A specific type of bookstore still exists in some cities; it has shelves and warped wooden floors that have obviously been added to over decades without much architectural planning, paperbacks stacked two rows deep with their spines facing different directions, and the entire place smells like paper slowly returning to the earth. The new releases section is practically an afterthought in stores like this. Everything else, including the out-of-print novels, the philosophy, and the histories written before living memory, is the true inventory. Recently, these locations have been quietly busy. People are returning to classic literature for some reason, and it is worthwhile to try to figure out what.
In 1944, C.S. Lewis provided the most convincing explanation in an introduction to a translation of a theological text from the fourth century, which is in and of itself proof of the claim he was making. According to Lewis, every historical era has its own set of presumptions that are so ingrained in the culture that its members are unable to recognize them as such. They just seem to be real. The arguments that appear to be the most contentious in any given era—the disputes that dominate public discourse and fill op-ed pages—usually involve people who share a much larger set of unquestioned premises but disagree on the surface. Lewis referred to these areas as blind spots. With his usual dryness, he noted that reading books written by those who did not share them is the only remedy.
This is not a claim that earlier eras had better solutions or that old books were wiser. They failed in countless ways, and from the distance of our own time, those shortcomings are typically clear enough. Old books provide a perspective that is truly outside of the present, from which the present can be observed rather than merely inhabited, rather than wisdom by default. None of these experiences—reading Thucydides on the breakdown of civic trust in Athens, Marcus Aurelius on maintaining composure while ruling an empire in crisis, or Montaigne on the comedy of his own inconsistencies—offer a solution to today’s issues. However, each of them accomplishes something more difficult to measure: it expands the boundaries of what seems feasible, enduring, and like nature rather than circumstance.
The resurgence of interest in classic literature is not coincidental. Widespread and difficult to pinpoint, there is a sense that the present is moving quickly in an unidentifiable direction and that the tools available to think about it—the news cycle, the algorithm, the recommendation engine—are not quite up to the task. The current moment is assumed to be the pertinent unit of analysis in everything that is optimized for it. Old books don’t make any such assumptions. They cannot flatter this decade, be shaped by its anxieties, or reflect its presumptions back in the form of confirmation because they were written by people for whom this specific decade did not exist. In this way, they are truly alien. They are useful in part because of their foreignness.
In a piece on the subject, Michael Hyatt pointed out that the book industry itself has subtly strengthened the preference for new. Booksellers usually return unsold new titles within 60 to 90 days in order to make room for the next wave; this system creates the appearance of abundance while actually focusing the discussion on a very small period of time. This has been partially remedied by the internet, which allows out-of-print books to be accessed and searched in ways that were not feasible twenty years ago. Tens of thousands of free public domain texts are hosted by Project Gutenberg. For a few dollars, AbeBooks can find an obscure Victorian essay. The physical barrier to reading vintage literature has all but vanished. The cultural barrier—the widespread belief that an older person is less sophisticated, relevant, or worthwhile—remains. Lewis called this “chronological snobbery.” According to his description, it is the unquestioning acceptance of the intellectual milieu of one’s own era coupled with the presumption that anything that has been replaced must have done so for a valid reason.
It is worthwhile to investigate that assumption. Books that have endured for centuries—not all old books, but those that are frequently reprinted, reassigned, and quoted—have withstood a test that no new book has yet to undergo. Their ability to endure is a form of debate in and of itself. It does not imply that they were correct about everything or anything in particular. It indicates that they had content that remained relevant to readers in a variety of historical periods, languages, and situations. It’s a useful filter. The taste of the present, which is exactly what we are attempting to look past, is the only thing that has tested a book that was released last spring.
It’s difficult to ignore the fact that those who have read the most for centuries are typically the ones who are least affected by the news. They have a longer comparison set, not because they are ignorant or uncaring. They have witnessed, on paper, the number of times the current crisis has had forerunners and how those forerunners were ultimately managed, mishandled, or outlived. Complacency is not the result of that viewpoint. If anything, it creates the opposite effect: a better understanding of what is actually novel about the present and what is just old problems dressed differently. Lewis proposed a straightforward rule: read an old book before starting a new one. Given the current situation, it would be reasonable to further modify that ratio in favor of the old books.
Chloe Olliver is senior editor at vclib.org, where she leads editorial coverage of literary criticism, political commentary, cultural analysis, and the evolving relationship between literature and public life across New York City and beyond. With a career spanning the intersection of literary journalism, political commentary, and educational publishing, Chloe brings both rigorous research discipline, in-depth knowledge, experience, and an accessible editorial voice to subjects that most readers find thought-provoking and culturally significant.