Morning, Noon, and Night: Finding the Meaning of Life's Stages Through Books

by Arnold Weinstein

From Homer and Shakespeare to Toni Morrison and Jonathan Safran Foer, major works of literature have a great deal to teach us about two of life’s most significant stages—growing up and growing old. Distinguised scholar Arnold Weinstein’s provocative and engaging new book, Morning, Noon, and Night, explores classic writing’s insights into coming-of-age and surrendering to time, and considers the impact of these revelations upon our lives.

With wisdom, humor, and moving personal observations, Weinstein leads us to look deep inside ourselves and these great books, to see how we can use art as both mirror and guide. He offers incisive readings of seminal novels about childhood—Huck Finn’s empathy for the runaway slave Jim illuminates a child’s moral education; Catherine and Heathcliff’s struggle with obsessive passion in Wuthering Heights is hauntingly familiar to many young lovers; Dickens’s Pip, in Great Expectations , must grapple with a world that wishes him harm; and in Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical Persepolis, little Marjane faces a different kind of struggle—growing into adolescence as her country moves through the pain of the Iranian Revolution.

In turn, great writers also ponder the lessons learned in life’s twilight both King Lear and Willy Loman suffer as their patriarchal authority collapses and death creeps up; Brecht’s Mother Courage displays the inspiring indomitability of an aging woman who has “borne every possible blow. . . but is still standing, still moving.” And older love can sometimes be funny (Rip Van Winkle conveniently sleeps right through his marriage) and sometimes tragic (as J. M. Coetzee’s David Lurie learns the hard way, in Disgrace ).

Tapping into the hearts and minds of memorable characters, from Sophocles’ Oedipus to Artie in Art Spiegelman’s Maus , Morning, Noon, and Night makes an eloquent and powerful case for the role of great literature as a knowing window into our lives and times. Its intelligence, passion, and genuine appreciation for the written word remind us just how crucial books are to the business of being human.

Genres: Nonfiction, Books About Books, Literature, Literary Criticism

464 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Dr. Arnold Weinstein is the Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor at Brown University, where he has been teaching for over 35 years. He earned his undergraduate degree in Romance Languages from Princeton University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. Among his many academic honors, research grants, and fellowships is the Younger Humanist Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Fulbright Senior Lecturer Award as a visiting professor at Stockholm University, Brown University's award as best teacher in the humanities, Professeur InvitÈ in American Literature at the Ecole Normale SupÈrieure in Paris, and a Fellowship for University Professors from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Weinstein is the author of many books, including Fictions of the Self: 1550ñ1800 (1981); Nobody's Home: Speech, Self, and Place in American Fiction from Hawthorne to DeLillo (1993); and A Scream Goes Through The House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life (2003). Northern Arts: The Breakthrough of Scandinavian Literature and Art from Ibsen to Bergman (Princeton University Press, 2008), was named one of the 25 Best Books of 2009 by The Atlantic. Professor Weinstein chaired the Advisory Council on Comparative Literature at Princeton University, is the sponsor of Swedish Studies at Brown, and is actively involved in the American Comparative Literature Association.

Reviews

[Cait · Rating 5 out of 5]

6/4/11 - I loved his commentary on Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I actually got a bit misty eyed.

Arnold Weinstein was the indispensable guide through my reading of Ulysses. I'm so excited about this First Reads win!

[Abner Rosenweig · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Uncle recently said he doesn't read fiction because it doesn't teach him anything. I answered that good fiction can teach a great deal, if you know how to read it.

In Morning Noon and Night, Weinstein, a Brown Professor of Comparative Literature, demonstrates how fiction can not only teach us about the human condition. He shows it can enrich and expand our own life's journey.

Generally, I appreciate Weinstein's musings. They're usually eloquent and distill the fruits of a lifetime of reading and reflection. Sometimes the realities revealed are not at all pleasant to consider but that goes with the territory.

My only frustrations are that the book feels sometimes repetitive and sometimes forced, as if the author were filling out some chapters because they were in his outline, even though he didn't have much to add on a particular topic. The book could have been twice as good if it were half the length.

Overall, I recommend MNN. It does what great works should -- offers nourishing insight, stimulates reflection, and encourages further learning.

[Zeba Khawaja · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just started reading this book and so far I don't like the introduction. It's mind boggling.

[Lisa Vegan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should have taken notes, but I didn’t want to be back in English literature class; I wanted to read this just for enjoyment. Sometimes I did feel as though I was back in a high school or college class, but I’d probably enjoy the classes given by this author.

So, childhood, falling in love, old age, and their experiences; that’s what’s concentrated on in this book.

I’ve read most of the books mentioned, which is atypical for me with these types of books about books, so that made reading this more interesting. The books with which I was not familiar, enough was said about them so that I could understand why they were being included. In fact, I got a couple spoilers, but I don’t really mind in this case.

Reading this was a bit of a slog at times, but overall very engrossing.

But, I think this is the kind of book, given the personal nature of how books touch us, that everyone has to write for themselves.

I appreciated that a wide range of types of books and their characters, classics to modern, are mentioned.

The biggest flaws of this book for me were that most not my own most influential works were not included (interestingly some were important to me when I was younger but no longer resonate as strongly), and also I think the characters/books written about were a tad too male centric (probably not as much as my perceptions indicated), and most definitely there was a deplorable lack of children’s literature, which has been so formative for me from age two to the present, and presumably the future too. There are many child characters talked about, but not children’s books.

I found the old age sections rather depressing; especially the life not lived parts, although, thank goodness, there is almost ample humor expressed throughout. Interestingly, I found these works just as sobering when I was young as I do now, perhaps more so.

King Lear (old section, naturally) resonated more with me when I was a teen than it does now. Oedipus too. Re Lear, my father was alive then (oh, those daddy issues sure come up in that play!) In my teens and twenties I got so much from these books. Perhaps I would again, perhaps even more deeply, but even if I should, I’m not likely to revisit them now.

I got a kick out of the last section in the part that says it’s so hard to imagine some old characters young and some young characters old; that is often so true.

There is a relatively short bibliography for a book of this type. The index is good except that I wish each characters could be found by first name too, not just by last name only; both would have been ideal. I didn’t read the entire index but assume all the works mentioned are there by title.

As I read, I often thought of MY books that fit this discussion. That was fun, and a worthwhile pastime, but I couldn’t rate this book with more than 3 stars because the author and I are just different enough. If I’d read this as an autobiography and not as a book about books, hoping to find something wonderfully new for me, I might have rated it higher.

I won this from Goodreads’ First Reads giveaway program and I am glad that I read it.

[Olgalijo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am an avid reader in several languages, and I have read extensively the classics from different cultures, so, as you can imagine, I was delighted to know that I was going to get Morning, Noon, and Night. It just seemed perfect, a way to brush up on quality books I had read years ago, or to discover that I should get back to a certain title, or just to get ideas about stories I had not yet read.

I found out that Weinstein has a deep knowledge about world literature, and he has obviously studied it, and felt it. But boy, is he dark. By the time you're a quarter into the book you start to wonder if there is a point to his constant pinpointing of the most disgusting and hurtful parts of each single classic (children being dismembered, sexually abused, famished...). Everybody knows: growing up can hurt, but why does he find only the hurt scenes interesting?

Halfway through the reading you begin to think about Weinstein's students. If they have to go through the same kind of stuff he writes into his book, I seriously think that their love for literature may end up grossly damaged.

The Night part is, of course, as depressing as all the rest. If he cannot see any happiness into the childhood business, he'll varely can find any confort in old age. He does try to insert some not-so-ugly visions of aging; but they lack the emphasis or the passion that goes into the rest of the book. They just give you a lukewarm impression, as if he only got them in there because he needed to provide some valance at the end.

To sum up my thoughts: I am happy that there is a publisher that still bets for serious reading, but I would advise that next time the serious reading should probably avoid depressing the readers. After all, people don't buy many books after commiting suicide.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

As I was reading this book I began to lovingly call it my college course in hardback. As an avid reader, I really enjoyed the way he not only discusses and analyzes literature, but I also was inspired by this man's obvious love affair with the written word. I have read a number of the books used as examples, but there was also a fair number I have not read. I cam away not only appreciating some books I have already read (and feel the need to re-read), but also a list of books that I had not heard of and feel the need to pick up now.

This is not a book to read in rotation (if you are like me an tend to read multiple books at a time), but one to really take the time to focus on. I feel that giving 100% focus helps one to truly appreciate and absorb the material. It is definitely best to have read a decent number of the books he discusses as one might feel a little lost or unconnected without some frame of reference, but he does a wonderful job of discussing it in a way that people can really understand instead of being pretentious. You can tell he has been teaching a long time and to be honest, by the end of this book I was wanting to take one of his classes.

The only real gripe I have is more for a general audience than myself. He often quotes from the literature discussed (which is great), even in the original language (also wonderful), but not always followed with an English translation of the text. I could not figure out why the translations were only included some of the time instead of all of the time. As most of this occurred with French, I was OK as I can read French, but I imagine this might be frustrating for a reader who does not know it.

A fantastic read for any true bookworm.

[Kenneth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a book to be read in one sitting(or even two), this is a deep examination of the processes of aging, in the context of some of the great works of literary history. The list of influences is not entirely comprehensive, nor could one expect it to be without spanning thousands of pages, but the cross-section is enough to further the author's point. As an aspiring author, I try to read as much as I can, and to see my craft from as many angles as possible, and Weinstein has put forth a sobering and thoroughly illuminating perspective.

Where this book begins to lose stars for me is in its structure. Morning, Noon and Night reads like a doctoral thesis; each section begins with a long, tedious chapter poking gingerly at all of the references and topics that are to be discussed, in depth, in the chapters immediately following. This felt like extra reading that could have simply been skipped or melded into the actual discussion.

This is not a light-hearted look at life, in any way. The topic, and each facet presented here, are dark and heavy with meaning. And while it is admirable that the author does not shy away from this weight, I found myself wishing for a break from the melancholy. But there is no break, and even the author's humorous asides have a maudlin tinge to them.

I received this book for free from Goodreads First-Reads. Thanks.

[Ci · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the author said, this may be the valedictory work of his life's work as an educator for literature. Literature as one of the key tools for us to find shape and contour of our own lives, as the author said "Art makes life visible." As similar to his early books, the author reviewed many western cannons on theme of one life's arch, from the morning of childhood, to the noon of love and maturity, and the night of aging and dying. With a tone more intimate and immediately urgent, the author urges us to explore our own world through the lattice laid out by great literatures. This is not a book selected on the moralistic and socially conforming lines; in fact, it is quite against the vein of social propaganda by plodding us to read the tough and hard works -- the works that reveal life and human nature as what it is -- red in tooth and claw -- as well as squalid and sublime at the same time.

I have some exposure to several of works he discussed, but at present moment, my reading is still woefully inadequate to fully appreciate the breadth and depth of this book. I plan to read most the mentioned works (perhaps use a few years' time) and then re-read this book again.

This book shall serve on my shelf as a constant source of inspiration and insights.

[Jeanine · Rating 1 out of 5]

2/22/11
Update: I am still trying to read this book and I don't think I am going to be able to read the entire book. I apologize to the author but I am finding this book very dry and hard to read.

2/3/11
I won this here at Good Reads. Only 2 stars to start. I just had a chance to skim the book and read bits here and there. The author Arnold Weinstein is a professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. I am not sure if he wrote this book for the average reader or if he plans to use this as a teaching tool in his classes. It reads as college text. So far I am not overly impressed. However, my background is Early Childhood Education therefore, I did not spend my time reading this advanced literature. So I am not familiar with all the stories he mentions.

It does concern me that many others have shelved this book as to be read and no one has looked at it yet. Not sure what that says.

[Roberta · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this copy of Morning, Noon, and Night from the publisher through a Good Reads give-away. My favorite parts are those in which the author writes about books with which I'm already familiar -- Tony Morrison's Sula, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Jonathan Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Shakespeare's King Lear and Othello. The material with which I was not familiar, was slow-going; these sections seemed more like a textbook. I heard Weinstein speak on public radio while he was visiting St. Louis, and got a taste of why a class using his material would be fascinating. He shows how literature is as much about us as it is about the characters, good literature holding up a mirror so we can see what being human is like as we grow up and as we grow old. If you are already well-read or if you want to be or if you simply want to learn more about yourself, this would be a good choice, whether you read the book in its entirety or dip in and out of it.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book from Goodreads’ First Reads and it’s very interesting, but reads much like a college text/college course…but a good college course. I can see where someone who doesn’t enjoy books that read like college texts might not like this. It’s worth a look especially if books you like are discussed because it does make connections you may have missed and bring up things you might not have thought about while reading the books discussed.

There are some spoilers to books, so once I discovered this, I skipped over parts where books I was interested in reading were discussed to avoid spoiling anything. I think I could have rated this book higher if I had read all the books discussed and then read this book.

If you’re a huge literature fan, I would recommend checking it out.

[On Point]

Listen to what Arnold Weinstein had to say about his "Morning, Noon and Night" here: http://bit.ly/hWgJQC


We can go through life with such a terrible poverty of self-awareness. A poverty so deep we do not possess our own lives. Youth is a blur. Middle age can be a grind and old age, a brutal humbling.
But turn to literature – great literature – and awareness is there, Weinstein tells us.

In "Morning, Noon and Night" Weinstein explains what Twain, Woolf, Roth, Morrison and more tell us about growing up and growing old. From Huck Finn on the river to King Lear at his end. Toni Morrison’s Sula and Virgina Woolf’s day-dreaming mother. Literature can get at the heart of what we’re doing and the experience we share can be illuminated and it does in this book.

[Debbie Maskus · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book that relates and explores life through books. At first, I thought that Arnold Weinstein would be pedantic and as boring as a textbook. Instead, Weinstein presents an educated and delightful journey into life via literature. I have read about 60% of the works mentioned, and feel compelled to read the other authors. Weinstein's book gives insight into the work of many different writers. I found Weinstein's jumping back and forth into life stages in the flow of the story to be irritating and confusing, at times. A book I plan to reread when I am not as rushed to finish reading.

[HeyT · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reads like a college course. Not necessarily a bad thing but at times I felt like I'd shown up to class without doing the required reading. That's not to say that Weinstein doesn't give appropriate summaries or quotes just that it was easier to see where he was going on the works I was actually acquainted with. Overall I found the premise of reading literature as a reflection of aging quite interesting even if at times the author delved into aspects of growing up and old that were quite dark.

This book was given to me at no charge through the goodreads firstreads program.

[T M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a long book and I had to spend a while reading it, perhaps to do the subject true justice. This book was a personally rewarding journey and has given me good ideas on how to think about reading as a lifelong project. Prof. Weinstein explained his own position, as an educator reaching his own later stages in life and past the meridian of reading experience with an honesty and impressive appeal. The section on childhood was the most emotionally appealing, although the later chapters on old age also struck some wonderful cadences. Highly recommended as a reading companion.

July 2014

[Hom Sack · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a lot here. I find Weinstein's personal insights more interesting. Unfortunately, they are interspersed throughout the book. The jem is the Conclusion chapter on Commencement. Here is where he reflects on his life exclusively. The author's work of 40 years deserves more than eight hours of reading in the span of eight days. Therefore, I will be back later to read it again, more slowly and carefully.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

An informative and enlightening journey with the mind of a fine scholar of comparative lit. How we can learn about living fully, at all stages of life, with very interesting examples from classics to today. English majors heaven. His lecture series on American Lit are wonderful; so is this.

[Cristyn]

I wond this one Good Reads giveaway....Can't wait to review it. Thanks!!

[Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A whirlwind tour of literary insights into development. Well written, interesting in its interpretive attempts and made me want reread some Faulkner and to read for the first time To the Lighthouse.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Made some profound connections.

[Ian Lunam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well worth the read. Shame he focuses a bit much on American literature. Gave me a few more books to add to my list.

[Judith Roumani · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book about finding the meaning of life's stages through books

[Jonathan]

Broad and deep. A great book lake.

[David Chapius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh My, What a joy it has been to find and to read (And Relish) this book by Arnold Weinstein.

[Les]

I won it from Goodreads and am awaiting arrival!

[Sasha]

Post likes this too. I like books about books, but do I really need more of them?