Do We Read Ourselves?
By Kristen on Nov 10, 2007 in Future Classics...?, Literary News
Once I heard a professor say that when we read a novel, we “read ourselves” — meaning that we should note which characters we are drawn to and which characters get under our skin and consider what these preferences indicate about ourselves. I have repeated this observation many times to many classrooms, usually early in the school year, in an attempt to nudge students beyond equating their personal tastes with quality. Blossoming readers frequently will believe or decide that if they did not care for a work, then it must be “bad” or poorly written. The challenge, in this case, is to not alienate the young reader yet attempt to push them out of their box a bit. So, I would repeat my professor’s philosophy and then ask my students to analyze what it was – specifically – they didn’t enjoy in a work of literature.
Recently, I didn’t enjoy the latest selection my book club chose. It was a murder mystery, which isn’t my favorite genre (although the occasional Janet Ivanovich is fun…), but more than that, I just didn’t appreciate — or care about — the protagonist’s point of view. So, I tried the above “trick” on myself and realized sometimes we simply don’t enjoy a book. Profound…? Maybe not, but enlightening to someone who has asked countless adolescents to read books they simply didn’t enjoy, but had to slog through to get a credit towards graduation.
So, since I enjoy my book club and want to be a contributing member… I wondered how we read ourselves into a book we really do not want to finish. The protagonist was an obituary writer and was a bit obsessed with the manner in which people die. This part was actually quite funny, but the quest to determine how one particular victim died lost me. Could be because I’m not comfortable yet with my mortality… Could be because I’m on the early side of middle age (the other obsession of the protagonist)… Could be because I just didn’t enjoy the story.
However, like my students before me who were forced to finish novels — I wish I had finished the novel out of principle. I rarely fail to finish a novel once begun — and have finished book club selections even when I knew I couldn’t attend — so this past delinquency has nagged at my conscience a bit. A nice reminder of what students go through every day…!
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