Reading and the Western Literary Tradition

Prior, Karen Swallow. Booked: Literature in the Soul in Me. T. S. Poetry Press, 2012. 199 pages. ISBN: 978-0-692-014547

I recently read and enjoyed Karen Swallow Prior's book, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through the Great Books (2018). I was told by some friends I should read her earlier book, Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me. I was not disappointed. Swallow is both a blogger and a Professor of English at Liberty University, specializing in 18th Century British Literature. In some sense, she combines both aspects of herself in this book. She tells the story of her life through books that impacted her life. Some of the books discussed in this memoir are John Milton's Areopagitica, Charlotte's Web, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, Gulliver Travels, and Death of a Salesman. She tells how books have shaped her life: "I know that spiritual formation is of God, but I also know--mainly because I learned it from books--that there are other kinds of formation, too, everyday gifts, and that God uses the things of the earth to teach us and shape us, and to help us to find the truth. One such gift is that my soul was entrusted to two good parents, one a mother who loves books and who read consistently to her children as we were growing up. . . . Although being raised by God-loving parents is no guarantee that one will love God oneself, it certainly helps. I did love God, even if it didn't always show, but for much of my life, I loved books more than God, never discovering for a long, long time that a God who spoke the world into existence with words is, in fact the source of meaning of all words. My journey toward that discovery is the story of this book. I thought my love of books was taking me away from God, but as it turns out, books were the backwoods path back to God, bramble-filled and broken, yes, but full of truth and wonder" (10-11). Booked: Literature in the Soul in Me is both a journey with and to God, and a journey with books.

Each chapter discusses a particular book that impacted her in a particular time in her life. For example, in chapter five she discusses how Jane Eyre impacted her life in eighth grade. She has an interesting title for the chapter: "Beholding is Becoming." She states that the middle school years is the age of becoming. One of the things she liked about Jane was "unlike most literary heroines, Jane Eyre is not striking, beautiful, or even pretty" (73). But beyond her appearance, Jane is a realistic character. Jane had "a very strong sense of self from a young age" (77). Swallow says her own self was shaped by her parents. She says she had a "sense of who she was," but she was not yet content with who she was. She thinks of Jane Eyre as a search for the self. The author asserts, Jane Eyre "is a poor friendless woman who is on . . . the quest for the self." She concludes the chapter, "In Jane I found a worthy role model on my journey to the freedom of becoming, fully and contentedly, myself" (93).

In the final chapter, she talks about poetry and doubt. The author says that she accepted Christ into her heart at the age of five, but it took a long time to accept Him into her mind too. She states, "As for me, I've never really struggled with doubt--doubt about God's existence or the truth of the Bible . . ." (190). She has faced doubt "through the disbelief of others, through the questions and honest searching of minds greater than mine, across the ages, on the pages and in the writers I have read" (190). One of the poets discussed in this final chapter is Thomas Hardy, and another is Matthew Arnold. She states, ironically, "Hardy's poems, like his novels, are riddled--in a truly bitter irony--with anger at God for not existing" (192). Of course, Arnold's "Dover Beach" is a very famous poem about the loss of faith. The speaker of the poem, says that without faith, the world has no joy, love, nor light. Swallow states, "Such poetry of doubt, ironically, helped grow my faith out of my heart and into my mind" (196).

Karen Prior's Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me shows how our lives can be shaped for the better by great literary texts. She shows on her chapter on Madame Bovary "that reading the wrong books can actually malform the self" (book review). Prior, even though she is Southern Baptist, argues for the importance of tradition. This book is enjoyable to read and it provides wisdom to the reader.