The Classics in the Slums, Revisited

A fuller explication of a truly moving phenomenon

Perusing Notes recently, I noticed what appeared to be a restacked portion of a conversation between

Megha Lillywhite

and a commenter on one of her posts. Ms. Lillywhite had made the point that the poor have never had an easier time of it when it comes to self-study and self-improvement, with access to Classical works that would have made il Magnifico turn verde d’invidia. A respondent objected, stating:

I get what you're going for, but it seems you are really out of touch with “the poorest” in our society. Even ignoring them and focusing on the working poor with stable housing - if someone’s trying to fight their way out of poverty, how much time do you think they have to write their thoughts, read classical literature, and learn how to play instruments? None of those translate to economic advantages to people in that class, so they aren't going to be the focus. Learning how to cook is the only cost effective thing on this list for a person with little to no extra time on their hands.

I’ve seen this exact argument before. One of my all time favorite essays is a City Journal article from 2004, “The Classics in the Slums.” I’ve referenced it before here and there, but this exchange inspired me to write a bit more about the piece and how it crystalized some realizations I’d had about my own life and the trajectory it took. The thesis, in short, is that contrary to the expectations of middle-class critics, historically speaking the working-class and poorer members of society, given the chance, quite generally leap at the opportunity to learn the humane arts and Classical literature. Jonathan Rose, the author, gives countless examples from his own research demonstrating this phenomenon, and the common response to it among society’s elites, which is most often condescending dismissal. Mostly focused on Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the work still has much to say about life in the modern West more broadly.

Rose begins with an anecdote that illustrates the latter point. See if anything seems familiar:

In 1988, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, president of the Modern Language Association, authoritatively stated (as something too obvious to require any evidence) that classic literature was always irrelevant to underprivileged people who were not classically educated. It was, she asserted, an undeniable "fact that Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare do not figure significantly in the personal economies of these people, do not perform individual or social functions that gratify their interests, do not have value for them."

The proper focus of poor people is to stop being poor, poverty being conceived of in strictly material terms. Man lives by bread alone, the steady supply of which is the sole business of life. People in that class should occupy themselves with bettering their economic station rather than reading Dante. For the left this means social revolution of some sort. For the NormieCon this means ‘education’ stripped to a vocationalist essence. If there is any practical function to studying classic literature it is as a credentialed academic demonstrating one’s command of trendy academic theories to hiring committees; that is its economic use, which is to say its only real use.

Over one million copies sold- capitalism at work!

As an aside, one of the most brilliant, subversive, and hauntingly sad takes on that latter approach is the play Wit. I recall watching the movie version, with Emma Thompson in the leading role as an English professor dying of cancer. Through flashbacks we learn that she is cold and demanding, uninterested in the subtleties of the works she studies. One of her former students is now the oncologist in charge of her treatment, and he handles her as she once did her books, as an indifferent object upon which to test theories. The only people who show her compassion are the working-class nurse and her former mentor, in town to visit her great-grandchildren (she herself is unmarried and childless). The latter offers to read her some 16th century poetry; she asks instead for her mentor to read from the copy of The Runaway Bunny she’s brought for her own family. Though she specializes in John Donne, one of the most profound theological poets in the English language, it never occurs to her to pray.

Seriously, don’t watch this around women. It’s affecting…

That film affected me profoundly; it made me sad both because I’d spent time in cancer wards and because I could relate to the main character, having read Donne and much of the material alluded to in the story. I saw that her tragic flaw was that for all of her intelligence she never had the courage to allow what she studied to change her, that she feared opening herself to it, and missed the real point, human connection. I saw that and I’d read those things because I could read those things, because I’d taken the time and put in the work to do so. It never would have occurred to me to even watch it if I hadn’t, and I would have missed out on something really meaningful, just as that professor did. In short, if I’d taken an instrumentalist view of reading and education, I would lost the whole point, as she did, until perhaps the end.

At the time I first viewed Wit (2001) and first read “The Classics in the Slums” (2004) I was working for Marriott in various low-level capacities, going to college off-and-on, when circumstances allowed it. I’ve written about my experiences a bit before. Working in the hospitality industry was and is a generally miserable experience, made particularly degrading by the fact that the main part of the job is pretending to enjoy it for the sake of the customers. I’d worked there since I was in high school, having graduated in 1997. Economically speaking I lacked connections and prospects it was the best I could do until I was able to secure a piece of paper that would allow me access to something more remunerative.

I didn’t really think in those terms, though. It wasn’t money I wanted, though that was very much something I needed. I longed for meaning, for a larger purpose behind the drudgery. Said drudgery preceded my paid working life; my high school had been (and, having looked it up, still is) a horrible place, a warehouse for mostly dysfunctional young people before they become dependents of one degree or one kind or another on the state. Many of those people, or similar sorts, were my co-workers at Marriott. In general, we all fit some definition of working-class, poor, marginalized, the ‘other,’ etc. I was very aware that something was missing from my life, from all of our lives. But it was reading “The Classics in the Slums” that allowed me to most fully articulate it.

This documentary explains it all.

Rose tells the stories of individuals and communities whose lives were profoundly harder than my own who nonetheless found in the life of the mind, in culture, a means to elevate themselves beyond the miseries around them. Vignettes like the one about a rowdy audience threatening a riot at a theater that had the temerity to cancel a Shakespeare play in favor of a modern comedy illustrate that working people took art quite seriously. The used book stores of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were full of workingmen and women spending their meager salaries on literature. Though school, even middle school, was out of the question for most of these people, and though they would never be able to ‘use’ their learning to profit themselves monetarily, it held value for them such that they were willing to sacrifice greatly to get it. The essay is full of wonderful accounts like this one:

While studying Greek philosophy at night, Joseph Keating performed one of the toughest and worst-paid jobs in the mine: shoveling out tons of refuse. One day, he was stunned to hear a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate." "You are quoting Pope," Keating exclaimed. "Ayh," replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well." Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith, and Richardson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he acquired a violin for 18 shillings, took lessons, and formed a chamber-music quartet, playing Mozart, Corelli, Beethoven, and Schubert—not an uncommon hobby in the coalfields. And he never forgot the electric thrill of pursuing books and music: "Reading of all sorts—philosophy, history, politics, poetry, and novels—was mixed up with my music and other amusements. I was tremendously alive at this period. Everything interested me. Every hour, every minute was crammed with my activities in one direction or another. New, mysterious emotions and passions seemed to be breaking out like little flames from all parts of my body. As soon as the morning sunlight touched my bedroom window, I woke. I did not rise. I leaped up. I flung the bedclothes away from me. They seemed to be burning my flesh. A glorious feeling within me, as I got out of bed, made me sing. My singing was never in tune, but my impulse of joy had to express itself."

Their betters generally disapproved.

Housemaid Margaret Powell (b. 1907) read Remembrance of Things Past three times over, but her allusions to Dickens and Conrad were likely to scare away boys. She worked for an aristocratic lady in Chelsea, who, considerate and liberal-minded in every other respect, was thoroughly nonplussed when her servant asked to borrow a book from her library. "Yes, of course, certainly you can, Margaret—but I didn't know you read."

“They knew that you breathed and you slept and you worked, but they didn't know that you read. Such a thing was beyond comprehension. They thought that in your spare time you sat and gazed into space. . . . You could almost see them reporting you to their friends. ‘Margaret's a good cook, but unfortunately she reads. Books, you know.’“

I’ve had such encounters myself.

I do not wish to romanticize the working class or poor people, or to imply that they all have some burning desire to read that their dull pseudo-elites are squashing out of contemptuous malice. Reading JD Vance will disabuse you of those notions. While modern Western man has the edge over the toiling Victorian masses in terms of sanitation and medicine he is quite disadvantaged in terms of cultural capital. Indeed, if anything, the mental life of modern man is much like his diet, stuffed with lab-generated prolefeed designed to keep him moving without really ever improving. Neoliberalism has so deracinated the masses, so cut them off from their own pasts, as to leave those who would create entertainment for them recycling recent material in ever-closer epicycles. J. R. R. Tolkien was a scholar of vast erudition who drew upon a huge body of knowledge in crafting his epic fantasy lore; modern writers tasked with interpreting his work can, at best, hew as closely to his story as possible; if they try to innovate, they so lack anything like the necessary background as to make the whole thing a childish pastiche. George Lucas could draw on Westerns and early science fiction, itself informed by classic works. His successors, well, not so much.

What to expect? You knew before you even tuned in. In another world, they would have put Roger Corman in charge of a show about lesbian space witches, and it would be Lana Turner on that poster.

I can remember reading Cicero while sitting on a barstool during downtime. I would get so into the work that I would become upset with the hostess when she told me I had a table to serve. I bought my first Greek textbook from Borders while I worked there, pouring over it, not quite getting it, and making the decision to go into great debt studying Classics at the flagship state college down the road. I remember having to email professors two weeks before the end of the semester to inform them that I wouldn’t be able to come to class anymore that term because I couldn’t afford a car repair I needed to make the hour-long commute (they were understanding). I never finished that degree (I continued with another) but those were the happiest years of my life despite the crap job and the constant uncertainty. I still have that Greek book today.

In my Myth and Society class we learned about the professor’s research on a primitive island, where the natives shared a body of lore known as the Song of the Ancestors. Classics proper, and classical literature more generally, is the West’s version of the same. It’s the most basic inheritance of the people, a field properly belonging to any son or daughter willing to plow it. To surrender that and valorize vocational ed and Netflix is the same as abandoning your communities to foreigners, trading your birthright for soup.

I teach now. I wish I could say that my days are spent Robin Williams-style amping up the youth with my idiosyncratic love of poetry. But teaching, in many ways, is as toilsome as waiting tables; only a minority of my work involves actual talking to students. This is true even though I work in a private school with little of the nonsense overhead of the public system. That’s not ideal, but I always find a way to make it work. My basic heuristic when it comes to the workings of Neoliberal managerialism is ‘there’s always a way around.’

This is such a better movie about teaching than Dead Poets’ Society.

Administration tasked every teacher with coming up with an ‘enrichment activity,’ something to engage the minds of the students in a more easygoing manner than standard classroom instruction. Most go with things like board games or such; my activity is Biblical Greek. Of course, the enrichment goes far beyond the particular scope implied in the title, as the background necessary to understand the language encompasses history, theology, linguistics, myth, and comparative literature, among other things. It’s my backdoor way of smuggling in the sort of education I’d have on offer all the time. I wouldn’t call it universally popular (the boys do like board games) but if I don’t have many, I have those who are willing to step to the challenge. As Gideon learned, that is enough.

When they ask what the point of learning a dialect of Ancient Greek is, I tell them it’s to talk to Ancient Greek people. Being dead, they have more interesting things to say than the living. Being able to read the Bible in the original language opens up a gateway to understanding the formation of your own world. This is especially true of the Bible, but the same can be said to an extent of classic literature generally. Outcomes vary a bit, but you can also expect the following results:

• Classical literature will teach you discipline. It’s as difficult as weightlifting and the gains come purely through effort.

• Classical literature will make you more of what you are. Not better or worse, but more. When the past opens up its mind to you, you become one with it, and are no longer a creature of the present. You acquire another dimension to yourself.

• Classical literature will make you strange. Your head will never be fully in the world around you anymore, you will never fully belong to the same universe as your peers. Your very idea of normal will shade into something your friends and family do not recognize. You will want different things than them.

Note that none of these things will happen if you’re studying these works for mercenary reasons. You’ll get that professor job if you check the right boxes, but you’ll be as boorish as any HR functionary and end up getting roasted on X for your manifest dullness. You have to approach the classics (in every sense) with an attitude of reverence and humility. But properly undertaken, there is nothing more rewarding, no better use of the faculties of the mind, no more certain path for the man of reason to be drawn to the higher things, to Truth and Beauty and Good, and thence to God.

So in short, in my considered opinion, classics belong in the slums.