When
my daughter Jada visited SPA in the summer before 2nd grade, she was
given a new book to read before school started. Knowing her enthusiasm
for reading, I asked her later if she had liked the book. When she said
that she would have liked it better if she didn’t have to read it for
school, I asked with dismay, “Jada, do you know what I do for a living?”
Yet I do understand the pleasures of reading change when it’s
required. Even innate curiosity resists coercion.
Still,
I know that most English teachers started as kids who loved reading
just as most teachers were kids who loved school. In 6th grade my best
friend and I had reading competitions, and we each totaled over 100
books in a month. I don’t think either of us cheated beyond including
an occasional novella. Having just finished a sabbatical which let me
read more than I have in years, I realize that some books create an
appetite for other books. Shelfari tells
me I’ve read over 60 books this year and asks if I want to set a goal
for next year. I’m not much on goals like that, reading isn’t a
competition like it was in 6th grade; it’s more like breathing now.
Preparing
for this class has made me think more about words assembled into novels
versus those in other forms. A few weeks ago I finished a
memoir/natural history/philosophical nonfiction book on trail in the
Boundary Waters (it rained a bit), and after that I read a period
fiction book that seemed to start as a semi-literary mystery. While
reading Amagansett
I found myself trying to label it, to classify it somehow. I picked it
up off a friend’s bookshelf, a friend who reads seriously, so I
expected something people tend to call ‘literary’. Yet the opening
scene was a body being recovered from the ocean by a pair of basque
fishermen on Long Island sometime after WWII. And somehow I found myself
questioning the story. Isn’t finding a body in an opening scene a bit
overly dramatic? Of course, I’d already ‘read’ the cover, because we
always judge a book by its cover, right? Perhaps the name of the author
was a bit too large, like Nora Roberts books sold by the grocery
checkout that sell authors as a brand rather than a particular story.
And although the LA Times and Chicago Tribune both had blurbs on the back, the opening one from People noted,
“An evocative tale of love and murder in America’s legendary summer
playground.” I guess that puts it in its place, right? No
self-respecting literary book starts with a blurb from People magazine.
“Evocative” seems a suspect adjective somehow, like it’s trying too
hard, while “love and murder” on the other hand just seem cheap here,
shorthand for genre fiction of romance and mystery. Yet I enjoyed the
story and the two main characters even as I continued questioning the
division between literary and genre fiction.
Genre
fiction is a publishing trade term for books sold within predictable,
comforting reader expectations. Like most mass produced products, say a
hamburger or a Hollywood action film, what’s being sold is less
originality than predictability. You know what to expect; there won’t
be any big surprises. And so, 75 pages in, the body of the pretty girl
is identified, the underrated, loner local cop is pursuing leads, and
one of the fishermen is acting somewhat suspiciously, although he’s
clearly not the murderer. And of course the family of the dead girl is
rich and dysfunctional. Despite these cliches, I found myself enjoying
the images of the beach this landlocked midwestern August. And the
pleasures of following plot twists hooked me like the show Downton Abbey which is nothing more than a well costumed period romantic drama.
Conversely, I read a book on trail in the BWCA (yeah, it rained some) called A Field Guide to Getting Lost.
The author plays with the term ‘field guide’ suggesting literal or
physical displacement, but these mostly stand in for emotional and
spiritual displacement. Rebecca Solnit’s writing is definitely not mass
market. She writes history and natural history books, and this one
included more personal history than others making it a form of memoir,
although not one that would easily fit in that genre, either. In this
book she writes about the painter Yves Klein, the reasons the sky and
ocean appear blue, and the disturbing drug overdose of a friend from
high school. And while her narrative voice and poetic writing engage
the reader, there’s little thesis and no plot to hold these ideas together.
The title suggests a general theme, something about the natural world
and the meaning of our wanderings within it. And having read it, I’m
still not sure how if it all comes together or if I’ve perhaps missed
something. Yet I want to read it again already as her writing is
beautiful and the questions feel important.
And here, perhaps is the point where these questions about reading come together. What’s the difference between reading Amagansett and A Field Guide to Getting Lost? Is
one “better” than another? More broadly, what’s the purpose of
reading? Why should we read novels? Why do we require English classes?
Like many teacher questions and life questions, the answer is really
both/and. Some reading is for comfort, for the familiar, for pleasure.
An immersion in a world of words as soothing as a hot bath. We want to
be entertained. Some reading, however, challenges our expectations,
our assumptions, seeks to shock or awaken us to a world we might never
have considered. It asks powerful
questions instead of offering familiar answers. In this way, books are
much like friends- we like it when they agree with us, but we need it
when they don’t. Or put in a slightly different way in a famous line
about the purpose of journalism, perhaps books too “comfort the
afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” and in both ways help us make
our way in the world.
