rj_anderson | Let us now read about depressed white males with no lives!

Interesting. Maybe my experience is soooo different because I was homeschooled through high school--that's when I started getting interested in literary analysis, and on my own I went looking for books of essays (beginning with Tolkien's work and going on from there). So when I hit university as an English major, writing and reading that kind of analysis was AWESOME.

I did read some of the "reading list" stuff in high school (Dickens, Homer, and Dante are all AMAZING, especially if you read Dorothy Sayers' poetic translation of Dante), and far more of it in college, and somehow I never lost my love of reading, nor my disdain of the literary elite who so easily discard my genre loves. (When I wasn't reading Dostoevsky, Faulkner, or Woolf, I had my nose in mysteries, Harry Potter, and the extended Star Wars universe.)

I'm lucky, I think, when I hear so many versions of Shannon Hale's story from my friends. I've always been a reader, and never had it spoiled for me.

Even though I came out of college knowing I wanted to write rather than analyze--it was a question of ranking preference rather than dislike. :-)

I sort of missed out on high school, but my community college literature classes convinced me that being a Lit Major because I loved reading was the worst idea ever. The whole thing where instead of enjoying or experiencing a book you de-code it? Not fun.

The whole thing where instead of enjoying or experiencing a book you de-code it? Not fun.

See, this always throws me, because to me? These are one and the same, and in no way mutually exclusive. I analyze EVERYTHING (including my own work!) and it does not prevent me from enjoying and experiencing a book. (I adored Passage, but I was also going AT it in philosophical and structural terms even while I was reading.)

Truly, I think I am a freak! :-)

No, but see I like your kind of analysis, even if I'm no good at doing it myself. It's all about finding new layers and new reasons to like the story, which is for yay. The kind of analysis that turned me off in college was a lot less fun and kind of made me feel like I should have a Decoder Ring or something. Stories that are written with Decoder Rings in mind are no fun for me to read, since I don't have one, and I didn't like using the Decoder Ring on other stories because it never worked very well. And it's too much work for me, anyway. I just want to find out what happens, and if a greater meaning unfolds with the action, then yay! But I'm a lazy reader, so. *grin*

Shannon and I were both in the wrong place for grad school, I think. Except that we had each other. I think that saved me more than anything else did. Funny that we both ended up in YA without really understanding at first that YA was what we really truly loved.

I kind of don't agree with this article. Yes, you get handed the classics in school -- because it's school, and part of the point is getting introduced to things that a difficult/different/old, the stuff you wouldn't try on your own when you're 16. Do some people get turned off? Undoubtedly, but IMHO, anybody who gets really, seriously turned off by this probably wasn't an avid reader to begin with and might well never have become one under any circumstances. And sometimes people are introduced to the books that they'd never have attempted on their own but turn out to love. (War and Peace is one of my favorite books ever, and I put off reading that for decades because it gets held up as this Huge Undertaking. Had I taken a Russian Lit course, I might have found one of my favorite novels a lot earlier.)

Pop lit is probably a better introduction to reading -- to introduce it as pure pleasure, nothing but -- and yet this person had plenty of experience with pop lit and knew what she liked. So I'm not sure why she's blaming the classics for a fairly standard bout of early-20s literature snobbery that obviously never turned her off books or writing for long, if at all.

I didn't at all get the impression she was blaming the classics (that would be a bit hypocritical, seeing as she's an avowed Austen fan!), but rather criticizing the mindset that insists that only books of a certain narrow type are suitable reading for intelligent people -- and that truly "grown-up" reading is all about analysis and not about pleasure.

My understanding of the article was that she was blaming herself for buying into a snobbish mindset and denying herself reading as a pleasure for so long, not that she was arguing against introducing young people to classic literature at all. I think that like anything else, it's got to be a matter of balance.

Personally I adore Crime and Punishment, even though it is by no means an easy read in any sense. But I read it independently, of my own free choice, in my early twenties. Would I have been able to appreciate it if I'd had it forced upon me in high school at the age of fifteen or sixteen? I'm quite sure the answer would have been no.

I'm vey glad I didn't get forced to read Austen in high school; I wasn't ready for her. I have no idea why; it certainly wasn't the language that was too difficult, or the plots. Maybe I just wasn't up to her delicate irony? All I know is that I tried P&P at 18, couldn't get anywhere with it, tried it again at about 23 or 24 and fell in love.

I think two things saved me from Hale's fate; a certain stubbornness that doesn't let me think I love something just because I "should", and a math contest my brother won in about 5th grade (when I was in 10th). His prize was a copy of Heinlein's Number of the Beats (I strongly suspect whoever chose it hadn't actually *read* it). I'd been reading Asimov for years, as well as my mom's Zenna Henderson and Anne McCaffrey, but it was that oneHeinlein book that turned me on to the res tof his stuff and led directly to my majoring in Mechanical Engineering. Once there, of course, any fiction reading was an escape so I was free to read what I wanted.

ETA: I had a great English teacher for 10th-12th grades, which also helped. We read books I enjoyed and books I never finished (wrote papers based on the class discussion). She admitted to hating Milton's Paradise Lost and I think hearing that an *English teacher* could dislike such a famous classic was also very freeing.

Edited 2008-10-21 01:17 (UTC)

I'm vey glad I didn't get forced to read Austen in high school; I wasn't ready for her.

Ditto to that. I tried very hard to read S&S as a teen and could. Not. Do it. I could read Shakespeare with ease, a knack that I seem to have lost since then, but I can read Austen with enthusiasm, now, so I guess it was an even trade.

That's interesting... I read Austen in Grade 9 ("Pride and Prejudice") and loved it -- but then I think that particular English teacher was one of the few who didn't boringify things. It was a school where we had really tiny class sizes, and everyone was required to participate in the discussion.

Yeah, I think everybody's ready for different books at different times. I just recently finished To Kill a Mockingbird (as you probably know, since I could not shut up about it *grin*) and while I absolutely adored it, I'm not sure I would have been able to appreciate its awesomeness as a highschooler. But then Mr. Bill's highschool-age cousins just read it, as well, and they loved it and spoke to me eloquently of its virtues. So who knows.

I'm vey glad I didn't get forced to read Austen in high school; I wasn't ready for her.

See, I was the opposite. I read P&P in high school and fell utterly and completely in love. I promptly bought and read every single Austen book and even now I consider P&P my favorite book ever.

On the other hand, I read Jane Eyre the following year and utterly despised it. When I read it again several years later for a college class, I certainly liked it a whole lot better (although I still am not a fan of the melodramatic style of the Bronte sisters and I have no real desire to read it again).

(That experience, along with discussions with classmates, led me to my Austen vs. Bronte theory that says most Austen fans will not be huge fans of Bronte and vice versa, given the difference in style -- melodrama vs. subtle sarcasm).

Well, I loved Jane Eyre too... but I haven't even been tempted to read the other Bronte sisters' work. No, not even Wuthering Heights!

I tried reading Wuthering Heights. It was one of the few books I've started and never finished. I felt like chucking it out the window. I know I started reading another Bronte sister book that I didn't finish as well.

Jane Eyre is at least tolerable, although I am still not a fan of the melodrama (madwoman in the attic and all that).

What who knows what you might have appreciated? You only know what you did. No, I didn't care for The Mayor of Casterbridge in 11th grade, but I remember lapping up Julius Caesar like it was made of custard. Some others here have said they wouldn't have liked Austen in high school; I loved it. Maybe there are kids who adored The Mayor of Casterbridge. Like you say -- balance is all. We have to understand that reading is fun, but we also have to learn that reading can be challenging, and that the challenge can be rewarding.

While I agree that a snobbish mindset does nobody any good, I felt like there was way too much backlash against "literature" voiced in the article. Probably it's a matter of emphasis/inference more than anything else.

Edited 2008-10-21 02:20 (UTC)

IMHO it isn't so much "blaming the classics" but blaming the exclusion of everything else that isn't Classic.

I wond4er how many of us shared similar experience?

I was always excited to read or reread books in school. I'd already read most of what we read in high school before we got to it in class--with the exceptions of Stoppard's plays and a lot of poetry. And I can't remember disliking any of it. I was a weird kid. When I was 10 I decided that I was going to read ALL of classic literature. I started with Dickens and worked my way through the English greats and then moved onto the Russians. My problem has always been finding interesting non-fiction to read. College helped a great deal with that and then I found really wonderful memoirs to read.

I know my experience is atypical though. I talk to people who groan when they remember being forced to read "Catcher in the Rye" or "The Sound and the Fury."

I really didn't care how the books were discussed or dissected; the point was that we got to read them. School was my job, as a kid, and I got to read during it. The rest was irrelevant.

Until, that is, they started in on My Stuff. My high-school creative-writing class -- a really fine effort by a wonderful teacher -- had a textbook that was mostly there because all classes had to have one. Our teacher told us to read the stories and we'd discuss their techniques as they came up in critiquing students' stories. She said not to bother with the questions at the back. But there were three Ray Bradbury stories in that book, and I just had to see what a textbook writer asked about them. I don't at all recall the questions now, but I was very indignant about them at the time. These people had no idea what they were talking about, I felt; I'd been reading Bradbury since I was eight and could have done far better questions.

I always felt that this was an aberration, though -- educators were fine when they talked about regular literature, but they just had no clue about science fiction. I liked the vast majority of the books I read in school, the notable exceptions being Billy Budd and something or other by Turgenev. And yes, the books I liked included The Catcher in the Rye and A Separate Peace.

P.

Do you find that the books you were made to read in high school and the way your teachers approached them whetted your appetite for reading and literature, or stifled it?

English as taught in High School: the perfect way to destroy any enjoyment one gets from literature.
My bookworm nature thrived despite English teachers, not because of them.

I had an enlightening experience when I was in Grade 9. Due to my father being on sabbatical, I had half of Grade 9 in one country, and half in another (and in both cases, it was the second half!). It so happened, therefore, that I came in half way through my English class's study of a Shakespeare play (it was Twelfth Night, if I recall correctly). That meant that I had to catch up to where they were up to, by myself, which meant that I read the first half of the play straight through without breaks, like I would read a novel. And I liked it! It wasn't boring, it was a cool story. This Shakespeare dude isn't so bad, I thought. 8-) And yet the way English is taught, everything is boringified.

I much preferred Shakespeare when I read him independently, as well. Thank goodness I wasn't made to study Much Ado in school or I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it half so much. I probably wouldn't have laughed so hard I had to put the book down in the middle of King John, either.

Due to moving around to different countries and states, I ended up having to study Romeo and Juliet twice!
I loathe that play. Sorry Mr. Shakespeare. 8-(

When I was around 14 I was so taken with The Merchant of Venice - not to say pleased with myself for 'getting' Shakespeare - I sat down one rainy Saturday and tackled King Lear, all by my earnest little self.

I think that experience pretty much killed any incipient snobbery in the bud - OK, it was great Art, but nobody could be expected to get through this stuff without help!

At least you didn't have to read Heart of Darkness four times (for four different college classes).

As for Romeo and Juliet, not his best play. In general, I think his comedies and histories are much better than the "tragedies."

I don't think I liked class discussion about Shakespeare in high school myself, although that may have been because we only went over the tragedies (Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Julius Ceaser). Reading them was fine but not class discussion. On the other hand, I loved and adored discussions of my Shakespeare class in college, which was only comedies.

Of course, while I enjoy reading Shakespeare, I much prefer to see the plays performed. Since we have a yearly (free) Shakespeare festival near where I live, I'm lucky enough to have been able to see a ton of his plays performed.

Um, I had rather a long comment here, but then I deleted it because I should have learned by now that things I compose after midnight are Never a Good Idea. If I still agree with it tomorrow, I'll repost in my own journal :) Sorry and good night!

I never really bought into the "only literary fiction/classics are worthwhile" ideology-- maybe because I never stopped reading the good stuff, even while studying the so-called "worthy literature." But I certainly know how pervasive that attitude is, and I know *so* many people who *did* buy into it. What happened to me is that I finally got sick of pretending that I did think of literature that way. I decided I wasn't going to play that game any more. I was sick of being told not only what I could read, but how I should read it.

Which is why I'm NOT getting a PhD. Could I do it? Yes. But I don't want to any more. If writing a thesis about Harry Potter would be committing academic suicide (which is what a professor told me, early in my grad school career)-- then I don't think I want to work within the academic system, thanks. Anyone who would dismiss Robin McKinley and Dorothy Sayers and Lois McMaster Bujold and Lori R. King out of hand because their books are *gasp* genre fiction isn't the kind of person I want to associate with. Hmph.

Lots of people do dissertations on children's lit. And hating the classics is practically a prerequisite. I didn't get my Ph.D. because I actually like the classics and respect their authors. After getting an M.A., I experienced open scorn for actually valuing the work of authors and was told if appreciating literature was my reason for going to grad school in literature, I was there for the wrong reason.

I feel a little disconnected from the article because to me, studying books in school and reading them for pleasure were two very distinct things. One was what I did for school, and the other was, well, pleasure. I never felt as though I was being trained how to react to books; that fell under the 'pleasure' equation, which homework definitely did not. :)
Dissection aside, though, I actually valued my HS reading list for introducing me to the concept of classics. Yes, the snobbish element felt and still feels restrictive in some ways - I don't like being told what to read any more than any other form of peer pressure, and resist them all when I can - but on the other hand, up to then my big literary excursion had been Stephen King's Carrie.

It was a world of possibilities opening, not to be flowery about it, but that's honestly what it felt like. Not only has some of the stuff I studied - Nineteen-Eighty-Four, The Great Gatsby, Death of a Salesman - ended up on my personal favourite list, the grounding I received in how to recognise literary quality enabled my later fascination with Dickens, Austen, the Brontes et al. Even Shakespeare, the stories at least. Deciphering the English, bleah.

That said, though, I do hear the author on the subject of YA fiction...having written an essay in grade-10 English arguing that kidlit could appeal to adults too. :) The simple, direct emotional approach inherent in the best children's books is I think an essential part of any writer's training, no matter when they encounter them.

Edited 2008-10-21 00:30 (UTC)

I loved a lot of the stuff she didn't. Arthur Miller, John Steinbeck, etc.

Honestly, despite the fact that the "classics" did predominate on the reading lists, I don't think the notion that they were inherently better than genre fiction was necessarily prevailing when I was in school. Our assigned reading for the UIL English competition included Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone -- and it was that very assignment that got me so wrapped up in Harry Potter through college.

I also had the good fortune of junior high and high school teachers who believed in including assigned reading like Anne McCaffrey's "Dragonsong", Richard Leder's "The Miracle of Language", Keillor's "Lake Wobegone Days", and Douglas Adam's "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", along with the classic texts. Maybe this helped temper the idea that the classics were better -- after all, even though there were more of them on the list, they were still being studied right alongside the contemporary genre fiction. Plus I just enjoyed reading, including assigned reading. I remember devouring the assigned Steinbeck in eighth grade, spoiling all of my friends for the depressing ending of "The Pearl". Later that summer I was under the spell of "East of Eden".

And even in college, though my study was largely focused on the American Renaissance (definitely that "classics" arena), we got to explore somewhat less well-known texts, several by female authors, and I was allowed to turn in textual explorations ranging from my fanfiction of "The Coquette" to a comparison of Ruth Hall to the Mary Sue archetype. And that doesn't even cover the Czech lit class, which gave us everything from satire to depressing literary fiction to bizarre folk humour to early science fiction.

Maybe my English degree is a bit of a different experience than most?

Some of the classics I read I really didn't like, such as Catcher in the Rye, Scarlett Letter, Anna Karrinina, Of Mice and Men, All Quiet on the Western Front, etc. However, there were classics I thought I wouldn't like and ended up loving, such as Julius Caesar, Tale of Two Cities, and Rebecca.

I was always a voracious reader, but mostly I have to be in the mood to read anything. So what appeals to me on one day is different than the next. The discipline of reading books I'd never choose no matter what mood I'm in was a good excercise for me, even when I didn't like the material. I can't say that doing that affected my personal reading choices at all except for the fact I read just about every book Daphne du Maurier ever wrote. :)

Edited 2008-10-21 02:44 (UTC)

Chiming in to say this doesn't fit me, either, because nothing and nobody could stop me reading for pleasure - not even law school! I did, sometimes, resent my assigned reading, and may have been turned off to some authors by being made to read them before I was ready (Whitman and Thoreau, for example), but, on the whole, this didn't happen.

Two things: my parents had a lot of the "classics" just lying around, and I read them on my own, without their being assigned. Was fascinated and horrified by 1984 and Brave New World; disliked A Separate Peace; liked, but did not love, Catcher in the Rye; absolutely LOVED Dickens, and also William Golding - when I understood him. He lost me sometimes as a teen.

Second, I absolutely loved a couple of books I was made to read in high school. As I said, I was turned off by Whitman and Thoreau, but I was surprised at how much I liked Moby Dick, a book I'd been avoiding for years. I went on to read Melville's short stories on my own. I did not like E.M. Forster (I've since changed my mind), but liked Gaskell and Hardy. And I loved Shakespeare, though I've come to the conclusion he's meant to be seen and heard, not read. Also Dylan Thomas - ditto. And Shaw as well.

But all through this, and all through the assignments, I kept reading and rereading Tolkien, L'Engle, Lewis (Till we Have Faces was another adult book my sister and I stumbled across as young teens, and I recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet!). And it was as a teen that I discovered Lloyd Alexander and Ursula LeGuin.

So now I'm a teen librarian, and probably at a disadvantage with some kids because I don't really know what it feels like to be turned off by reading. OTOH, I never had to suffer through the phenomenon of the summer reading list. I hate that with a passion. Kids of all ages should be allowed to read what they like over the summer! I really despise these ideas lurking behind such lists: (1) kids, left to their own devices, will not read voluntarily, and (2)if they do read on their own, they will choose to read junk, and will not think about what they are reading unless they are forced to.

Wrong! Very wrong. Since I started in this job, I've seen kids turned off by these lists, and I've heard them cry, "I want to read MY books! I never have time to read what I want to read." Why shouldn't they be allowed to read for fun in school vacation? Don't we want children to read for fun?!

So I guess the short answer is that children should be given time and space to read what they choose to read. It's up to us to give them a wide variety of good books to choose from. Then we should just let them at it. I have no problem with assigned texts in English class, but schools should also make time and space for pleasure reading. Too many don't, and that's probably the source of the problem.

Apologies for the length! I thought this was going to be a short answer - (

Speaking as a lifelong voracious reader, I enjoyed many of the classics I was required to read in high school and college. But speaking as, well, myself, there were quite a few others that I despised. Not because of their literary qualities or lack thereof, but because they just weren't interesting to me.

To Kill a Mockingbird? Southern, like me! Likable female protagonist! Presence of mental Gregory Peck! My enjoyment of TKAM led me to read Gone With the Wind and delve into other Southern writers. Wuthering Heights? Twisted true love! Rebecca? The joys of Gothic fiction! And so I investigated the genres, other similar authors, and so on.

Now on the other side of the spectrum--To the Lighthouse? Whiny woman never gets the gumption to change her life. The Awakening? Same, except woman never gets the gumption to accept the consequences of her efforts at change. And I hated James Joyce because he got famous due to writing like a babbling fool, whereas if I'd tried that, I'd have failed every last college-level course I took. It's all in what intrigues the reader. To raise a reader, give them lots of options and let them choose. They will eventually branch out, it's a natural development.

I started to respond, then realized I was writing a whole post in your journal. Basically, I'm quibbling with the delightful Ms Hale.

Well, I assume she's delightful: her books are, which is all one want from an author, really.

Let us now read about depressed white males with no lives!

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Er. No.