can read the death of Little Nell and not laugh." Hugo, Dumas, and  Cervantes have whole books remembered only for one or two striking scenes, lost in a sea of verbiage that keeps no hold on the mind. And the oldest and deadest of them all, Homer himself, is certainly not still kept for the exhaustive and boring catalog of the ships. :P

So how do you know what to leave and what to save? What to keep and what to discard? You know those ten books you keep being asked to take a theoretical desert island? Those books are the treasure box of the classics. And everyone knows people shipwrecked on islands always seem to get tangled up with buried treasure.

It's simple actually. And very fun and easy to do. Make a list of classic books and movies based on them you haven't read or seen recently, but that you do remember. What scenes immediately jump into your mind? What characters and what did they do? What sets jump into your mind? All the other stuff, the subplots, the dialogue, it's vague now. But that moment or that person is still crystal clear.

And THAT moment or person, right there, is what the story was always really about.

That's why it holds on your mind with such clarity. That's why your brain retains it when it's letting the rest of the book/movie be replaced by new ideas. Everything else is already leaving. People often clothe their stories in extra words and plots, as they conceal their bodies with plant fibers and animal skins. But the part of the body that shows--the face, the hair, the hands--now that's real person, not clothes. And if you have any sense at all, that's what you remember. The same with the classics.

Try it! It's really fun. And you might be surprised what jumps into your mind first.