Why I Had to Take a Break from the Classics
Over this weekend I finished reading Patrick Suskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Bloody good book, amazing prose. You would think it would be hard to describe scent in words but I swear I could smell through the words. There is also a very nice film depiction starring Ben Whishaw as Grenouille if you are not into the reading.
But right now I feel like I might be thinking I need a break from old stuff.
[Warning, may contain spoilers to Tender Is The Night]
My journey with the classics began in May, when I found the copy of Anna Karenina that I owned. I wasn't expecting much, because Tolstoy, the name itself brings forth dread. Long Russian names that blur together. What surprised me was that for all there was about hay and farmer stuff (looking at you, Levin). There was heart. There was Anna's desperation to feel something more beyond her life as Alexei Karenin's wife. There was Vronksky's stupidity. There was Levin's rejection by Kitty. There was the ultimate timeless of question, are we okay to live with our lives now. And the human ability to spiral into self-destruction when it feels like the answer is "no, I can't live with this anymore".
Never in my life have I expected I would relate to something written more than a hundred years ago by a man I saw as "difficult and a bit too religious" but I felt seen. Anna was not insane. She was selfish, yes, but she was trying to survive in a society where her heart's desires were suppressed. She was punished because she wanted more out of life.
I have read Camus (or rather I tried to) when I was 22. Back then I was working for this start-up and the founder was French-Algerian. Before I met her I truly did not know where Algeria was. And being the curious cat I wanted to find out more and hey what better way to find out than to read a book, my favourite medium of discovery. Back then The Outside made no sense. I even tried to read The Plague. To me they were not very good novels (yes, back then I saw them as simply novels).
Fast forward back to June 2025. Where I started reading Camus again. This time round I was looking at the philosophy that was absurdism. The idea that yes there is no meaning in life but I am going to continue to live with rebellious joy. For someone who had some dark years since 2018, it felt right. Someone telling me that I do not have to find meaning in order to live. And living in itself could be a rebellion of its own. Meursault started to feel relatable. Sisyphus. And then I made a mistake into reading adjacent authors.
I started to read Sartre because I read somewhere that he and Camus were friends. I picked up Nausea. The title should have warned me but I was like I am going to be intellectual and expand my French philosophy reading. Big mistake. at first, Nausea was great at first. Sartre writes disassociation so well. But then he started to lose me when he found everything disgusting, even his own hand. It sent ME into an anxiety spiral. I felt actually physically nauseated (haha!).
I did put down Nausea because honestly I couldn't fucking deal.
Then I found F Scott Fitzgerald. I remembered distinctly how The Great Gatsby was quite a laugh. So I picked up Tender Is The Night. French Riviera, resorts, Paris. What could go wrong? I became Rosemary, I was charmed by the Divers. There was beauty in the decay. Oh, my boy Fitz writes like the champagne was always flowing, the party that happens every hour. It became uncomfortable because Dick Diver started reminding me of someone in my past. To quote another writer, all that glitters isn't gold. I had a pretty bad reaction, not because of Fitz. But because Dick Diver reminded me of a predator like him that I once trusted in when I was a lot younger.
Dick Diver brought out memories that I wish I could keep forgotten. And yet, the prose was beautiful. Rosemary and Nicole got the endings they deserve (like I did) and Dick Diver got what he deserved, a fade into nothing (like he did).
Since then, my collection has grown. I bought physical copies of books I know I would want to underline and scribble in. Right now I have Baldwin, Camus, more Fitzgerald, Orwell, Marquez, Nabokov, Woolf in the delightful Penguin Modern Classics editions. And not to mention the Russian authors I have on my Kindle. Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment is waiting but after that failed attempt in May when I was coming off Lorazepam, I am keeping it for another time.
I was trying to be well-read. Worldly and wise. I want to be that girl, not just for aesthetics, but I want people to know that why, yes, I am having conversations with authors long dead. And yes, I find classics relatable.
And then as I read, I found that I didn't have to pretend. I did relate. I found commonality in the needs and wants of people in the 1800s and now in the 2020s. We still want connection, we still want meaning, we still want to know "what can I do if it feels like everything is too much?".
I was bordering on obsession. Jumping from One Hundred Years of Solitude to Perfume to Wuthering Heights. Mixing in some Camus here and there.
I began to pick up my Kobo again (my device dedicated exclusively to books in Traditional Chinese). I picked up Keigo Higashino. All the 推理 I could think about. They were linear (mostly) and had clear endings. When I read crime novels my brain switches from drowning-in-existentialism to oh yes I saw that coming from two chapters ago. While there was some social commentary, these books did not trigger any spirals.
You know there is something weird happening when you start to see stories with extensive murder plots as palate cleansers and comfort reading. I have started Agatha Christie's And Then There were None.
I do still dabble in the classics but at more sustainable levels. Some days I will read a couple of pages of One Hundred Days. Some days a bit of The Myth of Sisyphus. Nausea I have decided to leave for a future me. This Side of Paradise is next because I simply cannot stay away from F Scott Fitzgerald's prose and I do want to see him at his literary Boy Wonder phase.
I am learning that it is okay to stop. It is okay to say, not for now. It is ok. Maybe if it doesn't work for now I am just not in the right headspace for it.
Reading, much like everything else we do in life, needs to be balanced. I cannot flit from existential dread to moral decay without a cost to my mental health. I am going to mix in books that are well-written and yet don't require me to give up my calm. Camus can wait. Fitzgerald can wait. I shall attempt to solve some fictional crimes in the meantime.
Balance.