Recently I taught a new online class. This class teaches writers how to read a famous novel for insights into techniques and tips that might inform their own craft and projects. To be clear, the novel I chose was not at all new to me, but teaching it as a writing toolbox was. This book is famous in its native language and culture but is not well known here.
That book is a short novel by the famous-in-Germany classical author, Wolfgang von Goethe. The book in question is “The Sufferings of Young Werther.” It was published originally in 1774.
I have never exactly loved this novel, often called Werther for short. I read it for the first time in college, and I have taught it many times since, because, as I said, it’s an important work of literature. But the fact is, the hero, Werther (pronounced Verr-turr) kind of bored me. He is a very emotional, overly sensitive young man who falls in love with a woman who is already engaged. He proceeds to drive her and everyone else crazy, talks a lot about religion, carries on about being creative, leaves town, gets a job, has problems with the social scene at his job, quits, comes back to town, and kills himself shortly before Christmas.
The past few times I’ve taught the book, students have found the hero pretentious and overly self-involved. Almost everyone had more sympathy for the woman, whose name is Charlotte. Charlotte clearly likes Werther, but is committed to this other guy, named Albert. She doesn’t quite know what to do with Werther and of course feels terribly guilty when he kills himself.
I hadn’t read the novel in, I’d say, 15 years.
I reread it recently, this time from a writer’s point of view.
And gosh and golly, did I feel differently about it this time. Part of this different reaction may be due to the new translation by Stanley Corngold; this translation really gets the crisp modernity of the original German. But part of it is that my focus was entirely different. I was looking at the book as an amateur car mechanic, asking myself “what makes this best-selling classic car so special? How does it work?” In other words, what can I, as a writing student, learn from this famous text?
I got so much out of this experience. Moreover, talking with the eight other writers in my class gave me even more insight. Some writers still had problems with the main character, but we decided this was part of Goethe’s point: protagonists can be very flawed, but can’t we still sympathize with them? The answer was definitely yes. And then there’s the way the novel is structured – using the seasons of a year, and having the relationship flourish in summer and languish in winter. We also came to appreciate how clever and effective Goethe’s use of a fictional “editor” is. This sometime narrator organizes, and shares select letters that Werther wrote to him, and he comes in at the end of the novel to provide information that Werther himself won’t or can’t give.
This technique is so effective. The quieter tone of this narrator distances us from the intensely emotional goings-on, so it doesn’t get too out of control. And, or course, the editor narrates Werther’s death and the reactions of the people in his circle.
Another genius thing that Goethe does is seed the story with chance encounters with other people. These encounters build the complexity of the main character: he loves kids, he is kind to people who do not belong to his social class, and perhaps most importantly, he really likes and respects women as people (highly unusual in that time period). These scenes give us a very rich world, whose depth feels real.
Goethe also uses scenes that are very familiar to us now, like looking through a doorway to a scene already in progress and a dance-party sequence where the romantic feelings between the main characters become clear. Think about how ubiquitous the dance-party is in movies and books. It’s in “Grosse Pointe Blank,” and in “Napoleon Dynamite.” And of course “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility.” While I was reading that section I thought “gosh this reminds me of Jane Austen!” I did some online research and guess what? Jane Austen read and admired Goethe! That means, Austen probably borrowed from Goethe, and I can therefore borrow from both of them and use a dance party in my story/novel too.
When we read the old classics with attention as to what we can learn from them, we are following a time-honored writerly tradition, namely borrowing the good stuff when we see it.
So take another look at a classic novel that you thought was “meh.” What you see might surprise you.
