Tradition by Seth Lerer

Tradition by Seth  Lerer is a book by the Literary Agenda, a branch of Oxford University Press. In this erudite work  the Professor starts to saying that our society is less interested from various decades at this part at literature although literature remains a pillar of culture and one of the strongest connections and invisible wires between past and present; the importance of good books, good reading and rereading indispensable for understand the past and the present.
In this sense mr. Lerer admits that every work born in a certain historical period "speaks" of that age and problematic: each reader thanks to his/her past, knowledge, experience, erudition filters the messages of the book and characters with different perceptions. A fact is more than sure: that rereading is necessary for a best understanding of a classics or a book loved so badly.
Then mr.Lerer analyzes David Copperfield and other Dickens's books and influences of these remarkable characters on other writers in modern literature. 1984 by Orwell is read by Lerer as an emulative job; Orwell was a profound estimator of Dante and his Comedia like also of Geoffrey Chaucer. Orwell possessed a lot of copies of the Comedia. One in original, another translated in english: a third one in italian and english.
You will also discover the profound differences existing in the Odysseus and Iliad without forgetting an important digression about social media: reading and posting make all of us authors, defining ourselves.
Books we read define our identity. A book is a research and a discovery. When we find ourselves in a book and we recognize that story as our own story because captivating, it means that it is part of us.
In this sense Marta Nussbaum said in a passage: "People care for the books they read; and they are changed by what they care for."

The author adds:"What is reading if not a performance?"  Reading when we are somewhere, outside,on a bus, while we are waiting someone, on a bench, under a tree if we live in a countryside tells Lerer means  "to be inside" staying outside; absorbing notions, isolated from the world that it is around us but at the same time in great company.

The syntheses of this book can be seen in these phrases of the author:

"What are you reading? This, in the end, is the question that literature wants us to ask. The literature tradition...has both a past and present. Today makes yesterday mean...because the questions "What are you reading?" remains a question asked today. And if we answer it right...we shall give the story of our lives. We shall look our neighbors in the eye, we shall try to get along in the world, and as we talk about our books, we shall know that what makes us truly human in this unpoetic world is our continuing appreciation of the pastness of the past, our taste for a tradition made our own, and our need, when we have been inexact in taste, to ask forgiveness."

Highly recommended to scholars, students, teachers and everyone in love for literature, past, and present.

I thank Oxford University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori