The display case, labeled "Books and their Users," contains a note of explanation that, while trying to be humorous, cannot hide its displeasure at this reader's delinquency: "Dialogue with Books: A Schoolboy's Inattention." The open page is being offered as one early example of how the book/owner relationship might even extend to "pointed indifference to the contents." The moral is plain: no temptress should stand between a scholar, however bored, and his duty. Such "discrepancies" reveal, however, that authentic personal response only begins when readers are not officially controlled. By tapping a reader's rich internal conversation and set of feelings, and not the orderly version faked for the teacher, we begin to foster her confidence in joining wider circles of conversation.
Having for so many centuries taken for granted the easily accessible printed text, we have forgotten how this technology profoundly influenced the prerogatives of the reader. By making possible a new kind of textual ownership, the printing press also led to the personal appropriation of texts. Tediously copied manuscripts had been rare and even sacred objects. Institutions generally owned them, not individuals, and so they were never lightly discarded. Printing made books available on a much wider basis, and this gradually led to the development of a more intimate relationship between the owner and the text. Pen in hand, readers might communicate their feelings and thoughts about the author's words directly in the margins. The book was theirs to do with as they willed; they could make it work for them in any way they saw fit.
This conversation of personal preferences and connections should be honored when we're reading literature with students; these preferences and connections are the means for initiating democratic dialogue. One way of doing this is to grant authority to each individual's reading history. The tension that de Tocqueville identified between individual agency and dependency upon public opinion is often evident in a reader's hesitancy to hold any views about a book until everything's been checked out with the "critics," those cultural watchdogs in the business of informing us about what we should be thinking and feeling. Teachers of literature help break the tyranny of such a reliance on outside authority when they sanction the natural multiplicity of responses and interpretations that make up our social talk about literature. Recognizing that they bring distinct reading histories to a text can affirm for young readers the pleasures of reading. This is not just a matter of anchoring authority inside. Reading cannot be a social act if readers don't know or express their responses in conversation with others.
"You can say what you like about Animal Farm," Glenda said, interrupting Tara, "but for me it was just a silly book." She'd been listening patiently to Tara, all the while continuing to shake her head slowly, but now she boiled over. "Why read about all those animals? Tara, I know you really liked it, I know you saw all those symbols in it. Me, I couldn't make a thing out of it, I just couldn't get interested. So PLEASE stop trying to convince me." Then the girls both laughed. "Well," said Tara, "sometimes we agree on books and then sometimes we're miles apart. No, I'm not going to give up on you, especially when a book's as terrific as this one. But, okay, let's call it a day," and the conversation drifted to other things.
Glenda and Tara are good friends despite their frequent disagreements about their reading experiences--in coming to terms with their differences, they have learned to appreciate each other's individuality. Tara doesn't want to give up on Glenda; in some way their rift is unsettling: "Why can't she see what I see?"--each wonders about the other. Certainly, it would be more convenient if their tastes were neatly aligned. There would be no disagreements, and each would feel confirmed in her stance toward experience. It is easier to seek out and move in circles of similarity and agreement rather than have to tolerate disparities in response and interpretation. Such a course, however, leads to our impoverishment as readers.
Once the iron clad conformity of the right response and attitude in the literature classroom is broken, a stimulating plurality of taste and enjoyment emerges. Asking students to track and share what they really do and prefer as readers is an important way of broadening the conversation, although we must be willing to entertain perspectives at odds with the formal curriculum. Here, for instance, is the voice of a student who is just finishing high school:
Now for a confession--from the age of 13, I started to neglect my regular private reading. I much preferred to read non-fictional material, so although I read very few novels, I read many newspapers, magazines and non-fictional books. . . .My main problem these days is a lack of time for reading novels, and if I am brutally honest, an unwillingness to become absorbed in a world that is not reality. However, as To Kill a Mockingbird proved, there are a few books capable of winning me over again.
Another student also shows a keen awareness of the gap between what she feels and what she believes she should be feeling, when she confesses her pleasure at reading "trashy books":
At this I hear all literary type people gasping with horror. These authors' books, in particular, Jackie Collins', are seen by many as being all the same--trashy, cheap and not worth the paper they are written on. Their critics accuse them of writing for the uncultured masses, regularly turning out novels that they know will sell well, but which have no value as literature. . . .
I, and I know many other people, feel very guilty at reading this "rubbish" because of what the so-called experts say. I feel that as an English literature student I should spend all my free time reading "real" books--heavy, thick, dusty hardbacks that are written by a Russian, or at the very least, a French author.
I hate myself for thinking like this and falling victim to the views of the pompous critics, but I can't help it. I know I should have the courage of my convictions and read what I like by who I like, but I still feel guilty. When I start to think about it, I am not even sure if these books are what I really like reading, sometimes I wonder if I read them because they are seen as books that I shouldn't be reading. When I was very young my books were always chosen for me.
In these two instances, and in countless others that disrupt the "proper" decorum of reading, exists an exciting conversation that the teacher might join. This is especially true when teachers share their own rich and varied reading patterns.
As the second student intimates, the problem is often more about imposition and subordination, than it is about any given title or selection. Yet, in numerous instances, teachers fear that students, if they are given free rein, will avoid the "classics" and thus lose an opportunity to become critical readers. What seems to be the case, however, is that once legitimate participation in choosing books is denied, there is a natural inclination to opt out of the process altogether--that is read nothing. On the other hand, to get past the rigid order of any "approved" book list allows reading possibilities and connections to explode in wonderful profusion. The only admission that teachers must be willing to make at this point is that they'll never be able to keep up with all the titles. Hopefully this "inadequacy" will not be an excuse for restricting any student's reading range or perspective. An adult shows interest in student reading, not by imposing books, but by being attentive to the various dialogues they are interested in pursuing about the reading experiences they have initiated among themselves.
Democratically Sharing Our Cultural Knowledge
As textual information within our culture (books, music, art, film) continues to explode exponentially, no one, under the press of normal circumstances, can ever hope to stay abreast in order to command all the possible intertexual references needed for a "full" response and interpretation. Adding other areas of knowledge--including biography, history, and science--the experience of trying to exhaust all literary reference for a "complete" reading is truly overwhelming. This shouldn't imply that we give up in frustration or ignorance; instead, remembering these humbling realities helps me be more sympathetic to student readers. I can see how they often feel unable to join the reading conversation because they believe they know too little. First, they don't have to recognize or understand everything--nobody ever does--but, second, they need to avoid debilitating comparisons with those who more readily burst forth with interpretive commentary. Unfortunately, students spend more time learning what they can't do as readers, rather than simply getting on with the task of revealing what's on their mind in concert with others.
Popular culture texts such as Billy Joel's hit single, "We didn't start the fire"--with it's refrain, "It was always burning since the world's been turning"--serve to put the whole information game in its proper perspective. With verses that contain an endless list of names and events from the past--Joseph Stalin, Hemingway, the cola wars--this song reverberates more intensely as one recognizes more "items." Paralleling Don McLean's "Ms. American Pie," or Alan Ginsberg's poems such as "America," Joel's lyrics acknowledge that interpretations depend upon people sharing a heritage and not displaying total amnesia of the past.
But references demand a kind of communal layering; they're not just correct answers on some multiple-choice exam. The teacher's credibility in working with students on such a lyric grows out of her ability to create a shared pool of knowledge, drawing as equally on the students' resources as on her own. Each person expresses some bafflement, each can make some connections. With a democratic sense of the continuing information explosion and overload, we are able to defuse any elitist aspects of "cultural knowledge" and instead find ourselves all contributing items to E. D. Hirsch's list (1987). This means students become aware of what bits of information serve as markers for membership in what groups--a quite different matter than hierarchically legislating what is to count as "common" knowledge.
Attacks on cultural pluralism and the democratization of the canon show a deep disdain for the untutored. Those attempting to maintain their stranglehold of prejudice that derives from the "great books" argue that substitution or expansion will lead to a natural diminution of quality and standards. Fearing difference and encouraging feelings of nostalgia in order to mask their own privileged position as interpreters of these "sacred" texts, canon defenders create a fiction of coherence that, they would have us believe, must be maintained at all costs. There is a deep irony in trying to replace the broad spirit of Western inquiry with authoritarian readings of specific cultural artifacts. The quest for liberty--for freedom of thought and exploration--and the scientific method are in fact what created the very conditions that allowed all kinds of previously silenced groups and perspectives to eventually make their claims on our attention.
The raucous clamor to be recognized is certainly disconcerting when it seems to be dislodging a given set of texts and interpretations already securely in place; but this is precisely what fulfills the cumulative promise of our Western thought and intellectual tradition. Surely a restless critical spirit is what should animate our academic tradition. Besides closing down access, there is a further danger when any group claims the higher ground and attempts to restrict dialogue. Ironically, they end up offering exactly the wrong model for multicultural advocates. Without dialogue, those who hold a minority viewpoint and preach a culture of exclusion risk isolating themselves from the mainstream. Indeed, in Balkan fashion, they self-righteously feel justified in not entering the larger cultural conversation. Such splintering and segregation voids negotiation and thereby lowers every reader's horizons.
Obviously a society is constituted on the basis of some commonality in order that citizens are able to speak with one another. Given a deliberate effort, what students read in the curriculum will be widely representative and varied, and not narrowly directed toward compartmentalized perspectives. This "representativeness," however, can never be taken for granted, but must be consciously cultivated. Researchers have well documented a "selective tradition," in which teachers choose books for use in the literature curriculum that reflect their own circumscribed worlds and biases (see Luke et al; also Jipson and Paley). Still, the burden of community does not fall on what specific texts we read together. No, the burden falls on the ways we read together.
Democracy relies upon a tacit faith in fairness and a willingness to see that decisions serve more than the immediate self-interest of specially advantaged citizens. But despite this important principle of equality and fair play, the force of accumulated social tradition and the hidden exercise of power keep verticality unexamined and securely in place. Central to this verticality is the deeply ingrained belief that lies behind the refrain, "the people are not to be fully trusted." This moral and intellectual heritage needs to be uncovered for what it is, if we are to change those educational practices that run counter to democratic principles. For until we free ourselves from unconsciously acting in a paternalistic manner toward all those who have not yet reached our level of attainment, we can never hope to see the other from his or her perspective.
Often our social and occupational positions are maintained through routines that insist on the dependency of "clients." We seem invested in retaining others in some state of immaturity. I can say I want students to be independent, but then quickly turn around and hold them back because they have not yet adequately met some standard. What's really at issue here is my lack of faith in their ability to know what's good for them. Even while I may think everyone's entitled to equal rights and opportunities, any deviation from my view of things can suddenly appear as provoking disorder--which is really threatening my order, my authority. From here it is only a small leap to seeing difference and change as bad and therefore wanting to keep all "others" in their place.
Privilege and distrust work hand in hand. Thus the real message contained in any plea that would return the curriculum to the "good old days" is that access should be limited. People are not to be trusted with their own intelligence, nor with their own welfare or language. In contrast, open engagement with texts encourages us to take seriously perspectives alien from our own, and this experience keeps us from being locked in the present and concluding that history and human consciousness are inevitably on a downward spiral. But to see outside, we must also be looking inside to understand our own perceptions.
Our Reading Histories Tapping
The literature lesson, as I see it, is very much about each student's evolving answer to the ongoing saga of "what kind of reader am I?" This means, however, that we have to act so as to include every last student as part of this inquiry. Even the reluctant need to have their voices heard. Here, for instance, are the views of 14-year-old Eric, who would prefer never to be sitting in a literature class. I have interspersed his written words with what I imagine a teacher might be thinking in response, impressions a teacher might draw on in talking with Eric.
Eric: I'm the sort of person who does'nt like to read.
Teacher: So that's a big divide: those who like to read, those who don't. I wonder if that's just a natural inclination or a habit or a taste one develops or is prevented from developing?
Eric: But if I ever do have to read I read a book about mystery and suspense or a comedy.
Teacher: There's something about that rush-to-turn-the-page quality of a book. Sometimes I leave a book unfinished because I don't really care about what's going to happen next to the characters. Eric, what is it about a story that keeps you involved?
Eric: The places I have red a book is in bed or in the sitting room when there nothing on T.V. The worst place to read I think is in the kitchen on the loo or where there's people about. I like to sit in complete silence.
Teacher: Sometimes I can read with music going, but I'd mostly agree with you about the silence. I seem to read better in the evening. Does time of day make a difference for you? Can you read at all in school? I know I find it hard to concentrate when lots of other things are on my mind.
Eric: I learnt to read when I was about 4. My mum ran an playgroup and she used to help me to read. I started on basics like cards with small words on.
Teacher: Do you remember having any fun doing this? Was it hard? What story writing did you do then? Did the other kids look forward to reading?
Eric: Then when I was at school we had a set of about 10 books ranging from hard to easy.
Teacher: What were they like? I wonder if what was hard and what was easy varied from child to child. And if that was the case, it would be interesting to know if you got to choose some of your own books during this time. Did anyone ever use a library?
Eric: At night my mum used to read to me. Sometimes night time stories or comic books.
Teacher: I remember especially being read Grimm's fairy tales when I was sick. Do you still like listening to stories being read out loud?
Eric: I prefer watching T.V. more and when I do I like any sort of thriller or comedy.
Teacher: So you like the same kind of stories, whether in books or on T.V. I like it when at first no one will believe the victim and then gradually the evidence becomes overwhelming and the authorities are forced to change their minds--hopefully before it's too late!
By staying in touch with what the reader is telling us, rather than judging or feeling ourselves superior, the authority of our position as teachers can be used to enforce the idea that readers are entitled to their own likes and dislikes. This is the beginning point of democratic discussions of literature.
Our reading histories also extend to detailed accounts of how our feelings and understandings evolve while we're reading individual works. If developing readers learn to focus on "what happens as they read," then, as Donald Fry suggests, "they will grow into an awareness of themselves reading, which is another way of coming to understand how they learn, how they live, how they are" (107). This ongoing self-reflection done within an accepting environment breeds confidence in one's abilities because it sees reading as a self-correcting process. But again this kind of reflection is a social phenomenon: if we don't share our predictions and hunches with others we have no way of tapping into the larger pool of resources that we need to confirm and stretch the verisimilitude of our own readings.
Many literature teachers now encourage their students to keep reading logs to chart their emerging engagement with what they are reading. This allows one's reading, especially of novels, to be anchored in time. While sometimes we have the luxury to read a book straight through, more often it's the case that we move slowly through a story as it unfolds. This might mean that perhaps our mood will not always be the same as we come to read different sections of a book, or perhaps we'll not remember every detail over time. Once a novel is finished, however, and all that remains is a sense of global awareness, we easily forget the accumulating energy that was being invested as we moved through the pages sequentially. Keeping a record demonstrates dramatically the changes of direction our readings often take and therefore can make us more sensitive to and tolerant of the vagaries of other readers. Showing students that they have a reading process and history worth considering certainly helps to give them an added sense of power and participation. Even younger, less sophisticated students will eagerly join a common inquiry in this way.
Recently in England, I was talking over these ideas with some middle school students and their teacher. Afterwards, one of the girls, Rosa, presented me with a log she had kept for 35 days while she was making her way through Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian. Rosa, who had recently immigrated to England, begins her 21-page saga by copying the blurb on the dust jacket:
Young Willie Beech is evacuated to the country as Britain stands on the brink of the Second World War. A sad, deprived child, he slowly begins to flourish under the care of old Tom Oakley--but his new-found happiness is shattered by a summons from his mother back in London.
Then Rosa continues, setting down how she feels oriented to the book before actually beginning her reading. This serves as a base line for a series of changes that will subsequently take place:
I only chose this book, 'cause Sarah suggested it to me. The title seemed boring to me. . . . The front isn't really that thrilling, it looks like a book that goes for ever and never comes to the interesting parts. I read the hype (or whatever, you know, the thingy). It sounded pretty good, especially the part where it says, "Knows just how to grab the emotions." I'm that sort, you see, cries at nearly everything sissy!
There's absolutely no connection between me and the old fogey on the front. Seriously, there isn't.
I guess I expect to find my self crying when I'm finished with it. Sarah reckon's it's really sad. In this kind of book I think I'll expect really "big" words, you know like, "ostentatious" (I bet I've spelt that wrong, eh?) bye.
Rosa's entries are generally addressed directly to her teacher, who establishes an accepting and attentive partnership with her in the course of her reading. In the margins, he banters back and forth supportively. In response to her spelling anxiety, for example, he writes, "No--it's right. Miracles!" Rosa can speak freely for she knows she'll get a caring and honest reaction back. Thus, well into the second chapter of the novel, Rosa comments, "I like the way Michelle has used Tom's accent. If I wrote something like that it'll probably get corrected into proper English even though it's in an accent (you dig??)." To which her teacher replies, "If it's an accent, I wouldn't correct it & no--I don't like gardening." Or when Rosa copies out a line that's confused her in the novel, "He added some coke to the fire," [her italics] and writes, "Weird, ha? I wouldn't chuck my can of coke in the fire!!!? Coke, what's it mean?" again her teacher comes back humorously with, "Wally--It's a form of coal."
Throughout these beginning chapters, Rosa continues looking for a place to enter and connect with the lives presented in the novel: "Even at the beginning of the book the emotions are coming on strong. . . . So far there's no connections between me & the book, (don't really expect there to be)." She gives her ongoing impressions, even as she searches for expressions that she can't quite manage:
I've just finished reading the 2nd chapter, & I can already see the relationship between Willie and Tom is getting stronger, and more . . . (you know what the word is (?) I can't remember, never mind) (?!)) Yes, well, anyway, I'm going to carry on reading now!
Several pages later in her log, Rosa quotes another line, "The sheets were drenched in urine," and adds a comment that is surprisingly close to self: "(HO, HO!!) Fancy that, Willie wet his bed! Actually to be honest, that's the only connection between the book & me so far! (HA, HA!)." Throughout, Rosa writes in a colloquial style that keeps her close to her personal judgments of what she understands to be going on in the novel: "The characters are pretty naf, ain't they?, I mean personality ways. But the author has obviously thought very carefully about the kind of characters she wanted, & I think that the author has succeeded." Still, through most of her log she remains very much on the fence, not sure that this story will ever deliver for her: "I knew it was gonna be one of those books that never comes to the interesting part."
Much of Rosa's log is, of course, taken up with plot summaries of the story. This kind of "retelling" repetition helps Rosa draw the story inside herself, making it more her own. Yet even these "summaries" are peppered with her valuative reactions and reveal her as an active, responding reader:
Will was holding the baby in his arms, he had bruises all over the place. (Surprise "bloomin" Surprise!?). Will has been taken to hospital. Tom, Sammey & the Warden went along too! The baby was dead, they haven't told Will yet. That was so sad when Will went home (but I didn't cry!) It wasn't dramatic enough for me to cry, but was very emotional.
When at last Rosa comes to the end of the novel, she finds she's surprised even herself: "Finis! I didn't think I was going to cry! I actually cried! When they announced Zach's death, my heart missed a beat, there was a lump in my throat and the 'blommin' tears trickled down my cheek!" Here was a character that really moved her and cemented her relationship to the story: "It was as though Zach was the only character that was alive. He was the one I could actually feel his presence in my mind. I was crying for such a long time I just couldn't believe it. Zach reminds me of someone, but I can't remember who."
Finally, in her concluding remarks that complete this reading cycle, Rosa begins with some reflections on herself as reader:
As a reader, I've learned that I'm not a good reader. I'll be reading something & then suddenly I'll think who the hell is this?! My concentration seems to drift away when I'm reading.
Next she sizes up the whole story and offers a word of advice to the author, whom she continues to address unabashedly by her first name:
The book had a very nice slow beginning, at the end I didn't want the book to end.
I reckon that Michelle has her own "unique" kind of way of writing a novel. I like her style, it's definitely different to any other books I've read.
If Michelle were to re-write this book I'd tell her to cut the crap about Will meeting new people short & make the bit with his friends, getting along really well, longer. She should write about what they do as a "team," what adventures they want to do & all that.
Her closing words are more than ample testimony of how her 35-day persistence in the reading of this novel has paid off: "My opinions of the book have definitely changed. I use to think this book was the same & boring as any other book. But now I think it's really good." In her very hands, Rosa now owns a permanent record of dialogue with her teacher, one that illustrates the dynamic interplay between the personal and the social that constitutes her reading. By faithfully writing in her log, Rosa has discovered that she counts as a reader.
As we look more deeply into readers' responses, their ongoing attempts to make sense of some aesthetic stimulus, we see in what flux they exist. Responses, in other words, are very much temporally determined. They change cumulatively through time. As Rosa's log entries illustrate, one's final response to a story does not capture all the nuances of the accruing journey. Indeed, taking the final response in isolation, we might conclude that reading in time is a fairly straightforward affair. Yet any close inspection of actual readers, such as Rosa, shows that there is finally no set pattern. In fact, the strange and unpredictable twists and turns of response are frequently the rule, not the exception--something I am constantly reminded of whenever I track my own "readings" in time.
Admitting Our Reading Mishaps
One such response shift startled me while I was watching the movie Lorenzo's Oil (1992), starring Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte. For some reason, it didn't register with me that this film was a docudrama. Apparently my eavesdropping on TV commercials for the movie had been most inattentive. Further, I don't believe in quick and miraculous cures for unknown maladies; I share my wife's prejudice against what she labels the "illness of the week TV movie." All this left me with a set of formulaic expectations as the screen lit up before me: I thought this was going to be a movie about a family reaching to all lengths in order to cure a ghastly ill child, and at the last minute they would find some magical cure and the child would climb out of bed and resume a normal life.
Given this predisposition, it took me awhile to piece together what I was seeing on the screen. Several times during the movie, the camera glances over an object, a knife with an elaborately carved handle, and so I was waiting for this knife from East Africa to be the key to the plot. I read it as anticipating some witch doctor, who would then save the boy in the nick of time with a magic spell or potion. On the other hand, even as I tried to suspend my disbelief that miracles can happen, I found myself wishing that this suffering, emaciated child might just be allowed to die in peace.
Then slowly it dawned on me that the director was making a special effort to offer verisimilitude for the parents' quest for a scientifically valid treatment for this rare disease, adrenoleukodystrophy (LPD). For instance, the father spends countless hours at a medical research library delving into the secrets of fatty acids and organic chemistry. Models of the brain and the central nervous system appear, and I'm confronted with schematic diagrams of myelin, which I associate with myelopathy, a disease which killed my own father--this began to seem like a real malady. Did the olive oil, which the parents begin giving Lorenzo at the end of the movie, actually hold some recuperative power?
Finally, the actual chronology of scenes is emphasized. It's "March 14, 1985," six months after the first diagnosis, and time is marching on. Nor does any magic spell or potion appear, despite the family's recruitment of a caring African from the village where the family had previously lived. At that time, this man had befriended Lorenzo and now, most sympathetically, he comes to serve as part of the care procedure. Despite this gradual "reorientation" away from my original response expectations, it shocked me how far off the mark my predictive map had been. The movie had in fact been based on the story of a real family's controversial struggle against an entrenched medical bureaucracy.
As my interpretation took a new shape, it was possible to re-read the pattern of symbolism in the movie. No longer was it necessary to see the knife as a symbol of alchemy or magic; now it appeared as a sign of unity and continuity with the African. After making the long journey to a strange culture, he creates a special bond with the sick boy, who is seemingly locked forever outside the bounds of human communication. The African senses a living connection beyond human words and so strengthens the parents' resolve not to give up on their son's valiant effort to stay in touch, however tenuously, with the world of the living.
In sharing with my students how I felt thrown off in my viewing of Lorenzo's Oil, I try to demonstrate the many routes we end up taking to capture a work for ourselves. What is interesting about our initial reading of any text is that we can never quite relive the mystery and excitement of coming upon the puzzle of the words and the situations for the first time. By keeping our reading temporally located, we help defeat the notion of closure and "correct" interpretations. Seeing variety in the readings of others authorizes it to exist in ourselves. Cultivating such reflection on the reading process allows us to be expansive in our view of what can take place in the literature classroom.
The democratic process of reading literature exists to widen the circle of readers of all ages. It accepts their experience, whatever it's been, and links it into new combinations of significance. Each reading history bears testimony to the inquiring social nature of our minds--if curiosity has not already been leeched from them. Frederic J. Oates, for instance, began auditing college courses at age 70, after spending 40 years in the tool and die business. The father of Joyce Carol Oates, he tells of the particular reading pleasures that came about in classes where he was taken seriously as reader. To begin with, he inherited his love of poetry from his mother, "who always had collections of her favorite poems about the house." The fiction that he read in his early years "was the usual adventure stories, like Tom Swift, The Rover Boys and, a little later, Gulliver's Travels, Tom Sawyer and such." Yet he recognized even then that "there was something different about the two types of stories, something more than one of them being entertainment for children." He "wasn't to know the extent of the differences, however, for some years to come."
Although Oates had always been "an avid reader of fiction and poetry," by returning to school after all those years, and rejoining the conversation, he began to see the need to pause and probe his "reading in terms of its significance." In slowing down and reflecting on his reading process, he learned "to analyze, judge, look beneath the surface, question prejudices and easy assumptions." The point was to "see and hear and think in terms altogether different from those of daily life." This process of give-and-take carried out under the teacher's careful "prodding" made otherwise inaccessible books enjoyable for the first time:
One that comes to mind is Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. How many of us, I wonder, bogged down in the first section, and just got tired of what seemed gibberish? That story was given a fresh outlook after Benjy's "narrations" were brought into focus. For me, it became one of Faulkner's best.
Such broadly inclusive reading practices gradually gave Oates the confidence to see himself as an agent in his own literary education. His story about doing "something daring" in a class shows how the reading of literature expands when teachers feel free to move in unprepared directions:
I came to English class early and, without my professor's knowledge, distributed copies of a poem he had written, which I had seen in a local publication. The poem titled "Braille," was about people touching the names of the dead on the Vietnam War memorial in Washington, D.C. We got the professor to talk about the poem, and it led to one of our most fascinating discussions and an excellent impromptu reading. We experienced "poetry in motion," and I doubt any of us will forget it.
Oates' reading history disconfirms any elitist visions of who is able to read what. Because the "instruction" democratically invited his participation, Oates surprised himself with a burst of energy and self-recognition, just as Rosa had done. By staying in touch with his own responses as a reader, Oates could begin to appreciate the pressing human dimension of the literary conversation. How might we as teachers assure this happens for all our students, whatever their age or ability?