ok so i went to the store and after returning had a small epiphany of the shower. it works a bit like this:
say you take a person who doesn't know math, and you try to teach them differential calculus.
their head explodes!
but you teach them basic arithmetic, geometry, algebra and trigonometry--suddenly calculus is a piece of cake because it's built on a foundation of previous knowledge. it just makes sense.
literature is also built on a foundation, and that's the history of literature, all the stuff that writers read before saying "oh, this stuff is cool, i want to be a writer too."
so it helps to know the history of literature a little bit, and see what came from what.
this is not to say things don't have their own contemporary context, or that hermeneutics is useless. it helps to know history, and philosophy, and religion, and to be able to place a writer in their social, historical, political, ideological, theological, or psychological context. sure.
e.g. it helps to know a bit of ireland's history and situation when joyce wrote dubliners. e.g. joyce was obsessed with irish politics, and their subjection to britain, and when he was in trieste teaching english apparently that's all he talked about with his students. he had a very pessimistic view of life in dublin and couldn't tolerate it, so he fled. twice!
and if you throw in a bit of his biography, and know, say, about his relationship with his mother and father, or who his wife was and how he met her, that helps "enrich" things too. it's not that it's necessary, or "the real meaning," it just adds fun to the experience, if you're interested in that particular virtual reality game. vivid colors! high definition! and what not.
some people will use those bits of information to psychoanalyze, to reduce, to translate, to moralize, to destroy--for money and academic employment. but if you read that sontag essay i suggested you'll see that this sort of "analysis" misses the whole point of the whole game. moneygrubbing killjoy eggheads.
anyway for a survey of western literature i wholeheartedly recommend erich auerbach's "mimesis" which is a hegelian view in which he does see a "deeper meaning", and he traces that enterprise of the "spirit" from the odissey and the bible all the way to virginia woolf. ultimately for me it doesn't matter if his hegelian paradigm is true or not, and i don't believe that history is going anywhere in particular, but the way he takes a piece of language and how it operates in one era after another after another, in a fabulous survey, is a magnificent exercise and a monument to the whole enterprise of reading and writing books.
the funny part of this story is that he apologized for it! he was exiled during the war and away from specialized libraries so he basically just wrote... and wrote a glorious thing. silly prof! non-specialists are the best people.
other things i'd recommend reading, to remember that this is all a game:
-cervantes' own intro to don quixote (he came from a time when reading books was rightfully seen as a waste of time)
-thorstein veblen's "the theory of the leisure class" (he explains how wasting time became a pecuniary virtue)
-don quixote, of course, because lol
and for another great list of highly readable books, borges's "personal library" where he briefly reviews about 100 or so of his favorite things.
i got more to say about "required reading" vs "follow your bliss." tears eliot gets into that a little bit i think in "the function of criticism" which is another of his essays, if i am wrong i will correct this later.*
anyway borges (where i first found mention of veblen, btw) used to be a teacher and he refused to force anyone to read anything because he said that killed the joy of reading. i strongly second that. so when i say "read the classics" i don't mean it as an obligation. but i mean: instead of reading blogs by goofy stoic bros, check out seneca first. i.e. go to the source. it's ok if you skip seneca and prefer the stoic bros, but they might try to sell you vitamins or courses or some other stupid shit
the "sources" however is not merely greek or roman stuff.
e.g a lot of the best contemporary science fiction rests on the foundation (no pun here, no asimov) of the great and greatly damaged philip k. dick, who wrote in a hurry and on amphetamines to, yes, to pay for alimony he couldn't afford. his dystopic visions and his paranoia and dissociations are part and parcel of how we see the world today.
anyway, enjoy reading! that's the main stuff.
* eta: yes, that's the one! and btw it's the same title as an essay by his predecessor in the field, mathew arnold (a victorian) with which old possum was in time-traveling literary dialogue/competition/something. intertext! anxiety of influence! hahaha.