At first glance, Beha's situation is enviable: the 27-year-old Princeton graduate quits his job and is welcomed back into his parents' Manhattan apartment, where he decides to dedicate himself to reading all 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics Library, a "five-foot shelf" of (mostly) Western literature from Plato to Darwin. If only it were that easy: he must come to terms with the death of a beloved aunt early in the year, then is himself afflicted with a torn meniscus and a serious case of Lyme disease. With so much personal drama, the classics frequently take a back seat, and several volumes go completely unremarked. Beha spends the most time on those books that spoke most keenly to his personal circumstances; not only does he discuss John Stuart Mill's existential crisis at length, for example, he compares his own reaction to reading Wordsworth to the philosopher's. The broader conclusions Beha (now an assistant editor at Harper's) reaches about cultural values and the meaning of life are disappointingly pat; even the young memoirist concedes, "I haven't written the book I set out to write." (May)
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At the age of 27, Beha, assistant editor at Harper's magazine, was not having the best of times. Although he won a battle with cancer, other areas of his life were falling apart. In the midst of his difficulties, Beha set a goal to read all volumes of the Harvard Classics within one year. Also referred to as the "Five-Foot Shelf," the 22,000 pages of the 1909 collection were meant to provide the common man with an education. As Beha speeds through the volumes, details of his personal life are intermingled with his understanding of the texts. Time constraints permit little reflection on his readings. It is likely for this reason that Beha's own story becomes more interesting than his comments on the classics. He reads Shakespeare, Milton, Darwin, Locke, and countless others at a breakneck pace. Near the end, he questions if a slower and more meditative focus may have been a better strategy. He is probably right, but such an approach would not have produced this charming odyssey. Recommended for public libraries.
—Stacy Russo
Deciding to spend a year reading the entire 50-volume set of the Harvard Classics, Harper's assistant editor Beha discovers things-some touching, some banal-about the best-laid plans of mice and men. The author interlaces several stories in his debut. The main thread comprises even smaller ones-his reactions to the texts. He also tells about the Classics' editor, Charles W. Eliot, and the genesis and publication of the volumes, about his family and-most prominently-about his illnesses: Hodgkin's lymphoma (diagnosed while he was in college), Lyme disease, hives and a torn meniscus. A medical mess much of the time, Beha nonetheless persevered, reading while ill, while visiting relatives and while flying to England with family. (As he read a volume of Elizabethan drama, many of his fellow passengers watched Nicole Kidman in The Invasion.) There are moments of bizarre amusement-such as when the author, with his mother in the waiting room, makes a deposit in a sperm bank-and wrenching loss (the death of a favorite aunt). Beha is most effective when discussing the fragility of life, the certainty and uncertainties of death, and how the various writers he read dealt with it-or didn't. He is moved by Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," struggles through the two volumes by Darwin, ponders the problems of translation (so many of the originals were not in English), finds the grimness in Grimm, lingers overlong with Don Quixote, says very little about some texts, quotes favorite passages from others and finds himself changing as the year advances. He has a number of epiphanies-some rather ordinary: "life was teaching me about these books just as much as the books were teaching me about life." Finally, heresolves to remain a reader in the nonliterary contemporary American culture he comes close to condemning. The personal and family stories are almost always gripping; the comments about great books, less so. Agent: Sally Wofford-Girand/Brick House
“ ‘In much wisdom is much grief,’ counsels the book of Ecclesiastes, and in Christopher R. Beha’s tender intellectual memoir [of reading the Harvard Classics], we find plenty of both. . . . Life intruded rudely on Beha’s sabbatical, and he rose to the occasion by writing an unexpected narrative that deftly reconciles lofty thoughts and earthy pain. In doing so, he makes an elegant case for literature as an everyday companion no less valuable than the iPod.” —New York Times Book Review
“Winning . . . Intensely felt . . . Beha is shtick-free and serious of mind . . . Without making grandiose claims, this book serves as a guide to today’s perplexed, reflexively ironic reader, an inducement to think seriously without apologizing and feel deeply without hedging. . . . It demonstrates how and why to read seriously.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“An elegant and honest memoir . . . A charming addition to the literature of books about books. Beha is a clear-sighted writer, who has accomplished exactly what Eliot would have wanted: He found repose and strength of mind in those who express things more elegantly than we, in our Twittering, blog-filled age, ever can.” —Bookforum
“Disarming . . . Beha’s utter humility and unpretentious tone while describing an inherently academic and potentially irrelevant goal—to read a jumble of old-timey books and essays—puts the reader immediately at ease. Beha has a nice, unaffected way of including his internal monologues and the lessons he learns over the course of the year, as he struggles with his need to connect with the past and get perspective on his life. . . . What starts out as a mission to keep from being lost, adrift and alone in his sickness, ends with Beha finding solace. The Whole Five Feet reads like a charming college syllabus, written by a warm-hearted professor, who through a mutual love of books has inexplicably become one of your closest friends and confidants.” —The Portland Mercury
“[In the Harvard Classics, Beha] finds comfort in the fact that these writers faced the same dilemmas, pains and sources of hope he finds today. The result is a thought-provoking, tender, compelling read that is part memoir, part ode to the power of great books.” —The Oregonian
"The Whole Five Feet is no book report; Beha’s reflections are far the richer because he delicately wheels and dives among both the great writers’ ideas and his own life experiences—proving, if we needed proof, of the greatness and centrality of reading. About John Stuart Mill, Beha reflects on the nature of pleasure and happiness, observing through the prism of his own illnesses, 'Your comfort, especially your physical comfort, isn’t under your control, so you’d better find something else to work at.' The idea here is mature far beyond his years, and yet the style is all salt spray and blue sky." —Free Range Librarian
