While I was driving home one beautiful afternoon last week, listening to the Little Women soundtrack, I remembered a scene from the movie. Jo is helping Laurie pack for college (Harvard, if I remember correctly) and laments that she can't fit his favorite Dickens volumes into the trunk he'll be taking with him.
"I won't be taking all of Dickens with me," he chides.
"Oh, of course not, you'll have much more important things to read," Jo snarks.
Until recently, it didn't occur to me that she wasn't just being sarcastic. I mean, she WAS being sarcastic, but not for the reason I had originally thought. Jo and Laurie share a love of Charles Dickens and Jo is worried that now that Laurie's going off to college without her that he'll move on. But what I hadn't realized was that I was looking at this scene without taking the time period into account.
Watching this scene without being grounded in the historical context, you kind of think, "well, Dickens is one of those 'important' authors you would be expected to read in college." But Little Women begins during the Civil War in the 1860's. Charles Dickens started publishing in 1836. He was still alive at the beginning of Little Women. While he was recognized as a great author in his lifetime, this isn't a case of a couple of nerds bonding over their shared love of the classics - this is two friends who enjoy the same popular author.
Imagine your friend is going off to college and you can't. Will he come back still a fan of J. K. Rowling or Neil Gaiman (just for purpose of popular, acclaimed authors who have been writing for 20-30 years)? Or will he come back having found new favorites among the classics, leaving you out of the loop?