Classics Read Aloud

Ruby Love

You're never too young or too old to enjoy being read to. classicsreadaloud.substack.com

  1. 13h ago

    Double Birthday, Willa Cather (1929)

    I am currently walking 162 miles of the Camino de Santiago with my family. While on this pilgrimage, I am republishing some of my favorites from the archives. Willa Cather’s “Double Birthday” was the very first reading I published on Substack. If you missed these stories the first time around, now is a great time to listen or explore the archives on your own (searchable by date recorded, by author, and by theme). By the time the short story “Double Birthday” appeared in the pages of The Forum in February of 1929, Willa Cather was already well-known and widely published. One of Ours had earned the author a Pulitzer in 1923, and her novel Death Comes for the Archbishop was released in serial form in The Forum in 1927. In many respects, Cather was approaching the zenith of her career that year, having been awarded an honorary degree from Yale University and elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1931, she appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. Accomplishment can give one a certain level of freedom to move about. It was at this time that Cather departed from the prairie themes found in earlier works (My Ántonia and O Pioneer), preferring to explore the complications of more cosmopolitan settings. She began using her writing to examine culture, nostalgia, memory, and spirituality. It is no wonder, then, that “Double Birthday” found its way to the public via The Forum. For this story, Cather chose not a literary magazine per se, but rather one that was a hub for cultural and political debate. Willa Cather here writes of the years after World War I; a time of necessary transitions as the formalities of life before the war became off-putting, excessive, and flat after so much destruction. Previously cherished traditions (“full of chests of linen like this”) teetered in purgatory, awaiting a new place to land. In this vein, the thrust of Cather’s narrative leans towards an acceptance of time’s arrow. Known as a pragmatist in her personal life, Cather’s tone is congruent with her likely approach to this phase of her life and to society at large. Dour though the topic may be, Cather executes her tableau with terrific pace and scintillating wit. Please enjoy… Headline Image: Luncheon at Antino by Peder Severin Kroyer, c. 1890 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

    1h 3m

  2. Jul 3

    The Declaration of Independence (1776)

    The World Cup is making its way across the United States this summer, and with it, there is a newfound international appreciation for all things American. While the mass media is fond of highlighting the broad European fascination, nay, envy, of our humming temperature-controlled interiors; our giant Buckee’s, Wal-Marts, and refrigerated meat departments; and our ubiquitous “ranch sauce,” I hope there is something more brewing amidst the fervor that infects those within her borders. America is as divided as it is majestic. It is today, as it was in the 1970s, as it was in the 1860s, as it will be again. I, for one, find the tendency towards eyebrow-raising and cynical observation an all-too-alluring siren song, and I don’t think such dispositions deliver any worthy outcomes. Rather, I aim to focus my energy on what Helen Keller named, in 1929, “the pioneer qualities” of the country, “the large, free, unconventional, humorous point of view of men who sail new seas and blaze new trails through the wilderness.” These admirable, creative pioneer qualities are what have lifted up generations of ambitious, hard-working, determined families. They have also given birth to, quite naturally, a host of equally damaging proclivities. In a letter to his wife on the eve of signing the Declaration of Independence, John Adams worries over these tendencies. He confides in her that our many “Errors, Follies, and Vices…threaten to disturb, dishonour, and destroy Us.” He, along with his fellow signatories, knew of the risks they were taking in striking out from the crown, for human nature is predictable, especially when ordained with “unbounded Power.” And yet, they went forward with their great ambition, and we are here, two hundred and fifty years later, finding new ways to exercise our inclination to sail new seas and blaze new trails through the wilderness. Magnificence aplenty. Please enjoy this reading of John Adams’ letter, as well as the Declaration of Independence itself. When was the last time you connected with it directly? For most of us, it has been far too long. Headline Image: Afterglow by Jonas Lie, c. 1913 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

    20 min

  3. Jun 26

    Big Two-Hearted River, Ernest Hemingway (1925)

    I am currently walking 162 miles of the Camino de Santiago with my family. While on this pilgrimage, I am republishing some of my favorites from the archives. Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River,” released in September of last year, remains one of my most popular recordings. If you missed these stories the first time around, now is a great time to listen or explore the archives on your own (searchable by date recorded, by author, and by theme). ___ Every day, dozens of outdoorsmen head out into nature, armed with video cameras, battery packs, and oh-so-many envelopes of instant oatmeal, to capture their communion with nature. And every day, tens of thousands of would-be outdoorsmen tune into YouTube to watch the newest videos coming from the field. The outdoor genre is booming, with estimates easily topping more than 1 billion views per year. One can’t help but wonder if that concentrated energy isn’t chasing just a small taste of what Hemingway offers us with “Big Two-Hearted River.” His short story, published in May of 1925 in the inaugural issue of This Quarter, presents a semi-autobiographical sojourn to the waters of Upper Peninsula, Michigan, where the main character, Nick Adams, goes trout fishing and reminds the reader what a conversation with Mother Nature really sounds like. If you want an example of true mindfulness, this is it. Hemingway doesn’t allow Nick’s thoughts to wander towards the depths of worry, despair, or even hope that are surely there (as they are with all of us). Rather, he reverently savors the doing of this overnight fishing trip and the peaceful, almost gluttonous solitude it affords. “While he waited for the coffee to boil, he opened a small can of apricots. He liked to open cans. He emptied the can of apricots out into a tin cup. While he watched the coffee on the fire, he drank the juice syrup of the apricots, carefully at first to keep from spilling, then meditatively, sucking the apricots down. They were better than fresh apricots.” “Big Two-Hearted River” became the foundation upon which Hemingway built his first collection of short stories, In Our Time. Please enjoy… Headline Image: The Brook by Robert Lewis Reid, c. 1915 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

    45 min

  4. Jun 19

    “Indian Summer of a Forsyte” from The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy (1918)

    “The thought that some day—perhaps not ten years hence, perhaps not five—all this world would be taken away from him, before he had exhausted his powers of loving it, seemed to him in the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon. If anything came after this life, it wouldn’t be what he wanted; not Robin Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces—too few, even now, of those about him!” In 1906, John Galsworthy published Man of Property, the first novel in his acclaimed and oft-adapted The Forsyte Saga. It was met with the best sales and reviews of his career. (My reading of an excerpt from the book can be found here.) Despite its immediate success, Galsworthy was not quick to follow up The Man of Property. It took him 12 years to return to the Forsytes, a period he spent writing unrelated novels, putting on plays, and campaigning for various political causes. By the time Galsworthy finally revisited his most iconic creations, the world had changed dramatically. The First World War had upended much of the social order that produced families like the Forsytes, and the new generation of writers that emerged in its wake was not kind to his tales of the old aristocracy. The Man of Property would soon be called feeble, bloodless, and fake, though great literature always weathers such criticisms. Perhaps motivated by his advancing age—he was too old to serve in the army and felt that he was not contributing enough to the war effort—or perhaps by the suspicion that there would soon be little interest in a family like the Forsytes, Galsworthy returned to their story with both a rapid pace of work and a reflective mood. “Indian Summer of a Forsyte,” the 1918 interlude that preceded two more novels in the saga by 1921, focuses on patriarch Old Jolyon’s recognition of aging and his anticipatory grief over losing the things he holds dear. Looking out over the expanse of his acreage, the old man observes that “the orthodoxy he had worn in the ’sixties, as he had worn side-whiskers out of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off, leaving him reverent before three things alone—beauty, upright conduct, and the sense of property; and the greatest of these now was beauty.” It is shortly after this that Old Jolyon comes across a surprise visitor who is the embodiment of Beauty itself, and the two revel in each other’s company, while we, the reader, become uniquely aware of the shared grievance these two have for the temporary nature of life’s most precious happinesses. Galsworthy took note of such shifts in his own life, commenting on the departure from one set of priorities to another as an “endless duel fought within a man between the emotional and critical sides of his nature.” Was this Indian Summer interlude an opportunity to work this duel out on the page? Or was it, perhaps, Galsworthy’s attempt to soften the interpretation of his aristocratic position in the public eye by going in-depth on a character both representative and sympathetic? The Forsytes may be departed from the world, but there is still much to appreciate in Galsworthy’s depiction of this struggle, which plays out in various forms for every successive generation. Please enjoy… Headline Image: Sunset at Scheveningen by Hendrik Willem Mesdag, 1894 Subscribe to Classics Read Aloud to receive future readings, including commentary and interesting “et cetera” tangent links, right to your inbox: https://classicsreadaloud.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

    42 min

  5. Jun 12

    A White Heron, Sarah Orne Jewett (1886)

    “The tree seemed to lengthen itself out as she went up, and to reach farther and farther upward. It was like a great main-mast to the voyaging earth; it must truly have been amazed that morning through all its ponderous frame as it felt this determined spark of human spirit creeping and climbing from higher branch to branch.” Sarah Orne Jewett is one of those great American writers who enjoyed broad popularity while alive but whose name has fallen off the dwindlingly short list of classic writers with modern day recognition. This says more about the tenor of modern modes of entertainment than it does about the quality of her writing. Along with friend and contemporary Mary Wilkins Freeman (a recording of her story “Shadows on the Wall” can be found here), Jewett was published regularly by The Atlantic and Harper’s and under myriad regional mastheads across the country. The focus of Jewett’s entire life, personal and professional, rested in New England. She was raised in New Berwick, Maine, on a family property that situated her childhood home right next door to her grandparents. As a girl, she accompanied her father, a local doctor, on his rounds to visit patients in town and on the neighboring farms, and her life remained comfortably bound to the rhythms of her birth county. It is perhaps this tightly woven connection to family and land that gave Jewett her evident sense of intimacy with her stories and the characters they protected, which was sometimes at odds with the commercial necessity of her profession. In a letter to Anne Fields, she expressed, “Sometimes, the business part of writing grows very noxious to me… It seems as bad as selling our fellow beings.” She was nonetheless quite good at “the business part.” It is perhaps this instinct towards cloistering that influenced Jewett’s prose, which is delicate yet confident. What is clear, however, is that this leaning was hardly one which encouraged the musty staleness of a lifeforce kept enclosed. Quite the opposite, for her view of the world, expressed through the language and action of “A White Heron,” the well-loved and much anthologized short story, is inviting and fresh. In this story—some even describe it as a fairy tale of sorts—she lets us in to the inner world and budding complexities of Sylvia, a spirited, adventurous young girl who knows the forest just beyond her grandmother’s house like the back of her hand. It is the center of her universe, and we bear witness to the first opportunity she has to confront the rather adult considerations of loyalty and stewardship. In a letter written to Willa Cather in 1908, Jewett advised the aspiring writer to “find your own quiet centre of life, and write from that to the world.” She goes on to insist that, absent such centering, “strength in a writer is only crudeness, and what might be insight is only observation; sentiment falls to sentimentality.” “A White Heron” is the embodiment of Jewett’s sagacity. From its quiet center explodes a strength, consciousness, and humanity that is entirely unsentimental. Please enjoy… Headline Image: Twilight | Hale Woodruff, c. 1926] Subscribe to Classics Read Aloud to receive future readings, including commentary and interesting “et cetera” tangent links, right to your inbox: https://classicsreadaloud.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

    27 min

  6. Jun 5

    “Projection of the House” from The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy (1906-1922)

    “The notion of being the one member of his family with a country house weighed but little with him; for to a true Forsyte, sentiment, even the sentiment of social position, was a luxury only to be indulged in after his appetite for more material pleasure had been satisfied.” What is in a name? Well, if the name is Forsyte, very much indeed. The Forsytes, a fictional upper-middle-class family in Victorian London created by writer John Galsworthy in 1906, have been the subject of nearly a dozen radio and screen adaptations, starting with a silent film released in 1920, numerous television series, and, most recently, with a PBS Masterpiece series just released in the US in March of this year. Having watched a version of the tale from 2002 starring Damian Lewis and Gina McKee—a masterpiece in subtlety, patience, and gaze—I was keen to tune in to the newest version and did so, giving it the full benefit of a welcome reception. It had been many years between the two, and much of my time in the first episode was spent recalling to mind memories of the Lewis version; this new iteration seemed so very different that I assumed I must be misremembering. (Three episodes in, as I was fully convinced of the departure from the prior version, the driving thrust of this rendition was made absolutely evident: hunks with bulging pectorals and great hair. Perhaps these episodes fell off the back of the Hallmark/Lifetime truck.) What did Galsworthy intend with his trilogy, written over the course of 15 years? Which storylines accurately reflect the scenes imagined and phrases selected so skillfully that their author was later granted a Nobel Prize in Literature that specifically cited “his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga.” I was left with only one option: I had to read the original. If the failures of the 2025 rendition and its remarkable departure from the 2002 version serve only to drive others to the same action, it will have been worth it. The original work is the best of all worlds—it is easy to see why many have been tempted to bring the story to the screen, and yet none could possibly do it justice (the 2002 attempt comes awfully close). The Forsyte Saga is, as Galsworthy explains in his preface, “no scientific study of a period; it is rather an intimate incarnation of the disturbance that Beauty effects in the lives of men.” Today’s reading is from the first book of the series, A Man of Property, in which one can sense how carefully each of those words from the author’s introduction to the piece was chosen. An “intimate incarnation” suggests a sense of privacy and reserve, perhaps even of the subterranean, and gives flavor to the notation of Beauty’s “disturbance” bubbling up to the surface, uncontained and unrestrained. This chapter, “Projection of the House,” will give you just a taste of the simmering tension carried collectively by this family of self-made fortune and studied respectability. Please enjoy… Headline Image: Solitude by Joshua Shaw, 1818 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

    24 min

  7. May 22

    Rip Van Winkle, Washington Irving (1819)

    “Rip Van Winkle was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound.” Rip Van Winkle is one of those characters whom everyone feels they have heard of, many could identify why, few could delve into any particulars, and nearly none born after 1980 have read of directly. Maybe I’ll catch a few more today with this reading of Washington Irving’s entertaining tale of liberation. Yes, the story traverses the American Revolution, but there is a parallel and far more passive overthrow of power occurring as well. Rip Van Winkle, a kind-hearted but rather unproductive man, goes off into the Kaatskill Mountains (now known as the Catskills) to hunt squirrels and generally avoid the tyranny of his “termagant” wife, Dame Van Winkle. It seems Dame Van Winkle could never seem to quiet her disapproval of Rip’s casual, feckless ways, and “poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labour of the farm and clamour of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods.” Where can a fellow get a Man Cave when he needs one? Alas, Rip’s saunter into the mountains leads him to tarry with a group of jolly “odd-looking personages” who were happily bowling in the valley and drinking beer. Partaking freely of their generosity, Rip finds he has overindulged and lies down for a fateful nap. Upon waking twenty years later, Rip returns to town to discover just how action-packed those years really were. The British flag has been replaced with stars and stripes; King George’s likeness has been swapped for that of General Washington. And most fortuitous of all, Dame Van Winkle has passed from this world into the next. Freedom earned with a nap! Was there ever a more perfect arrival of events for a man so averse to effort? Irving clearly had fun with this one, cleverly adapting a story mined from German folklore to give, in his words, “a colour of romance and tradition to interesting points of our national scenery.” Please enjoy… Subscribe to Classics Read Aloud to receive future readings, including commentary and interesting “et cetera” tangent links, right to your inbox: https://classicsreadaloud.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

    43 min

  8. May 8

    “Spring” from Jean Gourdon’s Four Days, Émile Zola (1874)

    “The valley was mine, really mine; I had conquered it with my legs, and I was the real landlord by right of friendship.” Today, I invite you to remember springtime in your youth. Go back to that enchanted period, filled with an abundance of nature’s delights. Perhaps you remember rushing outside to roll down grassy hills, or rubbing yellow dandelions on your skin, painting it with the sun… Eventually, you put such childish frivolities aside, but the fresh spirit of Mother Nature still beckoned to do her job. Perhaps as a teenager you flirted on neighborhood walks, with only the bustling sparrows to watch you, or lay under the grand willow tree, relishing the cool vibrations of its lacey canopy rustling in the gentle afternoon breeze… Throughout the ages, young love has intuitively gravitated to the open air where the bloom of Spring could work its magic on yearning hearts… Spring doesn’t whisper. She parades her busy creation from on high to all who tune in to her blushing frequency. This may have been more obvious and accessible in Émile Zola’s time than it is today, distracted as we are by all this concrete, glass, and silicon. But she is nonetheless still there, with arms open, ready to accept us into her abundant bosom… Today, I implore you to find a garden, a field on the edge of the woods, any patch of grass where you can set a blanket. Lay down, close your eyes and let the air wash over you, breathe deeply the smells of dirt and grass, and then listen to Zola’s tale of this momentous spring day. Please enjoy… “♡ Like” this post to let the love shine in. p.s. Read the remaining three of Monsieur Gordon’s “Four Days” here. I expect to record each in turn during the coming year. La Vie Parisienne: This week’s posting finds me in Paris with my ever-elegant mother. At this moment, we are surely soaking up each delicate, ornamented detail. I may pop back here before hitting “publish” to add some pictures, but if you are reading this now, then it is safe to assume I am simply too fully absorbed in this lovely adventure to be interrupted. Until next week! “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving, 1819 “Hilda Silfverling” by Lydia Maria Child, 1845 “The Bridal Party” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1930 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit classicsreadaloud.substack.com

    28 min
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About

You're never too young or too old to enjoy being read to. classicsreadaloud.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Ruby Love
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    50
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Ruby Love
  • Show Website
    Classics Read Aloud

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