Doctor Zhivago/InHis Steps

Literature is not the favorite subject of all you readers, hard to understand, but true. But if you'd take a look at this list of what literature does for one, you should be impressed, if not convinced.

1. Gives one an emotional outlet.
2. Gives one a mastery of his own language.
3. Shows one the glory of the commonplace.
4. Interprets the present, restores the past, and predicts the future.
5. Gives one a knowledge of human nature.
6. Makes one a better person in some respect.

This bit of information came to me from my eighth-grade English teacher in Nashville, Tennessee.

When I write of reading twelve books at a time, I am not talking about twelve of the same kind, not twelve Agatha Christies, not twelve westerns, and not twelve by many a modern writer, who has gotten rich with reproducing the same plot in new clothes. But I am referring to really good books, the kind that will endure through generations. My pick for the greatest novel of the 20th century is Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, published in the United States in 1958, also the year he won the Nobel Prize in literature. Have we had a novel that good since then?

If book sales mean anything: Charles Sheldon's little book In His Steps, published in 1896, has sold over 30,000,000 copies, and enjoys popularity still in the 21st century. The count for Doctor Zhivago is only 310,000. Indeed, Zhivago is a larger book and much harder to read than Sheldon's work, but each has its place in worthy literature.


Source for the above dates and figures: The Internet.