Old books are musty. Newer reprints of old books can be hard to find. In either case, the content is outdated. I know these things, because I’m an incorrigible reader of old books. I repeatedly quote Homer, Dante, and St. Augustine in my homilies until my parishioners’ eyes glaze over. Looking at my desk right now, stacked on it are a 100-year-old choir school textbook about how to chant in Latin, a bound up selection of readings from the saints that date back more than a 1,000 years, and a stack of Os Justi Press reprints of theological classics.
The latter were sent my way recently by the good folks over at Os Justi and I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see these old titles being kept in print. When they arrived in the mail, I thumbed through them and got to thinking about old books in general. What’s the value in keeping them around, reprinting them, reading them? After all, as I already mentioned, the content is outdated. Those books know nothing of modern life.
That’s precisely why I like them. It’s why they’re so valuable. A common mistake people of every era make is to think their own time is the best and most important. This is not correct. If we fall into chronological snobbery by dismissing the wisdom of generations that came before, we lose so much. We get so blinded by trendy intellectual fads that our literature becomes limited and the whole tenor of our conversations and thought patterns is narrowed. The way to broaden our knowledge and empathy is by reading old books from different eras. In my experience, outdated books contain a surprising amount of interesting, thought-provoking, and relevant material. Simply put, calling classic old books “outdated” is a compliment. It means they’re timeless.
I made a short list of how reading old books benefits us.
Chronological humility
I’ve read a number of recently written books by the next-great-author that aren’t bad. I’ve read some old books that were bad. Not all new books are inferior, and not all old books are good. We can’t fall into the opposite mistake of thinking that our era is worthless but the past was a perfect golden age.
C.S. Lewis makes a similar point in his introduction to St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation.
“People were no cleverer then than they are now,” he writes, “they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us.”
Old books have something to teach us, even if it’s only how to avoid making the same mistakes.
Beyond this, though, humility acknowledges that previous generations did indeed have wisdom and not every modern development is progress. In the case of old books, the ones that are still around have passed the test of time, which is a clue that they contain much worth pondering. For instance, one of the books I’m very glad is in print from Os Justi is Romano Guardini’s book on Sacred Signs. This book contains tremendous spiritual insight into liturgical symbols. It has changed the way I think about Church architecture and liturgy, and deserves to be read widely.
Diversity and unity
Yes, old books can be difficult to understand because their sentence structure and manner of thinking seems foreign. This difficulty is good. It means we’re being exposed to diversity of thought.
I often struggle initially to get into a groove with an old book. I have a hard time empathizing with the characters, in fiction, or the author, in non-fiction. What I’ve found is that, if I just keep reading, eventually something clicks and a connection is made. After that, reading the old book is a joy.
As a reader, I enjoy the writing of people like St. Augustine, Dante, and Homer not only for their diverse content, but because they’ve somehow become my friends. In the same way, as a writer myself, I think of my homilies, essays, and books as a little contribution to the generational conversation. I read old books by authors. They inspire me. I write back. Hopefully other people join the conversation by reading and writing and, before we know it, there’s a whole wonderful world of diverse, inspiring books new and old that knits us together in friendship.
A living tradition
Old books are an entrance into a living tradition. Smart and talented writers from the past are still speaking. They have valuable things to teach and captivating stories to tell. The sophistication of ancient philosophers, poets, and storytellers is astounding. I often come away from reading an old book convinced that, of the two of us, the author is far more thoughtful and intelligent.
A complete perspective
Old books contain different assumptions about the world and how to move through it. By reading them, we’re opened up to these different perspectives. The result is an increase in empathy and openness. Lewis comments,
“Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period.”
In other words, old books can teach us a thing or two.
In a recent essay, Scott Cairns writes about how, when he was in a writing class, his teacher had him read old poems by Coleridge repeatedly in order to learn how to write. Not only did he learn to write from old poets, but he also became motivated to write back. The more complete his perspective became, the more alive his own efforts were. It seems to me that, even if someone isn’t a writer, being a reader of old books has the same general motivational effect. We get the sense that we’re being cheered on as we take our place in the grand parade of life.
So, perhaps, reading old books is exactly what every modern person needs. There’s a generational conversation taking place and it’s high time we joined it.
