A Subjacent Hideaway:1
An Inquiry Concerning Books and Lives
- for M______, wherever you are -
“If I encounter difficulties in reading, I do not gnaw my nails over them; I leave them there, after making one or two attacks on them…What I do not see at the first attack, I see less by persisting…If this book wearies me, I take up another; and I apply myself to it only at the moments when the boredom of doing nothing begins to grip me.”
-- Montaigne, “Of Books”
I: Five Young Men
The first young man took the life of his landlady
in an attempt to prove some abstract point.
Seven years in Siberia. He learned remorse.
The second young man drove across America
several times in a series of cars –
to and fro with an orphaned, fast-talking madman.
The third young man, like the first, committed murder.
Incapable of remorse, he’s enraged
when the prison chaplain asks him to turn to God.
The fourth young man thumbs a ride from Minnesota
to NYC in the dead of winter
with just his guitar, achieves fame within two years.
A fifth young man (yours truly) reads of the first four:
Raskolnikov, Sal Paradise, Meursault
and Robert Zimmerman (now known as Bob Dylan).
Seventeen years of age, senior year in high school.
Stricken with a “motivation crisis”
(as I learn it’s called some twenty-four years later).
Already accepted into college (Penn State),
I underperform through my final year
and, in six months filled with pathos and bravura,
drop out of the wrestling, track and cross-country teams,
am kicked out of the school’s Honors Program,
fall from 7 to 52 in class-ranking,
and, most notoriously, bid leave of the world
(or the bit of it I thought I knew then)
by removing to a subjacent hideaway
with my high school sweetheart – a rich kid from Turkey.
I enjoyed a seven-month sleepover,
that is, at the home of her lenient sponsors
(superlenient sponsors, I should rather say).
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1Submitted as an end-of-term paper for a course on Adolescent Psychology.
______________________________________________________
An opportunity? You could say that!
Hell! What choice had I between good grades and Meltem?
M_____ A_____, that is, of Istanbul, Turkey –
formerly Constantinople. “ENdeee…
you luf duh stupeet zhres-leen team bettuh den me?”
I was like one of the Brothers Karamozov,
she said. “Zhread it, seely Amerrykin!
But Czhrime oon Pooneeshmint fuhst…easiuh fuh you.”
I bought it. We discussed it chapter by chapter.
I “identified” with Raskolnikov.
No, I hadn’t killed anybody as he had,
but I did know I was letting my parents down.
Guilt is guilt, Dostoevsky seemed to say.
I’d find a Siberia of my own, I guessed,
after my exotic and cruel girlfriend had left,
write letters of apology to home.
By the time my True Love had departed our nest,
I’d begun Karamozov, but found it too long.
I settled for another, shorter book –
one that she said would act as a sop for my tears.
The existentialist agonies of Camus.
Oddly enough, The Stranger cheered me up.
It made it feel good to wallow in misery.
I could get through this, and if not, so what, I’d die.
I didn’t know you could say that in books.
(This, by the way, is exactly what Gabriel
García Marquéz reportedly told himself
after reading The Metamorphosis.
Had he known, he’d have started writing earlier.)
After Camus, I found Kerouac in order.
All of my teenage heroes had read him.
He instilled in me American wanderlust –
which isn’t necessarily a healthy thing,
as kids are already so unsettled.
But he also gave me a couple of somewhat
older buddies to look up to – Sal Paradise
(Kerouac’s carbon copy of himself)
and that frenetic savant, Dean Moriarty –
Neal Cassady in real life – an autodidact
who was raised by an alcoholic dad
on the streets of Denver during the Depression
and ingested all of Proust and Schopenhauer
in reform school during his later teens.
Self-taught, he was the smartest guy anybody
had ever met – one of the most handsome, to boot.
Sal and Dean – ego and alter-ego,
blood bondsmen in a new literature of life.
I could imagine myself as one, the other,
or both at the same time, for that matter.
The fourth book I read before heading to college
was Anthony Scaduto’s great biography
of Bob Dylan, who’d been my top hero
since 5th or 6th-grade, for which everyone teased me.
They took it as an unnatural devotion.
My father in particular hated
Dylan. “Cats screeching at each other,” he called it –
an antipathy which added to my pleasure.
I’d sing like him at the top of my lungs.
“Who killed Davey Moore? Why and what’s the reason for?”
Dad would clutch his ears and mutter under his breath,
imploring, “Jesus Mary & Joseph!
Why couldn’t you have given me a normal son?”
What I got out of Scaduto’s biography
was the desire to lead the sort of life
worth biographizing (if there is such a word)…
or autobiographizing, at any rate.
A life you could stand back from and admire.
Twenty-four years now since the time I read these books.
Great books, all four of them – books that helped me get through
painful vicissitudes of Life and Love.
I devote this inquiry to their memory.
II: By Themes
A few stacks of reading surveys. A handful of
questions on both sides of a single sheet.
One version for adolescents, one for adults.
The surveys are anonymous. I know only
the age and sex of each participant.
Name a book (or more than one book) that changed your life.
How did it change your life? Alter your point of view?
Is there a book you’ve read as an adult
that you wish you had read during adolescence?
Are there books, for that, you read as a teenager
that you feel you would rather not have read?
Finally, a space for additional comments.
And the results? I’ll admit they’re rather sketchy –
somewhat short of scholarship; hence, the poem,
in which sketchiness may rise to sublimity
(not that I’m promising it will happen this time).
I’ll try to organize this thing by themes,
of which I’ll build a forest to see some trees through.
We’ll begin with
The Kids.
If you asked me to name
a single common event or image
under which the bulk of their remarks seem to fall
or which they occupy, include, or call to mind,
I’d nominate that of an opening –
an opening that takes place on many levels.
First of all (I’d even say primordially),
books open up the imagination2
(which some, indeed, named negatively as escape3):
Give me an image and I’ll throw in one of mine.
I’ll match you one for one and call them fine!
– if we may so dare to sum up the sentiment
by way of a melodious, pleasing couplet.
After this primordial opening
follows the opening of the self to the self –
the opening, that is, of self-understanding:
I stand under a self I understand.
To it I contribute myself and have it manned.
(the old theme of the self as a play of mirrors).
Next we might name the opening to life.
Books tell us life is short and not to be wasted.4
Life can also be harsh and unfair (see below):
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2“[The Harry Potter series] got me into the whole magical world thing where anything can happen.”
3“I read books to escape reality to get a better understand[ing] of myself.”
4“[The Time Traveler’s Wife] made me think more about life, how short it is, take risks.” “Eragon made me start thinking about life and how short and quick life is.”
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Short is the duration of human life.
Too often poets see cause to rhyme it with strife!
(Not the finest couplet I’ve ever penned, I fear.
Use one of your own if it’s something near.)
Then further we attempt to bring love5 into play
and, with it, friendship.6 Books, or so our students say,
teach their readers that love is true and real.
They teach us first to love and, through loving, to feel.
Moreover, they teach us not to fear being spurned.7
“Love,” they tell us, “and love will be returned!”8
There’s a helluva lot we can say about love.
I’d tell you more, but that’s all I was thinking of.
Love manifests itself through its objects.
Freud tells us we see ourselves mirrored in others,
and through such images we acquire empathy –
a peculiarly human trait, it seems.
To those who are close to us, books draw us closer.
To those who are distant from us, or different,
books reveal our proximities with them –
our closenesses, our many similarities.9
They grant us compassion for those less fortunate
than ourselves, lacking our advantages.10
They also apprize us of the injustices
that parcel out advantage and disadvantage
with perpetual inequality.11
The Golden Rule beseeches us to empathize,
pulling Heaven to Earth from the blanketing skies.
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5“[Of Mice and Men] alter[ed] my view by loving my brothers more and take good and wise care of them.”
6“ If I hadn’t read Holes, I never would have thought about who my real friends are or taken the time to get to know someone I didn’t know that well.” Many young readers say that books can encourage us to ask our friends for help: “Speak let me know that you’re never alone and that when something major happens, you need to tell someone and not keep it bottled inside.”
7“If I hadn’t read Forever, I never would have been able to love as freely as I do now. I’m not scared to get hurt anymore.”
8“The book Forever shows you how you don’t have to be afraid to love someone because they will love you back.”
9“Perks of Being a Wallflower showed that even if people think cutting/emo [?] kids are freaks, deep inside they’re just as normal as everyone else.”
10On a somewhat related theme: “[The Lemony Snicket books] made me realize that my life isn’t as bad as I’m making it…A Series of Unfortunate Events…stopped making my life seem so difficult.”
11“After I read [The Only Alien On the Planet], I came to realize that there are a lot of children who grew up with physical verbal or any kind of abuse, and it affects them to the point they feel alienated.” Another student writes, “I started to think more about how people treat one another. And why people discriminate and treat one another so badly so I try to be more aware of it and talk to others[,] telling them to stop being discriminating if they are.” A third: “When I was a child, I got busted for doing wrong things. But I never did notice that other children like me are getting even worse punishments. Being abused is the hardest thing a child can experience.”
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Thus, love of one’s fellows leads further on
to a moment of love we might call interest –
interest in human ways, human history,12
in things humans find, in things they create,
in improvement and in possible perdition.
Interest is the sum of human care
and spans from the nearest here to the furthest there.
In contemplating misfortune and injustice
and in pondering them with interest,
pursuing them to their source, to their origin13
(keep in mind that this is all being done through books!),
we begin to think how things can be changed.
That is, books provide windows into the future.
We ponder what can be done to eliminate
obstacles and hindrances in our way
and in the way of our empathetic fellows.
There’s no way to entirely reveal the future,
although it tears at the present’s suture.
Teenagers, it’s true, tend to think closer to home,
so to home now we’ll return from this lofty flight
(and with iambic measure plant our feet).
Books make our students think about the great beyond,
which for them simply means what happens after school,
what they’ll do with themselves in 13th-grade –
a grade that extends through the short infinity
that will comprise their lives as it comprises ours.
Perhaps most importantly for our kids,
books can get them away from the television,14
get them to rethink bad plans15 and nasty habits,16
can give them, in short, a firmer handle
on what they wish to make of the stuff of their lives.17
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12“If I hadn’t read 3 Musketeers, I never would have been so into history and the changes of society.” “If I hadn’t read Night, I never would have known about the concentration camps Jews had to go through.”
13“If I hadn’t read Beloved, I never would have learned of the tragedies that went on at the time of slavery. I never would’ve found out how mothers went out of their ways to save their kids.”
14“If I hadn’t read The Babysitters’ Club, I never would have started reading habitually and watch[ing] less TV.”
15“[Sharon M. Draper’s Battle of Jericho] helped make me realize that life isn’t fair at all. That there are sexist people in this world. I had wanted to join a sorority in college. But now I don’t want to.”
16“This book had changed my life because it talked about how these basketball players had won their big game so they went out to celebrate. These 4 boys ended up drinking all except one. Then they crashed…This made me more cautious on my actions and ma[d]e me realize life is to[o] short. If I hadn’t read this book, I never would have gotten my priorities straight.” The theme of caution crops up from time to time in the surveys: “If I hadn’t read Hostage, I never would have been more cautious in what I do each day.”
17“If I hadn’t read The Truth About Forever, I never would have tried to do well in school and have a life outside of school.”
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If your kid’s reading bullshit, don’t let it get you.
You once read the very same, I bet you.
I’d bet on it, in fact, but I haven’t met you.
As You Walk Through Your Play
You can keep this in mind, as you walk through your play:
at least the kids appreciate your wit.
It’s something for you to hold onto through the day,
struggling with what usage does and doesn’t permit.
You’re sure to get a laugh, so don’t worry
if they understand you in any other sense.
It’s enough to us that they’re all making merry
as the now continues to build its fence,
obscuring what were our more particular points.
We all thought it a matter of timeless yearning.
But look at ‘em down there, passing their joints.
They all appear bound upon a keener turning.
Once more it’s the perennially changing temper
of the times. Anyway, just remember:
as long as the children are laughing, they’re learning.
***
Now onto
The Adults
The themes are related,
to be sure; the fundamental event
or image of opening, however, has been
replaced by the theme of increasing awareness
(which, if we were pressed to find an image,
might well underscore that of a widening eye –
an unrolling or expanding sense of vision).
And awareness is both awareness of
and awareness that. As the awarenesses of
in general seem to be clearly related
to the openings of our youthful friends,
and as we might suggest that they are extensions,
indeed, of those earlier openings,
it is with them that we’ll begin. Books, it happens,
increase our awareness of (open our eyes to):
the power of thought (an updated trope,
more or less, for the imagination made wise);
alternative perspectives18 (notice how we skip
over the self-understanding and love
of our earlier list, both of them now subsumed
under adult-invigorated empathy);
of new, formerly hidden empathies
(with children,19 with animals, with unfortunates);
of the renewal and power of forgiveness;
of one’s heritage (or the heritage
of one’s foreign-born parents); of one’s cherished rights;
of one’s true direction20; of new thought traditions;
and of how the world might be otherwise –
of how we all can work together to change things.
On to the awarenesses that. Books inform us:
that the good faith that we place in ourselves
should be prior to the trust we place in others;
that difficult thought is rendered accessible21
through patience and time and trust in oneself;
that things will ultimately work out in the end;
and, finally, that the truths of utility
we know as maxims lay hidden in books,22
and through the sooth derived from them we’ll work things out.23
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18“[All Quiet On the Western Front] provided me with an alternative to the romantic view of war…It influences my views and politics to this day.”
19“If I hadn’t read [Heidi and A Secret Garden], I might never have been alerted to my empathy for children with special health needs.”
20“[The Encyclopedia Brown series] encouraged me to figure out why the mystery happened (the answers are in the back of the book). I think this encouraged me to pursue a career in science because I want to know why things happen.”
21“Be Here Now opened my eye to American-based pursuits of Eastern religious thought…I read the Bhagavad-Gita first, and didn’t really understand much of it, so Be Here Now made this path of thought/practice more accessible for me.”
22“I paid much more attention to stories and the lessons/morals they conveyed than my teachers’ lessons.”
23“[Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine] didn’t really change my life, but some of the lines in the book were like quotes to live by; they were inspiring.”
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Leviticus
greatness is of more
than its merest self composed -
'tis vanity to
otherwise suppose!
each word an unsung silence
long presupposes
while playing Aaron
to an unspeaking Moses,
and moves through makeshift
and hidden hamlets
- for he who smashes the calf
destroys the tablets -
and the truth is leased
untermed on an unmarked plot:
the covenant is
kept or it is not
…from the splinters, from
the fragments
we seek
provisional commandments -
forms, forever
undeclared,
which lurk in unimagined
wake -
divinities
we, in passing, shared -
divinities
we, in chancing, make!
…and the ills of this world are
merely what we willed
III. Interlude: The Throwaways24
Though we’re not supposed to say that boys will be boys;
I do find that their nonchalance annoys.
I’ve read that girls are far more prodigious readers;
perhaps that’s why more and more of them are leaders.
My surveys are certainly case in point,
for every boy it seems with his wit must anoint
the prodigious pains I’ve taken to set things straight
on what our books contribute to our fate
with answers that aren’t funny, at any rate.
“Dr. Seuss taught me not to eat green eggs and ham.”
One boy says his favorite book is Spam.
Another lists, not books, but his favorite snacks.
“I learned all I know from a bowl of Apple Jacks!”
Another wants to read my mom. “She’s hot.”
And one boy tears off the pages to roll his pot!
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24“The statistics are consistent: Young male readers lag behind their female counterparts. According to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) in 2001, fourth-grade girls in all of the 30 plus participating countries scored higher in reading literacy than fourth-grade boys by a statistically significant amount” (McFann, 2004, 3rd paragraph).
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IV. Some Odds and Ends
So much for the big themes. Here are some odds and ends
I encountered on a last combing through
(and again we’ll allow the kids to have first say):
“I read quite a bit. It seems I’m always reading.
Not all of it however’s for a class.
I read a lot of magazines and online stuff,
but the actual number of books isn’t great.”
So kids, in fact, are reading more and more…
but not necessarily the books we give them.
“I hate reading. I really can’t stand it at all.
Nothing on Earth bores me more than a book.
But if it really kicks ass, I can’t put it down.”
(This is not an exact quote, but a metrical
paraphrase.) He hates reading, but there’s hope,
in other words. The challenge for us as teachers,
once we’ve decided on a book we think might work,
is how to get the book to kick his ass.
So there’s the challenge of finding which books are right
and the added challenge of how best to teach them.
“One good book makes you want to read others.
Before I finished The BFG [by Roald Dahl],
I hated reading more than almost anything.
Now I hope I can find books just as good.
I read all the time. If I hadn’t read that one,
I’d never have read a book of my own free will.
If you know of one this good, please tell me.”
A wonderful statement (although I’ve cleaned it up).
But it does introduce a number of questions.
By what means are we to find such a book?
How do we locate the needle in the haystack?
Should it even be our responsibility?
Is it a trick of good curriculum?
Or does it more depend on time, caprice and fate?
Before attempting our own tentative answers,
we’ll lend an ear to our adult readers
(and we’ll number their statements to keep them tidy):
First, “motivation to read often first takes place
when reading is disassociated
from schoolwork.” We don’t want to be graded on it –
on what we’d prefer to do out of love, that is.
Second, “a good book, if it’s the right one,
can prevail over the most defective teacher.”
A book can end up teaching itself, that’s to say,
if the teacher’s bad but the time is right.
Third, “you often don’t know how important a role
a book has played in your life until years later.
This may be triggered by experience…
by particular experiences, that is.”
Fourth, “students should be required to read certain books;
they’ll appreciate it in the future.”
My paraphrase falls short of the original.
I’ll try again: “Reading as an adolescent
most often goes unappreciated
until later – sometimes way into adulthood.
At the time, it seems pointless to read certain books
because the issues with which the book deals
are often foreign to youthful experience.
If my teachers hadn’t introduced them to me –
if I hadn’t been forced to read such things –
I’d have lost out on personal development.”
So well said I’ll leave it without commentary.
Xie xie to its anonymous author
(that’s Chinese for thanks and it fits the line better).
Fifth and finally (and sort of an odd man out),
“Heavy readers may feel guilty about
their habits.” (For more on this, see the Confessions
of Rousseau. I’ve experienced almost the same,
having once been fired for furtive reading.
Nowadays, though, I’m prone to trouble for writing.)
Montaigne Transcription
If I encounter difficulties in reading,
do you think I gnaw my nails over them?
After a couple of good attacks, I desist.
If I buried myself in such difficulties,
I’d lose both myself and my precious time.
I’d say that I was born with an impulsive mind;
often I don’t see any reason to persist.
For I do nothing without gaiety;
persistence without joy depresses and wearies –
having to withdraw one’s gaze and reapply it…
much as, when you judge a fabric’s luster,
you blink your eyes and catch it in varied glimpses.
If this book wearies me, I take up another
and apply myself to it at those times
when the boredom of nothing begins to grip me.
V. Theories and Theses
Now comes the hard part. It seems that the assignment
for which these verses have been occasioned
requires that I add a modicum of theory.
I could digress here at some length on the question
concerning whether and to what extent
art – High Art – may be occasioned. But I’ll refrain.
Instead, I’ll don the scholar’s cap and will venture,
in a series of progressive theses,
to connect these surveys with the required readings.
I. [and you may read out the numbers as you go]
The stories teenagers read contribute
to the narratives they weave to explain themselves
as their teenage years begin to draw to a close.
A metrical paraphrase: “The manners
in which a teenager perceives him- or herself
across time and space are known as identity…
Throughout adolescence, people explore
different alternatives…Perceiving oneself
in a particular role helps a teenager
construct his or her self-identity…
Individuals also tell stories about
themselves that help to foster self-identity…”25
I’ll drop the quotes at this point, as it’s tough
to keep it metrical without alteration.
The rest of it, however, goes something like this:
Human cognition belongs to language
(well, that’s a slight exaggeration of the text;
I’m taking advantage of poetic license
to cause the text to swerve around towards me –
towards my own conceits and predilections, that is),
and it is through language that its contents are shared.
Because of this, stories are a highly
important means of increasing self-coherence,
of relating one’s identity to others,
of participating in one’s culture.
Through narrative, an individual creates
an internalized story that binds together
the (reconstructed) past with the present,
anticipating the future and conferring
on one’s life a sense of unity and purpose.26
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25Nurmi (2005) p. 94.
26Nurmi (2005).
________________________________________________________
II. Books can help adolescents select
the environments in which they further their growth.
A corollary: Books can help students alter
(reassemble, redesign, refashion…)
the environments that have been pre-selected
or set up for them in advance by their elders.
More paraphrase: “Adolescents are not
merely passive targets of environmental
influence; rather, they select their future paths
and the spaces in which they come of age.”27
III. Books can provide students with alternative
feedback in cases where they have come to reject
feedback they’ve received from elders and peers.
“As a consequence of their efforts to select
the direction of their lives, teenagers end up
having specific outcomes [?] and receive
feedback about their successes and their failures.
Feedback concerning developmental outcomes
(in particular, negative events
and failures), requires that adolescents adjust
their thinking, their goals and plans in order to cope
successfully with future challenges.”28
IV. Literature can help young people adjust
to reality; at the same time, however,
it can serve to hinder this adjustment.
This one follows from what’s already been stated.
V. Books can help deflect troublesome behavior,
though they may also contribute to it.
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27p. 87 (metrical paraphrase).
28p. 87. Passage somewhat obscure in original.
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VI. Reading can help improve educational
motivation – although, again, the opposite
may from time to time be equally true.
They say that motivation steadily declines
from the end of elementary school on up
(motivation for school work, that’s to say).29
VII. Literature seems to have a special
capacity for providing what is lacking
in its young devotees; it may provide
a sort of temporary scaffolding between
affect and cognition prior to adulthood,
when the precipitous gap between them
is closed. Books are compensatory, that’s to say.
This one’s a bit more difficult to annotate
with quotes of scholarly authority
as it’s based on recent, difficult brain science
that I really can’t say I understand myself –
although if you find it of interest
you can refer to my listed references.
A guy by the name of Steinberg nicely describes
adolescence as “a situation
in which one is revving up an engine without
as yet having a skilled driver behind the wheel.”30
VIII. Finally (and speculatively),
genetic science now rejects the idea
that genes unravel their furthest consequences
in an autonomous process; instead
it is thought that the particular expression
to which they give rise is pretty much a question
of environment. It is much the same,
we’d suggest, with works of art and literature,
and this analogy between a genetic
man or woman and the autonomous
work of literature entails the following
questions: First, to what extent are the books one reads
part and parcel of the environment
in which one’s genes “express themselves” (or are expressed)?
Are they as crucial as our other surroundings?
Second, may we say that “genetic” works
of literature only come to fruition –
only achieve their full meaning – through “expression”
in the lives and the minds of their readers?
(Thus end our theses with carefull y poised questions.)
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29Board of Children (2004).
30Steinberg (2005).
31Susman (2005).
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VI. Conclusions
I guess this is where I’m supposed to give advice.
I’ve really no idea where to start,
which is why I’ve chosen this metrical device.
I’ve surrendered to the exigencies of art,
in which you’re never quite sure what will get said,
pushing from left to right with your metrical cart
and snatching choice precepts from the trays in your head.
It’s easy to get anxious over rhyme;
better, though, anxiety than a state of dread
when prose takes to festering in factual slime.
So much by way of preliminary…
Perhaps this time
we’ll begin with that airy
quote from Montaigne.
He seems to suggest that reading can be hairy,
pertaining as much to loss as to gain.
Yes, Montaigne himself can lack in motivation;
his interest, as ours, is bound to wane.
It doesn’t matter what the elevation!
A Shakespeare named William and a Simpson named Bart
will both be subject to readerly enervation.
How difficult for kids to make a start
when it comes to something like reading!
You’re never putting the horse before the cart.
But does that mean it’s got to be spoon-feeding?
That depends, I suppose, on your point of view.
I’ve spent a good number of hours kneading
through journals and surveys to find out what’s true.
As I see it, it’s half in curriculum, half in choice.
After poring over the “canon” through and through
and picking out what’s mete from Job to Joyce,
our students should be given some say in the matter.32
And their opinions should be brought to voice
without their fearing we’ll accuse them of empty chatter.
I’d say school reading should happen half and half.
Now don’t think I’m suggesting we flatter
the reading habits of every callow calf.
What I’m asking’s that we come up with a list,
jointly compiled by students and staff,
of books the kids love and books that are booed and hissed.
Of the books they love, do we adults concur?
Or do they rather succeed on some gaudy twist?
Or on some faded conception of true and pure?
As for books that they hate – would we deem them good?
If so, then exactly why do they fail to allure?
If our students don’t like them, is there some way they could?
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32“When students are supported in choosing from a wide selection of texts, sustained reading and measured achievement increase” (Guthrie, 2000, section marked “Instructional Contexts for Engagement”).
___________________________________________________________
That’s just the thing. For books must be prepared.
As teachers, we often don’t proceed as we should.
As it happens, our love for a book has not been shared.
“Then what are you suggesting, Mr. Haas?”
First, that our students should be spared
having to sip wordy nectar without straws…
or having to ascend certain books without a scaffold33
(to employ a term with theoretical claws).
If we give them no direction, they are baffled.
They should know that Shakespeare’s fool is half-bastard, half-rogue,
that when he goes home he lives off his meager hatful,
that he’s a vestige of the Renaissance in the Baroque.
That’s to say, we should give them a good bit of background,
then compare it all with what’s currently in vogue.
And we should coax them to each book with sight and sound,
making use of what audio-visual has to offer.
A book once flat will suddenly seem round
(though this may depend on the district’s coffer…
yes, certainly this all depends on cash –
capitalism’s most frequent proverb).
This doesn’t mean we should descend to mere flash;
for children are often unable to discern
relevant info from incidental trash.
It’s up to us to guide them turn by turn
through the thickets of the Information Age –
though it’s equally true there’s much for them to learn
outside of school – the institutional cage
(what scholars refer to as “unschooled knowledge”34).
That’s why we need to know the current rage
and add it to our pedagogical pottage.
Something they already know, of which they’re fond.
Something they’ll likely take along to college,
to their future in the great beyond.
____________________________________________
33For a comprehensive overview of the various types of instructional scaffolds, see Wilkinson and Silliman (2000).
34“Before students step foot in a school, they have amassed a rich body of conceptual knowledge about the world around them. This unschooled knowledge influences their learning from text, and can differ significantly from the schooled knowledge they acquire during formal education. Sometimes students reject knowledge found in content textbooks and hold onto erroneous interpretations gleaned from out-of-school experiences. Thus, the more educators understand about the interplay between schooled and unschooled knowledge, and about everyday cognition, the more effectively they can guide students to richer, more meaningful interpretations of text” (Jetton & Alexander, 2000, under section marked “Knowledge: The Scaffold for Text-Based Learning”).
_______________________________________________________
Let’s turn for a moment back to those odds and ends
that we tossed out somewhere back in the pond –
the ones, in particular, from our grown-up friends.
“It’s hard to like reading when it’s all about school.”
Cultivating a love for books depends
on its not being imposed with the dunce’s cap and stool
(motivation, that is, that’s merely extrinsic35).
Good reading habits are not imposed by rule
or by procedures that we’re forced to mimic.
Nor can they be assessed by score or grade.
There is no apparatus, no alembic,
by which a readerly mind is made.
That’s why we need to think about the goal.
Do students want to read so they’ll get paid
remuneratively well and not dig coal?
Or are they after deeper mastery?
In short, the teacher plays a difficult role,
avoiding by turns high-mindedness and dastardly
attempts to stroke each whim,
which result in intellectual bastardy;
for Giapetto begins his work with a wooden limb,
and teachers are like parents, you’ll admit.
But enough…this analogy’s topped its brim.
A second adult wrote something I like quite a bit:
“A good book over incompetence can prevail.”
You know those tenured fools who never quit
and manage to keep the school board off their trail.
However, such success cannot be planned.
Again, it’s back to searching for the grail.
But even if the fool is somehow canned,
we know there’s only so much we can do.
Despite our best intentions, small or grand,
our students are a motley sort of crew,
which means they rarely want to read the same.
But that’s how it is, after all, with me and you!
_________________________________________
35“Declines in interest and competence beliefs regarding English language arts are pronounced as children enter middle school... Oldfather and colleagues found that students’ intrinsic motivation to read declined as they went into middle school. Change in motivation reflected changes in classroom conditions. Children in these studies moved from a self-contained, responsive classroom that honored students’ voices and where formal grades were not awarded, to a teacher-centered environment in which students had fewer opportunities for self-expression and little opportunity for negotiating with teachers about their learning. These changes led students to become more focused on extrinsic motivational goals, such as achieving good grades” (Guthrie, 2000, under section marked “Motivation Research”).
___________________________________________________
Perhaps we should mention some books by name.
A Tale of Two Cities was often cited –
so dreadful it enjoys enduring fame.
To Kill a Mockingbird was also knighted.
The runner-up is Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
(It happens that I’m with all three delighted;
they deal with human infamy and lies.)
Robinson Crusoe, finally, topped the list;
it wins through sheer antiquity and size.
Each one of them is “boring,” the surveys insist.
But boredom must be interpreted, of course.
We must unknot the fingers in the fist.
I remember youthful boredom with remorse.
I think I always knew it was something else.
I wanted to read, but not by dint of force.
I saw each classic book as a formidable house.
I had no key, nor could I pick the lock.
I’d nibble on the outside like a mouse,
and through the windows covet half the stock.
I’d tell myself I was as yet too small,
and burrow underneath a neighbor rock.
In class, for books I hadn’t read at all,
good Uncle Cliff would help me get an “A”.
Yet voices in my head began to call,
“Come on and join us. Enter in the fray!”
When kids say “bored,” they simply mean “too thick
for planting in such newly fertile clay.”
As one of us has said, “There is no trick.
At times, we simply for them must decide.”
We cannot know as readers how they tick.
We thus select those volumes true and tried –
those favorites that we’re familiar with.
They’re heady, but their truths can be descried
by kids if we provide them with a sieve.
We pass them on with no uncertain pride;
through them, we’ve learned a bit of how to live.
And don’t suppose our kids will be denied;
for each year we will add a book or two
which they themselves have spotted in the tide
and welcome them aboard as valued crew
in our continued journey for what’s true.
Books warm us when we’re feeling cold and blue,
and cool us when we suffer from ague.
We laugh when Don Quixote comes askew,
then sigh when Hester turns a scarlet hue.
We smile when Watson offers Holmes a clue,
and cry when Juliet is bid “adieu.”
We think of how much Holden Caulfield grew,
then number all the dragons Arthur slew.
When D’Artagnan escapes, we mutter “Phew!”
and think about the day McMurphy flew.
We pant when June and Henry start to screw,
then genuflect when War and Peace is through.
But perhaps it’s time to leave off. I’m almost blue.
VII. Postscript: Five Young Men Again
The first man awoke and addressed the three others:
“I feel as if I’ve tried to prove some point…
or as if somebody has used me to prove his.”
The second said, “I’ll give ya the lowdown, brothers.
But first let’s split this beat old musty joint.”
“Whose joint?” said the first. The second, “It’s not my biz.”
The third man: “But wait…it’s not so easy as that.
Existence here is somewhat permanent!
Hell, I should know. Remember? I’m in for murder!”
The fourth just shrugged and intoned in a rusty scat,
“Death, my good men, is in-dee-ter-min-nit…
O-phee-lee-uh rages on but no one’s heard her!”
Weary of pondering pedagogical need,
the fifth man’s rhymes began to run to seed.
So he stacked up four good books and began to read.
November 18 – 21, 2006
Honolulu
References
Board of Children, Youth, and Families (2004). Engaging Schools: Fostering High School Students’ Motivation to Learn. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Guthrie, J. T. (2000). Contexts for engagement and motivation in reading. Retrieved 11/18/06 from Reading Online: An Electronic Journal of the International Reading Association Web site: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/handbook/guthrie/index.html .
Jetton, T. L. & Alexander, P. A. (2000). Learning from text: A multidimensional and developmental perspective. Retrieved 11/18/06 from Reading Online: An Electronic Journal of the International Reading Association Web site: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/handbook/jetton/index.html .
McFann, J. (2004). Boys and Books. Reading Today, 22(1), 20–21. Retrieved 11/18/06 from International Reading Association Web site: http://www.reading.org/publications/reading_today/samples/RTY-0408-boys.html .
Nurmi, J. E. (2005). Socialization and self-development. In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of Adolescent Psychology (2nd ed., pp. 85-124). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Steinberg, L. (2005). Cognitive and affective development in adolescence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(2): 69-74.
Susman, E. J., & Rogol, A. (2005). Puberty and psychological development. In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of Adolescent Psychology (2nd ed., pp. 15-37). Hoboken, HJ: Wiley.
Wilkinson, L. C. & Silliman, E. R. (2000). Classroom language and literacy learning. Retrieved 11/18/06 from Reading Online: An Electronic Journal of the International Reading Association Web site: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/handbook/wilkinson/index.html.
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