An essay in a recent NYT Book Review about the best way to teach literature may provide insight into the most satisfying way to read literature.
The author, an English professor who teaches a popular fiction workshop at a midwestern liberal arts college, admits to some bewilderment as his students acquire the ability to "write better sentences and cleaner paragraphs". What is the secret of their success? He realizes, finally, that he is "really instructing them in reading as a process of seduction...by fixating on certain attributes of the beloved as one falls in love".
His explanation seems a bit overheated - but maybe not. He starts the class by assigning a few books, encouraging his students to focus on their visceral reactions to the reading assignments: What did they like? Love? And why? He observes that once his students isolate the energy and power in the phrases or sentences that they love, they apply that vitality to their own writing.
Love? Is this what we are seeking when we read a classic or contemporary work of fiction? The professor says, of course! (Or, in his words, "... how can you teach someone to master language or read literature unless he's fallen in love with it?")
The professor's teaching technique results in his students becoming better writers. Would trusting our primal response to a work of literature result in our becoming more committed readers? What do you think? Have you read a book lately that has gone "straight through the heart"? I hope so!
Mary Hoskinson-Dean
click here for the complete essay by Dean Bakopoulos in 3/24/13 NYT Book Review
