Reading Well, the Great Books, and the Good Life

Prior, Karen Swallow. On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books. Brazos Press, 2018. 267 pages. ISBN: 978-1-58743-396-2.

Karen Prior, Professor of English at Liberty University and author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me, in On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books show how reading great books well can build character. She uses classic works of literature to examine twelve virtues: prudence, temperance, justice, courage, faith, hope, love, chastity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility, and she also discusses the corresponding vices. Some of the authors discussed in the book are Henry Fielding, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Jane Austen and others. The author provides insight from authors of virtue ethics: Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Alasdair Mcintyre, and Josef Pieper. Prior has written an excellent book that shows how reading well the Great Books can cultivate character.

The author has been shaped by great literature. She asserts, "by reading about all kinds of characters created by all kinds of authors, I learned how to be the person God created me to be" (14). She thinks characters in literature can serve as models of virtue and vice. She encourages the reader not only to read widely, but to read well; "one must read virtuously" (15). She defines virtue as "excellence". Reading well, she says, "is in itself, an act of virtue or excellence, and it is also a habit that cultivates more virtue in return" (15). Virtue is presented in literature through the actions of its characters. In addition, it provides opportunities for the reader to practice the actual virtues. Reading virtuously means, "first reading closely, being faithful to both text and context, interpreting accurately and insightfully" (15). Reading virtuously cultivates virtue in the reader. Prior asserts, "The attentiveness necessary for deep reading (the kind of reading we practice in reading literary works as opposed to skimming news stories or reading instructions) requires patience. The skills of interpretation and evaluation requires prudence" (15). Even setting time aside for reading requires discipline. Reading well requires that we pay attention to the "words on the page."

To read well, we need to enjoy our reading. That is why she encourages "reading promiscuously." Pleasure makes it more likely that we will read. Those who enjoy reading will read which will increase their skills of reading which will increase their enjoyment from reading which will increase their reading. That is mentioned in Trelease's How to Read Aloud Handbook. She says it is best to put down the book that you are agonizing to read, and to pick up a book you will enjoy. She thinks that different people will enjoy different types of books.On the other hand, "the greatest pleasures are those born of labor and investment" (16-17). She does say that reading well requires that the book be read for itself, and not for some lesson it teaches. She quotes from C. S. Lewis about receiving a work versus using it. She makes a good point that literature must be read for both form and content or the reader needs to pay attention to both. The author states, "The virtue or excellence of literature cannot be understood apart from its form. To read literature virtuously requires attention to that form, whether the form be that of a poem, a novel, a short story, or a play. To attend to the form of a work is by its very nature an aesthetic experience" (19). There is a big difference in reading the Cliff Notes of a novel and the novel itself. Reading aesthetically is more a formative than an informative experience. Through the act of reading literature "invites the reader to participate in the experience aesthetically, not merely intellectually"(21).

In one chapter she discusses diligence through an analysis of The Pilgrim Progress. Prior uses Aristotle's doctrine of the mean to discuss this virtue and other virtues in other chapters and its corresponding vices. Diligence represents the mean between "the extreme of excess and their extreme of deficiency" (179). She shows how a major theme of Bunyan's classic work is sanctification. To grow in holiness requires diligence. In another chapter she discusses patience by examining Jane Austen's Persuasion. She shows that patience means more than waiting, but a willingness to suffer. Another virtue examined is temperance by analyzing Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones. She states that prudence is the "mother of the three other cardinal virtues" (34). Prudence is choosing right from wrong in everyday life. In Tom Jones she shows how authors use satire and in Pilgrim's Progress, symbolism.

Prior, On Reading Well, has written a book that in enjoyable to read, teaches the reader how to read well, examples of how to read classic texts, and how classic works can cultivate virtue in the reader. It was surprising how much she knew about philosophy and virtue ethics. She skillfully intertwines virtue ethics with literature. This book is highly recommended.