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latest news about the publishing industry with interesting insider interviews with publishing industry experts. we'll also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books. the latest book reviews, and we'll talk about the current nonfiction books featured on c-span book tv. and welcome to about books, a program and podcast produced by c-span booktv. we look at the business of publishing and we talk with authors about their work as well. in just a minute, we're going to be joined by columnist danny heitman of the baton rouge advocate to talk about rereading the classics. but first, i want to let you know that all booktv programs are available online at booktv dot org. danny heitman. in the wall street journal. you wrote a column entitled i'm revisiting the books of my

youth. why are you doing that. well, peter, i'm revisiting the books of my youth, basically based on my rediscovery of my norton anthology of american literature. that i used as a college freshman college student in 1982. and as you can see, it's really born the year. it's now held together with some duct tape and basically, in the course of cleaning out my house and tidying things up, i decided i'm going to take this old book from the shelf and i'm going to repair it in the course of repairing it. i reconnected with some of the wisdom that was and it wisdom that, to be frank, was not well

received when i was a freshman college student because quite frankly, i was too young to really appreciate what writers like henry david thoreau or ralph waldo emerson or emily dickinson had to tell me. so in reconnecting with that as an older person, i realized that a lot of the literature really resonates. as you add more birthdays, as i have and as everybody adds, that's what really reignited my desire to to to really revisit these classics and to engage with them as a source of instruction in my daily life. and in your column, you quote margaret aire burns as saying the trouble with education is that we always read everything thing when we are too young to know what it means. and the trouble with life is

that we're always too busy to reread it later. that's true, isn't it? i mean, when i was a college freshman and i was listening to henry david thoreau talk about the advantages of having very few possessions. it really fell on deaf ears with me because i didn't have anything to speak of. i was a poor college student. i have a very old jalopy of a car that i used to get back and forth to class and my aspirations at that time were to acquire more stuff like a lot of young people. and so thoreau, quite frankly, struck me as as an oddball. he here was a guy who lived at a cabin out by the woods, did not have any obvious means of he

didn't seem to have any kind of romantic life, which is something that like a lot of college students, i also wanted. and the other thing that struck me about him is the pictures. i notice that he had a pretty strange hair and and viewers might find this hard to believe. but back in college, when i had a little bit more hair on my cell, i thought, hey, it'd be great, really never have a keen hairstyle that would be attractive to members of the opposite sex. and, you know, thoreau kind of looked like a guy with bedhead, so this was not a guy that i automatically looked to as a hero, as a college freshman. well, fast forward a few decades. you know, now that i'm a guy who's had a mortgage, his filled backyard shed with more tools than i can ever use on shelves,

with more books than i can ever read, and a closet with more shirts than i could ever wear. of course. now what thoreau was saying means just so much more to me and it's just kind of a fundamental irony of life that whenever we're introduced to these great works of literature or in school, we're just often just, frankly, just too young to really appreciate what these writers are trying to tell us. so it's been a real blessing thing in my life to be able to connect as an older person and really grasp more deeply what these books have to tell me. so, danny heitman, even though you don't necessarily write about this, what's the solution to that young problem reading old writers and their wisdom? how do we how do we reconcile those things.

i think one thing that is a florida is to create opportunities for these books to greet us throughout our lives, even after we leave college and a really great way to do that is to hear these books in a bright and interesting way that even after we leave college, we might be tempted to go and reconnect with them. a very powerful example with me is after i left car, after i'd left my american lit class and a couple of years later, i had a summer internship on capitol hill. and as i was on my lunch hour and i was leaving the smithsonian museum of natural history, a little fleck of gray caught at the corner of my eye,

pivoted. and there was a bright leigh illustrated edition of walden there on the shelf of the gift shop. and just seeing walden curated in that bright, interesting way, really kind of prompted me to revisit it again. now, i still was not fully receptive to its message, but i do think it underscores the value of just our popular culture continuing to reintroduce these works to us. i'm going to give you a great example of that. i have a i have a really nice abridgment of henry david thoreau's journals that was published a few years ago by new york review books. really nice, bright paperback. and this is the kind of thing that a younger person might be tempted to pick up.

the other thing i just cannot say enough good things about the library of america, which is a nonprofit, organized nation that curates really the definitive editions of classic american literature. they're also a great resource if you want to really revisit these great works of literature. this edition right here is an edition of emerson selected journals. and this book is really dear to me because i think in emerson's journals, you really connect with a man who's a lot more emotionally vulnerable than the ralph waldo emerson of his essays. and as essays, you can kind of come across, quite frankly, as a little bit pompous. there's a great upcoming biography. it's going to be due out this spring of ralph waldo emerson by

james marcus. glad to the brink of fear. and marcus very humorously says that ralph waldo emerson can seem to him kind of like that uncle at holiday gatherings is dispensing advice that you really don't want to hear. just a little bit of a bore in emerson's journals, you see a man whose really struggling he's struggling with grief. he's struggling with wonder. he's struggling with the whole idea of religion and how to best honor divinity and the cosmos. and this is the guy that a young person would be much more inclined to embrace than the emerson, who are sometimes taught an american lit class. so i think moving culture is a great way to reconnect us with the classics. so many great adaptations of

jane austen novels as an example. and also just biographies that kind of give us a new dimension of these figures. you know, like there's a wonderful recent biography of henry david thoreau by laura dussault walls. she connects you with thoreau as someone who has just got a lot more dimensions than the guy just hanging out. you know, by the pond, trying to think great thoughts. there's a great reason anthology about henry david thoreau. now comes good sailing. it's edited by andrew blotter a lot of great writers who talk about how thoreau is deeply relevant to them and the modern lives that they lead, and probably my favorite essay in here is by george howe holds. there's just really a neat

writer analysis. thoreau on ice and he talks about the fact that thoreau just really enjoyed ice skating and he just had a great time out on the ice. this is not a henry david thoreau that we typically think about a guy who's out there having fun. and so i, i just think if we can create as many opportunities as past rebel for readers to simply happen upon these writers again, then that's all to our benefit. danny heitman besides thoreau dickinson emerson who else? what other authors or contained in your edition of norton anthology? well, one writer that i really want to point out is elizabeth bishop, who is just a fabulous

american poet who just wrote with such absolute precision about her inner life and, you know, one of the complications is that a teacher can tell you of teaching a survey course as you just cannot get every writer in this anthology. so i was not exposed to elizabeth bishop, third classroom instruction. she is someone that i happened across cross again in this book and i revisited her while recuperating from getting my wisdom teeth out, and i was heavily sedated. i was then allowed in my apartment and there was a public television documentary on about

elizabeth bishop and they were reciting long one art, which is about the art of losing. and bishop says, ironically, the art of losing isn't hard to master. and what she's really saying is losing and lost alive can indeed be very hard to master. i was just entranced by the quality of her language. and it occurred to me the next morning that maybe i had been charmed by bush because also heavily sedated after dental surgery. so i went and pulled my norton anthology off the shelf from college and revisit her work. our split, split more accurately. i visited her work for the first

time in this anthology, and i found it every bit as magical as i had the day before. another great writer that is in the anthology ology that is just more relevant than ever is james baldwin. a great excerpt of the fire next time. james baldwin, of course, and the formative african-american writer. but i really would caution people don't just connect with james baldwin, because he speaks so eloquently about the african-american experience. ends connect with james baldwin because he connects eloquently with universal human experience. so that's what all great writers do. and whenever he talks about in that great essay, she has a stranger in the village, he

talks about being in switzerland and being the only person of color in this little village. you know, on one level, it's a commonplace sign of race. on another level, it's a contemplation of the degree to which all of us, whatever our walks of life at some point, we're outsiders. and he connects with that experience. so powerful and with such poetic sentences that he's just a writer, that everybody should read. danny heitman the norton anthology has been expanded over the years to include newer writers. i bet that's a fun debate at the norton company. when they decide who to include with that, what do you think about the expansions? well, that's all to the good. i mean, cannon's literary cannons are reconsidered with every generation and i just

think it's a great that that that's done. i you know, again, think that while it's great to include writers because perhaps they come from under represented communities. i also think it's important for people to really value these writers because if they're great writers, they speak to universal experiences. an example of that from british literature for me is virginia woolf. virginia woolf is widely celebrated and rightly so, as a great feminist writer and as someone who spoke very powerful way about the marginalization of women. and this wonderful essay she

wrote about a room called a room of one's own. she talked about the the wrong headed policies that excluded women from higher education. and i think, you know, anybody can get great instruction and injustice by reading that at the same time. i don't read virginia woolf because i have to. i don't read her from a sense of grudging civic duty. i read virginia woolf because, gosh, her sentences are just so beautiful. they're so perfectly balanced. they're just like a butterfly that is land on a rose. and they're just gorgeous sentences. and. i right now, i've i've been involved in reading her

journals. that's that's how i've spent the past few weeks, you know, reading her her diary entries. that's where you kind of get a very intimate look of virginia woolf at ground level. there's a wonderful little passage that i read yesterday where she's scholarly herself and saying, you know, i really should have spent more time writing today. but instead, i beg to take, you know, and that's kind of a neat thing. and we can all relate to that because all of us are really getting moods sometimes where we have work today. but instead of doing the work that we should be doing, we do other stuff that seems more fun. danny heitman is a columnist for the baton rouge advocate public station. and i'll tell you that one of the classics that i return to again and again is one that takes place in your neck of the woods, a confederacy of dunces by john kennedy toole.

you know, i have a little quirk and even though a book reviewer occasionally write a few book reviews for the wall street journal and other places, and i'm someone who's constantly urging people to read this and read that, i tend to get my back whenever somebody says, you really need to read this at. my first encounter with a confederacy of dancers is when it was published, when i was in high school and a friend of mine met me in the hall while we were on our way to class and he said, you have absolute got to read confederacy of dunces. and i thought he i don't i don't know if i want to read that, but eventually just just to placate my friend, i started reading it and it really had a subversive

effect on me. it is so rich, but roaring like funny that i would think about it while i was in biology class or while in physics class or while i was on an english class and i would just have this uncontrollable urge to laugh. and it has been, you know, one of my all time favorite books ever since. the reason that i love it so much is the main character like so many of us who read the headlines every day, he is thoroughly convinced that the rest of the world is populated by idiots. and as you continue to read the book, which you watch, you slowly come to understand is our hero, ignatius riley. while he's condemning everyone for being absolute fools. he is actually the biggest fool

in the book and it's the book is really two things for me. it is kind of an observation of someone who is essentially an extended adolescence. he thinks people in authority are our dullards. he just is so exasperated at the world, hasn't quite caught up to his ideas of how the world should be. that is very much an adolescent sensibility, which is why it it just really struck me so deeply in high school. but the book is also a kind of a an observation about our own moral blindness. we always think the other person is absolutely wrong. and if they would just come around to our way of thinking, then the world would be better. and quite often we're flawed, too. i mean, is is there a better book to read right now with our country being so divided as it

is, as a book that's really about the fact that we need to look at our own foibles? i mean, that is really what makes confederacy of books just an eternal classic. and i'm really glad that you brought it up. danny heitman where are you in the norton anthology right now? what are you reading? well, i have recently been rereading emerson again. you you know, emerson's essays. the first time i read them, i was really. really put off by what i consider to be a kind of a sense of dry certitude. and his essays, he seems and his essay sometimes more as if he's proclaiming a truth that actually may prove a truth.

he simply offers these observations and kind of makes you feel like they're settled. settled and. reading as journals really brought me to want to reread the essays. and now that i'm reading them, i have a greater appreciation of how hard earned those those truths were that emerson came across. and because he was a guy who has struggled, first of all with organized religion and how do we best, you know, honor god, even when we feel that church life is emotionally distant from us? he also struggled with grief. he lost a wife very early, and

his first marriage. and the so, you know, the ability to reconnect with these essays and read them, you know, knowing what i know now about emerson has really brought a whole new dimension of that experience for me. i wanted to share something that i that i found in his journals that really kind of gives us a different emerson than the guy who kind of feels like he's had it all figured out. emerson says good writing is a kind of scathing, which carries off the performer where he would not go. you know, so here is a guy who is basically saying, when you're a writer, you have to give yourself permission to go to places that you did not expect and and this is the emerson that

i really like to hold to heart, as opposed to the guy who kind of sounds like he is poor, offering pronouncements from a pulpit. so in danny heitman writes in the wall street journal, as he ligations of marriage and parenthood kept me home more often, i reread passages from thoreau's walden for instruction and how to savor small moments outside my doorstep in the wake of family deaths. i found emerson's quiet resolve after his own losses and inspiration. dickinson, whose poems remained open to joy as the country. cory turned toward the civil war, offers me a model in seeking serenity amid social division danny heitman. we appreciate your time on book tv. thank you. it's great to join you from phi kappa phi where i had it for a magazine and i really grateful for the opportunity to connect to that. thank you, sir, and thanks for

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