A year ago, I spent my Pizza time reading classic novels. I went through HG Wells, Jules Verne, Herman Melville. It was a beautiful thing to become re-acquainted with these classics with older eyes.
Of course, I was especially annoyed by the knowledge that every one of them today would be denied a publishing contract. Every one of them would be passed over by a literary agent. Jules Verne would have heard he doesn’t understand conflict and story structure. Wells would have heard that his protagonists were often weak and most persons wouldn’t be able to relate to them. Melville would have been told his editorializing, sarcasm and digressions were distracting to the reader.
Nevertheless, these are classics. They have survived for centuries because they indeed are timeless. Did you know you can google earth the chapel in Moby Dick? No kidding, it’s a real place. In front of it is a memorial plaque with the names of many lost at sea from whaling and fishing. And the fact that Moby Dick was retold as a Star Trek movie shows how timeless it is.
He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength,
with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is
chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale
principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy,
man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.
— Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Listen to the rolling tones in that. The words seem plain and boring. But if you try reading them aloud, you realize a rising hatred burns in Ahab. The confrontation is not with Starbuck, but with fate itself in the person of the ghost whale Moby Dick. Ahab is the whole scene standing in a bored out spot designed to take the weight off the stump of a leg torn off in Moby’s mouth. The crew is hypnotized by Ahab’s wrath, and almost to a man, they drink a toast to Ahab’s murderous rage.
Riveting. Read the scene separate from the story. It’s hideous, the burning rage of a strong man crippled. Ahab is wroth, a word that has little meaning to readers today, but signifies a wrath that burns and churns like bubbling lava, held in check only to wait for the opportune moment, when murder will be dealt out in a lashing out at its target. Ahab understands at his death he has condemned his crew to perdition, and the ghostlike beckoning at the end as Moby lashes out at the Pequod, the fury of judgment upon the Pequod for persecution of whales in the pursuit of greed.
The odd quote from Moby Dick in the movie Jaws passes by most people. Quint is an Ahab, seeking revenge on sharks for their murder of hundreds on the USS Indianapolis. Amazingly, the recounting of the fate of these men by Quint in the movie was written not by Benchley, but by the actor himself. There are two allusions in Jaws to Moby Dick.
This kind of riveting imagery can be easily tapped for your novels.A steady diet of not only these classics but also Shakespeare can boost your writing skills. This is why all writers agree – you must be a reader to be a writer. Every novel in some way trains you as a writer. They can be good bad examples, or they can shape and drive you.
Take some time to read classics, let the richness of these stories build you and strengthen your writing.
