Book Review
Title: Four Quartets
Author: T. S. Eliot
Publisher: Mariner Books
Date: March 20, 1968
ISBN: 978-0156332255
When you go to pick up a book to read, what normally comes to mind is, “Where’s a good story I can sink my teeth into?” or “Where can I find some good romance and action?” These are fine reasons and reading is a great occupation regardless of what or why. But once in a while another motive ought to come up: “Where can I find a taste of the best writing, where the writer approaches the work as an artist?” Such a motive is bound to open up all kinds of new discoveries and interests in one’s reading habits.
Some of the most mouthwatering stories and intense drama occur in the realm of “great literature.” And there is nothing necessarily highbrow in the term “literature”—such literary artists as Swift, Poe, Dylan Thomas, and Capote have seen to that. You won’t find a more suspenseful romance than Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
And you won’t find more intrigue and action than in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. What these writers do-that the so called “trash writers” don’t do is sweat and bleed over the placement of every word, agonize over the location of every paragraph.
Of course they also begin with a genius for writing, but disciplining that talent makes creating a work of art possible. This makes it literary art. But it doesn’t make it highbrow, it just makes it deeper or more interesting reading.
There’s a big difference between a good writer and a great writer. But the greatest difference applies to that distinction between a great writer and an artist. Posterity alone judges which writers endure as literary artists. The ingredients that make writing an art remain vague. They may be recognized by a consensus of those most involved in literary art, but such ingredients will never be quite explainable.
The closest one may come to an explanation is a poetic description appearing in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets:
“ … where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together …”
Poets are types of literary artists who don’t have the luxury of using a good story to support the form. They are one of the most overlooked groups of writers by modern readers. And no one sweats and bleeds over every word more than the poet. You may not find a juicy or compelling story, but you may find juicy and compelling thoughts; at the very least, thought provoking ways of looking at things. Every frame of mind and frame of reference can be explored in poetry. No other mode of expression is quite as capable of such blends of moods, from sensual to intellectual, violent to sublime, in such concentrated forms.
What follows is a passage of poetry which shifts from an intellectual expression to subtle sensual allusions:
“What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end,
which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden.
My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.’’
It’s from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. T.S. Eliot is one of those literary artists who has been looked kindly upon by posterity. (We are posterity for him.) He will most likely endure as the greatest poet of the 20th century. So if you do look for different kinds of reading once in a while, T.S. Eliot’s work is one good possibility. Whether it’s T.S. Eliot, Jane Austen, or Truman Capote, try some literature and see what happens.
Related Quote:
Reading Good Books Enhances and Lengthens Life
Great works of fiction are those with a more layered, complex investigation into the human condition, written in an artistic language resulting from painstaking development, so that it appears effortless.
Reading is a demanding process that yields deeper pleasure and more meaningful experience than movies and video. Every good book we read creates more depth in our thinking.
We also gain a deeper understanding of other people: “an influential study published in Science found that reading literary fiction (rather than popular fiction) improved participants’ results on tests that measured social perception and empathy, which are crucial to ‘theory of mind’: the ability to guess with accuracy what another human being might be thinking or feeling.”
It turns out we can enjoy our books longer as well, because reading them makes us live longer, according to another study: “Overall, the researchers calculated that book reading was associated with an extra 23 months of survival. … Reading magazines or newspapers didn’t have the same effect … it’s the deep engagement required by the narrative and characters of fiction, and the length of both fiction and nonfiction books, that increases cognitive skills and therefore extends lives.” Reading lengthens life (and improves the quality of it); watching TV shortens life (and destroys the quality of life). What a choice.
— Screenformation 2.0 (p. 86).
Happy Reading.