How about some pushback from a non-English professor?
I see this kind of argument regularly — that teaching students to analyze fiction, looking for meanings that aren't readily apparent at the explicit level, turns them off books and reading. I don't deny that a lot of people report this experience. But it honestly confuses me, partly because I personally can't relate at all, but partly because this argument so often comes from STEM people. Analysis and inquiry are supposed to be your bread and butter!
For me, and for I think a lot of people who love reading, noticing things like symbols, subtext, allegories, etc is part of the pleasure of reading fiction, and makes reading a richer and more meaningful experience. And I also don't buy the argument that critics are routinely finding things that aren't there just to make themselves sound smart or torment poor high school students. If you read, for example, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and don't draw the connection between the industrialization of the idyllic pastoral landscapes and the rape of Tess, you're missing a lot of what the book is saying. And in the Lolita example — yeah, it's about a verbose older man lusting after a prepubescent girl. But the Europe-vs-America stuff is there too. The great novelists were typically quite intentional about things like this — but also, the unintentional things, the assumptions they make because of their historical period and point of view, are revealing too. There is real pleasure, there is excitement, that comes with noticing this stuff. And close reading, to me, is about asking these questions at the sentence and paragraph level. Why this word and not that word? Why is the author using animal metaphors for this character and machine metaphors for that one?
When I encounter arguments about how trying to teach students analytical ways of reading fiction turns them off, I think about how different the discourse is for film. No one seems to complain when people talk about how a director might use camera angles or lighting or sound to convey something that's not explicit in the action or dialogue. Or how certain objects become laden with meaning because of how and where they appear in the story. Hitchcock fans will happily talk about the meaning of the color green in Vertigo and never question that the director is using it with intention (unlike "blue curtains"). I never hear people say that discussing this stuff turns people off watching movies, or that it's a bunch of fakery that people feign in order to sound intelligent. A quick visit to reddit will reveal that people even talk like this quite happily, and in excruciating detail, about their favorite TV shows! And for the most part, these aren't people with academic training in film criticism. They're lay viewers who are eager to wring every last bit of meaning they possibly can from the things they love, and are constantly looking for new ways of doing that.
So I wonder if there isn't something else going on behind these complaints. Perhaps it's simply that someone who is bored by a particular novel is being asked to treat something they're not interested in as though they're deeply interested in it — like the distaste that comes with feigning love. And not very many people have a natural affinity for old things and a desire to probe 19th-century thought. But I saw a comment somewhere (probably twitter) that most people don't remember how to solve quadratic equations or the steps of the Krebbs Cycle or anything else they learned in high school, but they do remember the books they read.
You really enjoyed learning literature in a certain way--great. But...have you considered survivorship bias? Given the way English is taught in our schools, the only people who continue to read it are people who enjoy reading in a certain way. Everyone else just assumes literature isn't for them.
Maybe the deeper thing going on here is that lots of people are accurately reporting their negative experience of how literature has been taught to them. And perhaps after a while, these negative experiences ought to be taken seriously.
The difference between film critique and literature critique is obvious. You only take film classes if you already love film. But everyone has to take literature classes. In my case, as in the case of many other people, we had to read literature before we really understood whether we liked it or not. We were forced to read it. Our grades were held hostage to whether or not we could satisfy a professor as to our understanding of these texts. That tends to create negative feelings about a thing, unfortunately.
I think there are a bunch of different claims here to take apart.
"People who enjoy reading for pleasure often don't enjoy reading analytically." — Yes. Lots of people report this and I don't doubt the truth of this claim.
"Trying to teach students to read analytically discourages them from reading for pleasure." — Maybe. The point of bringing up film/tv criticism is to show that a lot of non-academic people find analysis of media pleasurable and interesting, IF they're analyzing something they love.
"We shouldn't try to teach students to read analytically, because it interferes with reading for pleasure." — this doesn't automatically follow. I was "forced" to take biology class too, and I didn't love solving quadratic equations. That doesn't mean those things shouldn't be taught in school. The point of studying something in a classroom is to impart knowledge and skills.
"Literary criticism is sophistry, and critics are finding things in texts that don't exist" — that DEFINITELY doesn't follow. Whole different ballgame.
I didn't make any of these claims besides the first one, though.
The claim is that teaching kids that the highest way to appreciate literature is by reading analytically discourages them from attempting to read literature on their own. And because the best way of understanding literature is to read a lot of it, the net result is to reduce peoples' engagement with and understanding of literature.
The example in my post that you don't engage with is the one about learning meter. A professor tried to teach me meter in class using methods that were doomed to failure, because that's simply not how you learn. Chaucer did not sit down and practice scansion. He learned meter by reading and listening to a lot of poetry. I did the same. However, this was not an option that was even presented to me in class. The professors were wrong about how to teach this very basic and age-old literary skill.
As for your final claim, I think that my own experience was of being told to write about symbols that I did not perceive. If I could explicate the symbol in terms satisfactory to my professor, I would get an A. To me, that is sophistry. It's fine if professors and teachers actually perceive symbols, but to say that I ought to say that I see the same things they happen to see--that is the same as asking me to lie. And if they see no problem asking me to lie, then surely many of them are lying as well.
But you're making the second and third claims pretty directly in your comment? That teaching literary analysis is discouraging for students, and that we should change our methods so that they don't get discouraged.
The last claim about sophistry was, I admit, kind of an unfair reading of what you wrote (although I think you intended the title of your previous piece to be provocative in this way). Upon re-reading your post, it seems like what you're arguing is that if you read a lot, rather than trying to learn the kinds of formal techniques that are taught in English classes, your intuitions about literature will improve such that these subtextual meanings will be readily apparent to you, rather than something you're producing on command because that's what the professor wants.
And I agree with you! As someone who was also not an English major and who did and does most of my literary reading outside a classroom setting, there's no substitute for reading a lot (and also gaining life experience) and learning to make those connections on your own. And I think most English professors wish they could tell their students to just read more.
This isn't only true of English! The way to get good at chess is not to read a bunch of books about strategy, it's to play a lot of chess. But a serious chess player is probably also going to read those strategy books, and if they hire a tutor, they will want that tutor to talk to them about strategy and try to help them see things on the board that they didn't see before. Unless they're stupendously gifted, they can benefit from learning the tools and techniques of the people who came before them.
Since you're asking me to engage directly with your example about meter: what do you think the classroom's reaction would have been if the poetry professor had assigned seven hundred pages of Chaucer and told the students to read it aloud until they understood meter intuitively? I bet a lot of professors wish they could teach their classes that way! But it's just not true that it's impossible to learn meter by studying it formally, or by reading other poets like Shakespeare. Plenty of people can and do learn meter that way. And it's a lot faster.
I guess my complaint with the whole "asking students to analyze what they're reading is just teaching them to bullshit" argument is that it seems English is held to a different standard than other fields of knowledge. The point of taking a class is to gain a skill you didn't have before, and ideally in an efficient and engaging way! Maybe close reading isn't the best tool for that. And bad pedagogy does result in a lot of bullshit! But I think there are literary skills worth trying to teach, and that it's possible to teach them, and that it's possible to come out of an English class feeling invigorated, not discouraged.
I think the main claim is more that we shouldn't teach kids how to read analytically using the close reading method, specifically, for two reasons:
1. It's an ineffective method for actually learning to understand more complex texts accurately, for most high school students
2. It effectively puts people off engaging more deeply with literature (and even complex, non-literary writing), which, when widespread, creates a crisis of cultural thought
Unlike other methods of analysis in other classes, which might be "unpleasant" but not necessary harmful, engaging in close reading (as taught in highschools) creates fear and humiliation. This is a really different, far worse emotional and psychological state than just a barrier to "pleasure," like boredom.
It's strange that English classes are sticking with this poorly defined method, frequently damaging method, instead of just...trying to teach the texts with other methods?
And, at this point, the rigidity is bizarre!
It's so much more extreme than the limits placed on processes to learn information in other classes. Particularly compared to visual art and Biology in high school, at least from my own memory. It was truly wild difference between how analysis was taught in English vs those classes.
1 method with no cultural or linguistic context vs numerous methods with context in all directions.
It's not working anymore. Something really needs to change.
>It's strange that English classes are sticking with this poorly defined method, frequently damaging method, instead of just...trying to teach the texts with other methods?
They really aren't "sticking with it." Some teachers are close reading zealots, but they aren't the majority, and English as a discipline is anything but rigid. If anything, it is famously liberal in methods. It is, after all, the discipline that spawned Media Studies/film analysis, Black studies, and many others.
Maybe it's really pushed in high school? Is that where people are getting this impression? This misconception is widespread and it's just totally inaccurate, so that's my guess--that close reading is taught in a very browbeating way in high schools? That was certainly my partner's experience.
If the close reading method in particular doesn't help students engage with a text, and if it routinely makes them feel humiliated, then I agree we should try something else. But I think we can expect students to attempt some kind of analysis beyond basic comprehension. My memory of school is that "analytical" reading was only expected at the high school level (I think I did a specific "close reading" exercise once, in 12th grade), and that everything that came before that was focused mostly on reading for reading's sake, as well as basic comprehension and maybe exploring some historical and cultural context. I'm not sure what it's like at high schools today — is close reading really something that's heavily emphasized?
This resonates closely with what I tried to work out for myself in a comment above.
One small point--if every kid in high school was required to take a class where they need to write papers about jump cuts in Godard, there would be a lot of conversation about how evil film studies are. People who take English classes may or may not read in their spare time. But they are all expected to do so for class. People taking a class on film are probably a self-selecting group. English is unavoidable.
Many of my best students were STEM majors. Chemistry, in particular, seemed to have honed abstract thinking in a way most amenable to reading literary texts well.
I'm biased, since I'm in a graduate program for English literature, but I do wonder how universal your claims about English education are. I did not hear about "close reading" once until I went to college, and then only in English-major-only courses. Some professors told us that we needed to underline or highlight passages, but I seldom did this and was never penalized for my lack of discipline.
Most of the literary instruction I've received during my formal education has been threefold: one, it's given me time, structure and motivation to read far more books than I otherwise might have; second, I've learned about the history of ideas and how literary texts have participated in that history; and I've learned some formal stuff, like how to recognize a sonnet or free indirect style. This learning has been for me a gateway into more enjoyment, not less, although in moments of finals-adjacent stress, I do remember feeling as though some of the joy had been sucked out of reading for me. And I do remember other students saying stuff to the effect of: "I used to really love reading, but after being an English major, I'd just rather watch TV."
With all of this said, there is probably good reason to believe that my experiences put me in a distinct minority. On Substack, there's a ton of--not quite vitriol, but anger and dissatisfaction with English classes, university English departments, and so on. People don't seem to like what the institution has become, and it's not because they believe that literature isn't worth time or serious study.
I suppose for me the question all of this raises is: what does good institutional teaching about literature look like? How can classes be designed that bring about enjoyment and love rather than resentment, fear, or anxiety? Or is that simply not a possibility?
You yourself acknowledge that on Substack there is substantial anger at English teachers and English departments. I think my experience of finding English class unhelpful and unpleasant is a far more common one than the experience of some of my commenters in finding it useful. The only unusual thing is that I eventually started reading literature anyway and that I came to love it and to write about it in my own distinct manner (which is the whole reason you're reading my post).
I don't know how to teach English well. I think the point of English class isn't to teach people to love literature--it's to teach people how to read and write well. That's also a task that it seems to be doing poorly. Maybe more focus on that task would be better--a bigger focus on rhetoric and argumentation, instead of interpretation of texts. Ultimately, literature can take care of itself. Interest in literature is downstream of literacy--if you have a large enough people who can read and write well, then literature will result. Until the mid-19th-century, the top schools in the UK and America didn't teach English literature at all, but literary culture in the vernacular still thrived. Why? Perhaps precisely because it constituted an area of freedom--something that wasn't mediated by the academy or by the state.
The question of which experience of English class--yours or mine--is more common is pretty impossible to fully settle without some sort of evidence. The apparent popularity of a certain opinion on Substack is not dispositive evidence that English teachers generally do a poor job.
Based on my own anecdotal experience, I think you're right to say that most people find English classes unhelpful and unpleasant. But I also think that most students find history, mathematics and science education unhelpful and unpleasant. For example, I spent lots of time in high school struggling and failing to learn trigonometry, a manifestly useless skill for nearly all students and one that most of them resent being forced to learn. Most students hate school because school kind of sucks! It’s all about discipline, obeying and respecting authority figures who don’t always merit respect and obedience, standardized testing, being asked to meet arbitrary requirements… yuck! But I don't think English classes are worse than any other aspect of schooling, and in many cases, I think they’re quite a bit better. A quick Google reveals that, according to one survey at least, English was the most common "favorite" class for US high school students--and, in my own experience, most students talk about English teachers when asked to name their favorite teachers.
This isn’t to say that English classes can’t be improved, which is why critiques like yours merit respectful attention. To the degree that English teachers really do ruin students’ experiences with literature, they should be changed because, IMO, English classes should teach people to love literature. Pleasure reading is strongly correlated with stronger foundational literacy skills like vocabulary size—there's a pretty robust research literature demonstrating that. More people liking to read is pretty undeniably a social good, so if schools can make it happen, they should. And literature, as a form of writing that is distinct in that its primary purpose is pleasure, is, I think, a likely useful genre to encourage pleasure reading. (In my experience, it is extremely difficult to teach reading comprehension skills or rhetorical analysis to someone who does not already enjoy to read.)
The difference between English and math is that kids who love math generally love math class. But there is a substantial cohort of kids who love to read, but who hate English class, because English class makes them feel ashamed of the way they read and the books they read. That's what drives this anger later on towards English class--the feeling that something they loved was taken from them. And that's why they also feel anger towards the sorts of texts that get taught in English class, and often denigrate them as racist or pretentious or find other ways to justify ignoring them.
I don't know if that's a solvable problem or not. It seems like a poor state of affairs, but maybe it's simply a natural byproduct of how writing and reading skills need to be taught to the masses. But if it is a necessary byproduct, then English class should make sure it's doing a good job of teaching those skills!
There is something about English as a subject and discipline that makes comparisons difficult. I was thinking about responding to @Naomi Kanakia's recent posts (https://www.woman-of-letters.com/p/unfairly-maligned-or-over-looked ) more at length, but maybe a small comment for now, based on an exchange in the comments with @Isaac Kolding, where they were comparing the successes and failures of English and math classes.
There is something difficult about the comparisons between subjects or rather: disciplines.
The study of mathematics and mathematics are the same. There is no math outside math class--even if you are doing it out side of class, you are doing what would make sense to be done in class.
But the study of literature and literature (by which I mean reading and writing literature) are not the same. There is literature outside of English class and outside the study of literature.
Math class and English class are different animals. The institution makes them appear the same--but they are not.
So what Naomi is writing about is only partly about how bad English education is (I am not going to argue with that)--it also also about a strange set of expectations about a discipline--English.
The study of anatomy gives us no pleasure in our own or other people's bodies. It is not giving us the pleasure we take in running or in sex. It might make you more conscious of what you are doing, and make some improvements, but that is not what anatomy as a discipline is about.
On the other hand, we do expect English class to make us enjoy of the books we study.
Cultural expectations are what they are. A discipline needs to work with them. English is clearly not very successful at handling its situation, and it also appears to become less and less successful. (If that is the case, it is unlikely to have been the fault of close reading tho. Which does not make the dumb symbol hunting Naomi wrote about in an earlier post any more forgivable.)
But shouldn't the comparison be with say, film studies? Art history? And there we are talking about classes no one is required to take. Whereas everyone is taking English.
It might make sense to recognize that math and English are subjects that have a very different relationship to their objects.
A lot of people expect English classes to be book clubs. That is clearly in conflict with the idea of literary studies as a research discipline. Teaching English means balancing these expectations--and succeeding at it is a remarkable achievement.
In other words, the problem is not only that English profs are doing a bad job. Many of them are. They are also put in a position where they are unlikely to be able to succeed, no matter what their approach. The problem has a structural dimension.
While I'm all for this discussion on how to be more inclusive...
The reason for the problems English departments are facing isn't because they scared off readers. I wish we had anywhere near that much power! It's a combination of the academy becoming a bloated monster demanding exorbitant amounts of tuition from scared young adults, the perpetual misconception that English majors don't get jobs, the politics English faces as the umbilical department for a lot of charged/controversial disciplines like Queer Theory and cultural studies, and, oh, the fact that big tech is dopamine-hijacking our brain through devices and continuous algorithmically-driven sensationalism*.
There are other issues specific to the culture surrounding the humanities and why we get questioned so much (and how that results in tons of self-abnegation), but I'm certain the cultural conditions we're facing are most of the issue here.
* People make fun of this last stance, but seriously. I am also a grad student and I have a box in my room that locks away my phone for hours so I can read. Yes, TikTok is one of the problems.
Yeah, this is all true, and I don't disagree with any of the points you raise. But if English professors are teaching in a way that alienates, bores, and repels students, that's still a problem, even if solving that problem won't immediately solve the bigger problems faced by higher education English departments (or, for that matter, high-school English classes). Teaching method is still a reasonable area for critique even if an improved teaching method will not save the humanities!
Also--it bears mentioning--plenty of STEM teachers are *awful*. So the bad pedagogy thing isn't this uniquely English issue.
At my extremely STEM-heavy school, the humanities are being funded because 1) they result in better graduate applications and 2) they improve student morale toward the university considerably, because rather than sit through some lecture class and do their homework, they're actually getting the experience of questioning and exploration that they want as undergrads. (You get that in STEM, of course, but my understanding is it happens at graduate level, and in the undergrad level bad teaching abounds. Good teaching just isn't much rewarded in STEM.)
Yeah, I've heard horror stories about some STEM profs. And you raise another good point--like music and arts education, there's probably good reason to believe that English classes improve morale and therefore student retention and completion rates. (I have had plenty of students who have never felt comfortable talking to a professor, and have never had a conversation in the classroom, except in English class.)
Agreed, I'm definitely interested in ways to improve. But I am quite unconvinced it's a pandemic-level problem. It's a problem with a certain, very important class of readers that has been neglected, and that is worth talking and thinking about, but the overall issue is way overblown here. We're all talking squarely in anecdata, but I spent a fair bit of time outside of the academy, in the working world. In the wild, I didn't meet a bunch of people who stopped reading because of English--they definitely existed, but I more often met non-readers who grew to appreciate literature a bit more in the classroom, or literature types who had fond memories of their classes. So: absolutely we should seek to improve, but there's no reason to think the whole profession is "sophistry." Talk about kicking a struggling puppy, lol.
See my windy rant above. I agree with you, Isaac. The dichotomies here are false. There are some egregious cases that illustrate the point, and these are in part the reason why humanities programs are struggling. But it doesn't have to be that way -- and isn't in many classrooms.
I agree. And I felt in my case that my refusal to counterfeit my reactions to texts was actually punished. What if, to me, there's actually no symbol. I do not perceive something as a symbol. How can I write a paper saying something is a symbol if I do not believe that is true? It just teaches that your own reaction is not good enough.
Certainly, something can be a symbol without seeming like a symbol to you because you lack the relevant historical context. (For example, the cross is a Christian symbol whether you know anything about Christianity or not.) But maybe the point of literature education is to fill in those gaps. The problem, as I see it, is that many of those "symbols" are force-read into the text: the author didn't intend it, and the author's target audience wouldn't have seen any particular symbol in there. And then there you are, rewarded for "discovering" a symbol that isn't actually there.
If it's a symbol to someone, then great. I can write a research paper talking about all the people who've read this particular symbolism into it. Maybe after writing that paper, I will come to agree. But if I'm asked to write about my own reading experience, then I can only write about symbols that I actually perceive.
The other thing: you can genuinely believe that you see a symbol in a text and be wrong about it. Right? So, the cross is a Christian symbol. Now suppose that, coming from a Christian culture, you read an old Taoist text (to take a completely random example) in which some sort of cross comes up. Maybe two chopsticks lying on top of each other at a right angle. If you think it's Christian symbol, or a symbol of suffering or redemption or what have you, then you're quite simply wrong. You read that into the text, i.e. you misinterpreted the text.
I get that literature is not mathematics, but there should be some measure of "correct" and "incorrect." A lot of it ends up being "anything goes, as long as you can say it eloquently and insert some quotations from the text." And the more you hallucinate, the better your grade.
I've no idea what would be better. I just think if they're meant to constitute a person's reaction to a text, then you can't be punished for honesty, no? My reaction is my reaction. If it's not deep enough, then it is what it is. To ask a student to counterfeit a deepness they don't possess--that's dishonest.
So this brings your concerns from the previous essay into some relief, and I again have a few comments.
1. The issue with the MFAs not liking old books doesn’t have much to do with the techniques of literary criticism at all, imo. It has to do with two things: the aesthetics of modern contemporary fiction, which are often quite stringent and antithetical to old books’ aesthetics (at least on the debut-novelist level), and the MFA's version of literary criticism, which is “reading for craft” and associated ethos.
When I was in an MFA program, I too loved old books. I came into mine absolutely having done my homework with regards to contemporary fiction (I read plenty of _Conjunctions_ and _Tin House_), but my reading was very scattered, very subject to my whims and inspirations, and I found that my aesthetic inspirations were really, really unfashionable. Fiction-wise, the people that made me want to write were the modernists, and modernists did a lot of things that the MFA programs were not okay with: stylistic wildness, messing with narrative, philosophical investigation, etc. They did not say this overtly, but pushed me tirelessly in a very specific aesthetic direction, under the aegis of “craft.” Talking about how a piece "works."
It’s not that I can’t talk craft—I can. People loved my critiques and I even got an award for them. I see the purpose of craft. But it’s at cross-purposes with talking about the ideas a work is espousing. You don’t give literature the benefit of the doubt when you read with a craft lens, like you do with literary criticism, so when certain aesthetic styles go out of fashion, it’s hard to appreciate them, because you can’t mine them for “technique.” That’s not “unfiltered appreciation of literature”—it’s craft.
I also wasn’t much good at writing fiction then! For many reasons. But I digress. It used to be the case that many more creatives actively engaged in literary criticism (some still are; Brandon Taylor does, but it’s rare). But sometime when the ascendancy of MFA programs began, which of course came after the ascendancy of English departments, a huge rift developed, and to my thinking it has nothing to do with approaching the literature in the way you’re describing, because neither discipline does that by default.
2. To move away from MFA world for a second: the place I went to undergrad had a Great Books introductory course that every freshman had to take. We were all absolutely browbeaten with literary-critical and philosophical takes to literature, and let me tell you, a huge number of us—from all majors, STEM and humanities and social sciences—absolutely loved it. The immersiveness, the insistence that we talk about big ideas with each other, the introduction to new layers of the texts from a multiplicity of perspectives. It was all very Secret History. The syllabi was terribly unfashionable by modern standards (and I would certainly make some adjustments if I taught something similar), but it genuinely electrified us. And the methods for reading rewarded were absolutely _not_ some sort of unfilitered access to pure art—quite the opposite.
3. The purpose of close reading is largely to keep students from projecting their preferences and biases all over the text, to keep them focused, and to keep them thinking in terms of evidence. They frequently have a lot of issues with this; there is an attitude that literature is entertainment in some places, and this helps nudge them out of it. Your green light example aside, I think it works as a place to start, because my experience is that many students don't know how to approach old texts at all. They need some sort of foothold. (So do I--I religiously read the introductions to everything!) Close reading was, of course, a pedagogical tool at its inception, and in the context of an argumentative paper the point _is_ to close read with a view to the bigger picture of a text. I edit for a literary journal, and while it depends on the article, maybe 20% of a given article on average has to do with close reading. That is about how often I’ve seen it done in the classroom, too, though of course different professors have their preferences. Of course it sounds like your experience was much different, but fwiw I don’t notice any broad forest-for-the-trees problems with close reading.
4. As I said in the other post… I appreciate this as an account of _your_ experience, and I absolutely appreciate it as an account that might help other readers like you come to appreciate the likes of Chaucer or other difficult authors. But you're using this as a crusade against the English classroom, and you're doing it in a way which just does not jive with the experiences of plenty of avid, devoted readers. Some people do need scansion of Chaucer. Some people do need historical context. Some people come preloaded with dispositions that lend themselves to thriving in an English classroom. And some don't. I simply don't see the need for the sensationalistic headlines here. We can correct the assumption that there is only one way to read, provide tools for lay readers, and move on.
This is one of the best articles I’ve read in a while. In my early 20s I would have definitely argued that I prefered contemporary literature over older literature. This could technically still be true for me, but part of that calculus was likely in part due to variables you discuss here: when I read these older books, my teachers and professors seemed to fishing for specific kinds of insights, an experience I then associated with all literature written before a certain point. But with a recent book, I didn’t feel that external or internal pressure, and could enjoy it moreso on my own terms.
I appreciate the intent here and agree that the argument holds in some cases, but the recovering professor in me recoils from generalizations like this: "In other words, English class, even at the college level, doesn’t necessarily teach the skills it purports to teach. It teaches you something, but the form in which that thing is taught tends to get in the way of people actually learning to love and understand literature."
Just as you can't claim that all English classes at Harvard will reach the same level of quality (you might actually experience more rigor in a class taught by an excellent professor at a state university), so you can't claim that all profs are doing this. I've witnessed what you describe while observing courses during my stint as a department chair (for instance, one colleague did not really allow students to read "Goblin Market" as anything but a queer text, which I found quite problematic, even though I kept those reservations to myself). But that's not how I taught at all.
The reason older texts are more difficult to read is that people knew more of the Western canon then and could be expected to track allusions. I was raised in an evangelical home where television was forbidden and an entire chapter of the Bible was read before every mealtime (including all the begats). So I had the opposite experience: I hadn't read Marx as a college freshman, but I did know the Bible inside and out, which gave me an unfair advantage over my peers in close reading. I quickly saw how learning a little Plato and Aristotle -- pretty much any philosopher -- upped my game exponentially.
In that context, close reading was the best way to synthesize my entire liberal arts education. What is so terrifying about that? It's often quite delightful. I did not go to an elite school, but I wrote a paper I'm still proud of comparing Shakespeare's kings to Plato's rulers in the Republic. (Henry V is the philosopher king)
As a professor, I tried to recreate the conditions for discovery. I took my seniors to the Willa Cather Archive in Lincoln, where they got to read her last will and testament, could see typescripts edited longhand by Cather's partner Edith Lewis, could review the film contract for "The Lost Lady" (where the director wanted to cut the whole second half of the novel because it was too depressing).
I think scholarship in its best sense is just a heightened form of close reading. Cather might drop a reference to the "Jewel Song" in "O Pioneers!" and you can read right over it if you don't know about Faust. But if you catch something like that and do a little digging, Cather's texts will reward you amply. In the best scenario, a professor helps a student refine close reading with careful attention to context and evidence.
I do not think any of this has grown stale. In fact, these are still the tools we need to evaluate information authoritatively.
Sorry for the rant, but I think there is still a way to teach literature with delight and discovery at the heart of it -- and with some scholarly parameters that help everyone become a better reader without feeling stupid.
I am sure you are a good teacher, but you've observed that other classrooms are not so good. In fact you left English academia because you felt like the institution as a whole wasn't good. Moreover, it is undeniably the case that most people are turned off by literature, no? It is also undeniably the case that most peoples' main contact with literature comes through English classes. I am telling you my experience that the way I was taught literature was a turn-off, and that I had to ignore a lot of this teaching in order to really enjoy it.
I am speaking for all the people who never came back to literature. They cannot speak in a way you'll trust, because you would just assume that they have a poor sensibility or are uneducated or mulish somehow. But I obviously love literature, and yet I don't see much value in the way it was taught to me (at a fancy Catholic private school, at Stanford University, and at Johns Hopkins). Maybe it's something that bears thinking about.
Clearly an emotionally charged topic for us both. There are a lot of statements here that I disagree with, but I’ll desist from further rebuttal. I am curious though if you think literature can be taught in an academically rigorous way, and if so, what that would look like?
My understanding is that the main purpose of English classes is to teach people how to express themselves effectively. Whether or not this task is being done well is something English teachers can decide for themselves.
My task is to help people appreciate literature, and I find that for a large subset of people this means unlearning lessons they unconsciously imbibed in English classes. Whether it's possible to teach English without teaching people that literature is austere and unapproachable--this is something I can't say, because it's not my trade. I suspect it is, but if you tell me it's not, then I suppose I'll have to believe you.
You didn't ask me, but I'll answer anyway! Maybe it shouldn't be taught as a separate subject at all, or at least not as a mandatory subject? Of all the subjects taught in school, literature is probably the one that encourages bullshitting the most. You are rewarded for making stuff up and punished for refusing to do so. Perhaps most assigned reading should be non-fiction, with an occasional work of fiction used to supplement the non-fiction.
A lover of older books myself, I find I prefer contemporary writers who manage to achieve something similar though in a different way, i.e., people who love sentences. The sounds of the words, their rhythm, the complexities they can hold together, and the images they arouse. I also love listening to a good reader with an older book. I have listened to Juliet Aubrey's read of "Middlemarch" twice, many happy hours, as well as reading it myself first. Shirley Hazzard and Penelope Lively are two more contemporary writers who give me similar pleasure. I love many contemporary writers as well. Lauren Groff, Anne Michaels, Paul Lynch come to mind.
Great, thoughtful article. Books were popular before they were literature because reading is pleasurable. Physically and mentally pleasurable. Like walking or singing--the activity taps into our human nature. Some people just want the story to spin out in their heads, and that's enough. Later, the truths hidden in the story may whisper to them in a time of need. I think there is room for English courses taken by non-majors or courses in continuing ed that focus on reading great literature for pleasure. Honestly, universities could probably make a dollar off of it, which certainly enhances the appeal. There's a hunger for great works. There's not so much of a hunger to dissect them, unless of course you want to be an English professor.
Loads to digest here and I think I need to give it another read… but I was prompted by your comment that the term ‘close reading’ was invented by critics rather than supporters.
It’s far from the first time a label intended to be derogatory has been repurposed. It happened with the Quakers (Society of Friends) and it happened with The Big Bang, originally coined by Fred Hoyle, then a household name, at least in the UK. To the end of his days he continued to promote the ‘Steady State’ theory, but was an increasingly lone voice.
I’m so glad you have written this and I feel lucky about finding it and reading it. I am an engineer, who’s mother tongue is Spanish, but still continue reading more and more good books in English. And yes, some are difficult and specially the old books, but I won’t surrender !! Because there is hope for me. Thanks !
I can't speak to the specific criticisms of English academia here - I didn't take many English classes in college - but I always love to hear people making this point:
> whatever literature has to teach is most easily learned by simply reading a lot of it.
I've often thought that, if your goal were to get people to appreciate reading, the thing you'd focus on is getting them to read a lot. Which means letting them read stuff they like. My imagined English curriculum is like "talk to the student about whatever book he's most recently read, listen to what he thought about it, and suggest another book that might also be appealing," over and over again until he tires of reading Animorphs* books and is ready for something more challenging. Instead we try to force people who have taken a lot of joy in Animorphs books and we force them to read Romeo & Juliet in horrendous conditions :(
My actual experience of high school English, fwiw, was largely quite positive. I was a substantially more advanced reader than necessary for the books we read and enjoyed most of them. But I had already done the prerequisite work of reading hundreds of books that I liked!
I liked high-school English well enough, but was similarly a committed reader by that time. Also I had a couple open-minded and charismatic teachers whose own love of writing conveyed. But mainly I was already comfortable with the idea of reading diverse and challenging books.
Very interesting essay and comments. I studied Comparative Literature and really struggled with all of the literary theory: postcolonialism, Marxism, structuralism, etc. I did not understand the necessity for reading literature through these lenses, I just wanted to slowly read and enjoy the beauty and complexity of books, learn about their historical and cultural context, the biography of authors, discussing what an author tried to do and if they succeeded. But I know that a lot of my classmates really enjoyed this type of stuff, and it made them enjoy the texts more. So to me, it feels like personal preference. But I know that I love to read older literary criticism from before literary theory, because that is the way I relate to texts.
I also know that after my studies, it took me years of reading Harry Potter (this was 10+ years ago) and Hunger Games before I could slowly find my way back to my real love for an author like Virginia Woolf. For me, it feels as though maybe literary studies eventually wasn’t for me, I would be better off loving literature and reading more essayistic pieces of criticism. Maybe it would be nice if there was more room in university for studying literature in this way, but I don’t know if that is possible, because it isn’t ’scientific’ enough. Thank you for making me think about this, and making me feel less alone.
How much old literature had the other students in the MFA program read?
I went to a school, St. John’s College, that abandons any attempt to teach methods of study and just assigns students a lot of books to read. So that extreme is at least possible in academic institution. It creates interesting characteristic differences with students who are taught through lectures and textbooks. (For instance, Johnnies are more at risk of insane hot take misinterpretations of philosophers. Conventional philosophy majors are more at risk of having “knowledge” of certain philosophers that does not go beyond knowing how to repeat and manipulate orthodox verbal formulas.)
I think the problem with close reading, and literary analysis in general that goes beyond interpreting the literal meaning of a text, is that it's taking methods from biblical hermeneutics and applying them to works that are not religious, which in some ways makes the whole enterprise fall apart, particularly when you don't have the context of understanding how biblical hermeneutics works. You're allowed to do a really kind of brazen type of close reading when it comes to religious texts because you're operating within an internal tradition system that is assumed to have real meaning imbued by God. You're then allowed to ignore historical context, etc. because you are trying use the texts available to you in order to say something theologically meaningful, even if it obviously isn't the literal meaning of the text.
You can see this kind of thing all over the place in the rabbinic tradition (a favorite example of mine is in the Talmud where a rabbi answers the questions "does God pray?" by willfully misinterpreting a phrase that literally means "my house of prayer" as "the house of my prayer," and so says, yes, God does pray), and I think having the context of that kind of interpretation both makes it more understandable what's interesting about close reading and why we do it (it's fun, it's theologically compelling, it allows you to interpret a text to mean almost anything you want it to mean if you can twist it in the right way, and we've been doing it for a long time), and also makes you more measured about applying it to literature, which does not have a tradition of being theologically meaningful, and so therefore you can have fun with close reading but make sure you can still interpret the text literally and understand what the author is trying to communicate.
Anyway, I didn't major in English so I have minimal experience doing close reading in a classroom, but I do find it fun to use those methods on my own whenever I read. I did not like reading most old books in high school but I love to read old books now. I'm not sure I was developmentally/academically prepared to understand those books when I was assigned them (and I didn't like being assigned to read things in general) and I think that had a much bigger part of why I thought old books we're boring/felt anxious about trying to read them than being forced to do close reading. I had to really get over the assumption that reading Dickens as an adult would feel the same as it felt when I was 14. I'm not sure what the right answer is about when to introduce which texts to kids (I'm a math teacher, not an English teacher - but I do think we introduce some math concepts to some kids too soon), but part of me also thinks that being familiar with the biblical hermeneutic tradition and understanding that literary hermeneutics descends from that could be helful in better being able to use it and understand its benefits and its limitations. I agree though, that just reading a lot is the best way to go - it's all just practice anyway.
Thank you for this. I also really have trouble coming back to any book I was assigned in school--it's a major barrier I have to work to overcome, even though I know by now that actually I'll enjoy most of those books
You don’t need literary criticism to read and enjoy books. It’s a niche independent activity to be done and enjoyed for its own sake. I agree that it’s a mistake to teach students that understanding a book requires a technique that has nothing to do with the book.
I don’t think anyone whose interests are restricted to contemporary literature can be considered serious readers, students, scholars, etc. whether they’re a National Book Award winner or a BookTok star.
I agree! However, I doubt either my former classmates or this NBA winner would admit to only being interested in contemporary literature—it was just an observable fact that they never willingly read older books and didn't get excited about them. I'm glad that our culture still pays at least rhetorical homage to the idea that older books are worth reading
To the first part of your discussion, I think a major factor in the frustration at close reading is the fact that classes tend to proceed chronologically book by book, rather than focusing on a single work. But in an actual critical scenario, it would be more typical to read a work, sometimes several times, before actually reflecting on it enough to write. It could take several weeks just to finish reading, writing up notes, find references and connecting other sources, and beginning to articulate something meaningful.
This doesn’t work in a normal class structure so teachers just immediately start on analysis, proceeding directly to critical commentary, which is… ridiculous frankly.
How about some pushback from a non-English professor?
I see this kind of argument regularly — that teaching students to analyze fiction, looking for meanings that aren't readily apparent at the explicit level, turns them off books and reading. I don't deny that a lot of people report this experience. But it honestly confuses me, partly because I personally can't relate at all, but partly because this argument so often comes from STEM people. Analysis and inquiry are supposed to be your bread and butter!
For me, and for I think a lot of people who love reading, noticing things like symbols, subtext, allegories, etc is part of the pleasure of reading fiction, and makes reading a richer and more meaningful experience. And I also don't buy the argument that critics are routinely finding things that aren't there just to make themselves sound smart or torment poor high school students. If you read, for example, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and don't draw the connection between the industrialization of the idyllic pastoral landscapes and the rape of Tess, you're missing a lot of what the book is saying. And in the Lolita example — yeah, it's about a verbose older man lusting after a prepubescent girl. But the Europe-vs-America stuff is there too. The great novelists were typically quite intentional about things like this — but also, the unintentional things, the assumptions they make because of their historical period and point of view, are revealing too. There is real pleasure, there is excitement, that comes with noticing this stuff. And close reading, to me, is about asking these questions at the sentence and paragraph level. Why this word and not that word? Why is the author using animal metaphors for this character and machine metaphors for that one?
When I encounter arguments about how trying to teach students analytical ways of reading fiction turns them off, I think about how different the discourse is for film. No one seems to complain when people talk about how a director might use camera angles or lighting or sound to convey something that's not explicit in the action or dialogue. Or how certain objects become laden with meaning because of how and where they appear in the story. Hitchcock fans will happily talk about the meaning of the color green in Vertigo and never question that the director is using it with intention (unlike "blue curtains"). I never hear people say that discussing this stuff turns people off watching movies, or that it's a bunch of fakery that people feign in order to sound intelligent. A quick visit to reddit will reveal that people even talk like this quite happily, and in excruciating detail, about their favorite TV shows! And for the most part, these aren't people with academic training in film criticism. They're lay viewers who are eager to wring every last bit of meaning they possibly can from the things they love, and are constantly looking for new ways of doing that.
So I wonder if there isn't something else going on behind these complaints. Perhaps it's simply that someone who is bored by a particular novel is being asked to treat something they're not interested in as though they're deeply interested in it — like the distaste that comes with feigning love. And not very many people have a natural affinity for old things and a desire to probe 19th-century thought. But I saw a comment somewhere (probably twitter) that most people don't remember how to solve quadratic equations or the steps of the Krebbs Cycle or anything else they learned in high school, but they do remember the books they read.
You really enjoyed learning literature in a certain way--great. But...have you considered survivorship bias? Given the way English is taught in our schools, the only people who continue to read it are people who enjoy reading in a certain way. Everyone else just assumes literature isn't for them.
Maybe the deeper thing going on here is that lots of people are accurately reporting their negative experience of how literature has been taught to them. And perhaps after a while, these negative experiences ought to be taken seriously.
The difference between film critique and literature critique is obvious. You only take film classes if you already love film. But everyone has to take literature classes. In my case, as in the case of many other people, we had to read literature before we really understood whether we liked it or not. We were forced to read it. Our grades were held hostage to whether or not we could satisfy a professor as to our understanding of these texts. That tends to create negative feelings about a thing, unfortunately.
I think there are a bunch of different claims here to take apart.
"People who enjoy reading for pleasure often don't enjoy reading analytically." — Yes. Lots of people report this and I don't doubt the truth of this claim.
"Trying to teach students to read analytically discourages them from reading for pleasure." — Maybe. The point of bringing up film/tv criticism is to show that a lot of non-academic people find analysis of media pleasurable and interesting, IF they're analyzing something they love.
"We shouldn't try to teach students to read analytically, because it interferes with reading for pleasure." — this doesn't automatically follow. I was "forced" to take biology class too, and I didn't love solving quadratic equations. That doesn't mean those things shouldn't be taught in school. The point of studying something in a classroom is to impart knowledge and skills.
"Literary criticism is sophistry, and critics are finding things in texts that don't exist" — that DEFINITELY doesn't follow. Whole different ballgame.
I didn't make any of these claims besides the first one, though.
The claim is that teaching kids that the highest way to appreciate literature is by reading analytically discourages them from attempting to read literature on their own. And because the best way of understanding literature is to read a lot of it, the net result is to reduce peoples' engagement with and understanding of literature.
The example in my post that you don't engage with is the one about learning meter. A professor tried to teach me meter in class using methods that were doomed to failure, because that's simply not how you learn. Chaucer did not sit down and practice scansion. He learned meter by reading and listening to a lot of poetry. I did the same. However, this was not an option that was even presented to me in class. The professors were wrong about how to teach this very basic and age-old literary skill.
As for your final claim, I think that my own experience was of being told to write about symbols that I did not perceive. If I could explicate the symbol in terms satisfactory to my professor, I would get an A. To me, that is sophistry. It's fine if professors and teachers actually perceive symbols, but to say that I ought to say that I see the same things they happen to see--that is the same as asking me to lie. And if they see no problem asking me to lie, then surely many of them are lying as well.
But you're making the second and third claims pretty directly in your comment? That teaching literary analysis is discouraging for students, and that we should change our methods so that they don't get discouraged.
The last claim about sophistry was, I admit, kind of an unfair reading of what you wrote (although I think you intended the title of your previous piece to be provocative in this way). Upon re-reading your post, it seems like what you're arguing is that if you read a lot, rather than trying to learn the kinds of formal techniques that are taught in English classes, your intuitions about literature will improve such that these subtextual meanings will be readily apparent to you, rather than something you're producing on command because that's what the professor wants.
And I agree with you! As someone who was also not an English major and who did and does most of my literary reading outside a classroom setting, there's no substitute for reading a lot (and also gaining life experience) and learning to make those connections on your own. And I think most English professors wish they could tell their students to just read more.
This isn't only true of English! The way to get good at chess is not to read a bunch of books about strategy, it's to play a lot of chess. But a serious chess player is probably also going to read those strategy books, and if they hire a tutor, they will want that tutor to talk to them about strategy and try to help them see things on the board that they didn't see before. Unless they're stupendously gifted, they can benefit from learning the tools and techniques of the people who came before them.
Since you're asking me to engage directly with your example about meter: what do you think the classroom's reaction would have been if the poetry professor had assigned seven hundred pages of Chaucer and told the students to read it aloud until they understood meter intuitively? I bet a lot of professors wish they could teach their classes that way! But it's just not true that it's impossible to learn meter by studying it formally, or by reading other poets like Shakespeare. Plenty of people can and do learn meter that way. And it's a lot faster.
I guess my complaint with the whole "asking students to analyze what they're reading is just teaching them to bullshit" argument is that it seems English is held to a different standard than other fields of knowledge. The point of taking a class is to gain a skill you didn't have before, and ideally in an efficient and engaging way! Maybe close reading isn't the best tool for that. And bad pedagogy does result in a lot of bullshit! But I think there are literary skills worth trying to teach, and that it's possible to teach them, and that it's possible to come out of an English class feeling invigorated, not discouraged.
I think the main claim is more that we shouldn't teach kids how to read analytically using the close reading method, specifically, for two reasons:
1. It's an ineffective method for actually learning to understand more complex texts accurately, for most high school students
2. It effectively puts people off engaging more deeply with literature (and even complex, non-literary writing), which, when widespread, creates a crisis of cultural thought
Unlike other methods of analysis in other classes, which might be "unpleasant" but not necessary harmful, engaging in close reading (as taught in highschools) creates fear and humiliation. This is a really different, far worse emotional and psychological state than just a barrier to "pleasure," like boredom.
It's strange that English classes are sticking with this poorly defined method, frequently damaging method, instead of just...trying to teach the texts with other methods?
And, at this point, the rigidity is bizarre!
It's so much more extreme than the limits placed on processes to learn information in other classes. Particularly compared to visual art and Biology in high school, at least from my own memory. It was truly wild difference between how analysis was taught in English vs those classes.
1 method with no cultural or linguistic context vs numerous methods with context in all directions.
It's not working anymore. Something really needs to change.
>It's strange that English classes are sticking with this poorly defined method, frequently damaging method, instead of just...trying to teach the texts with other methods?
They really aren't "sticking with it." Some teachers are close reading zealots, but they aren't the majority, and English as a discipline is anything but rigid. If anything, it is famously liberal in methods. It is, after all, the discipline that spawned Media Studies/film analysis, Black studies, and many others.
Maybe it's really pushed in high school? Is that where people are getting this impression? This misconception is widespread and it's just totally inaccurate, so that's my guess--that close reading is taught in a very browbeating way in high schools? That was certainly my partner's experience.
If the close reading method in particular doesn't help students engage with a text, and if it routinely makes them feel humiliated, then I agree we should try something else. But I think we can expect students to attempt some kind of analysis beyond basic comprehension. My memory of school is that "analytical" reading was only expected at the high school level (I think I did a specific "close reading" exercise once, in 12th grade), and that everything that came before that was focused mostly on reading for reading's sake, as well as basic comprehension and maybe exploring some historical and cultural context. I'm not sure what it's like at high schools today — is close reading really something that's heavily emphasized?
This resonates closely with what I tried to work out for myself in a comment above.
One small point--if every kid in high school was required to take a class where they need to write papers about jump cuts in Godard, there would be a lot of conversation about how evil film studies are. People who take English classes may or may not read in their spare time. But they are all expected to do so for class. People taking a class on film are probably a self-selecting group. English is unavoidable.
Many of my best students were STEM majors. Chemistry, in particular, seemed to have honed abstract thinking in a way most amenable to reading literary texts well.
I'm biased, since I'm in a graduate program for English literature, but I do wonder how universal your claims about English education are. I did not hear about "close reading" once until I went to college, and then only in English-major-only courses. Some professors told us that we needed to underline or highlight passages, but I seldom did this and was never penalized for my lack of discipline.
Most of the literary instruction I've received during my formal education has been threefold: one, it's given me time, structure and motivation to read far more books than I otherwise might have; second, I've learned about the history of ideas and how literary texts have participated in that history; and I've learned some formal stuff, like how to recognize a sonnet or free indirect style. This learning has been for me a gateway into more enjoyment, not less, although in moments of finals-adjacent stress, I do remember feeling as though some of the joy had been sucked out of reading for me. And I do remember other students saying stuff to the effect of: "I used to really love reading, but after being an English major, I'd just rather watch TV."
With all of this said, there is probably good reason to believe that my experiences put me in a distinct minority. On Substack, there's a ton of--not quite vitriol, but anger and dissatisfaction with English classes, university English departments, and so on. People don't seem to like what the institution has become, and it's not because they believe that literature isn't worth time or serious study.
I suppose for me the question all of this raises is: what does good institutional teaching about literature look like? How can classes be designed that bring about enjoyment and love rather than resentment, fear, or anxiety? Or is that simply not a possibility?
You yourself acknowledge that on Substack there is substantial anger at English teachers and English departments. I think my experience of finding English class unhelpful and unpleasant is a far more common one than the experience of some of my commenters in finding it useful. The only unusual thing is that I eventually started reading literature anyway and that I came to love it and to write about it in my own distinct manner (which is the whole reason you're reading my post).
I don't know how to teach English well. I think the point of English class isn't to teach people to love literature--it's to teach people how to read and write well. That's also a task that it seems to be doing poorly. Maybe more focus on that task would be better--a bigger focus on rhetoric and argumentation, instead of interpretation of texts. Ultimately, literature can take care of itself. Interest in literature is downstream of literacy--if you have a large enough people who can read and write well, then literature will result. Until the mid-19th-century, the top schools in the UK and America didn't teach English literature at all, but literary culture in the vernacular still thrived. Why? Perhaps precisely because it constituted an area of freedom--something that wasn't mediated by the academy or by the state.
The question of which experience of English class--yours or mine--is more common is pretty impossible to fully settle without some sort of evidence. The apparent popularity of a certain opinion on Substack is not dispositive evidence that English teachers generally do a poor job.
Based on my own anecdotal experience, I think you're right to say that most people find English classes unhelpful and unpleasant. But I also think that most students find history, mathematics and science education unhelpful and unpleasant. For example, I spent lots of time in high school struggling and failing to learn trigonometry, a manifestly useless skill for nearly all students and one that most of them resent being forced to learn. Most students hate school because school kind of sucks! It’s all about discipline, obeying and respecting authority figures who don’t always merit respect and obedience, standardized testing, being asked to meet arbitrary requirements… yuck! But I don't think English classes are worse than any other aspect of schooling, and in many cases, I think they’re quite a bit better. A quick Google reveals that, according to one survey at least, English was the most common "favorite" class for US high school students--and, in my own experience, most students talk about English teachers when asked to name their favorite teachers.
This isn’t to say that English classes can’t be improved, which is why critiques like yours merit respectful attention. To the degree that English teachers really do ruin students’ experiences with literature, they should be changed because, IMO, English classes should teach people to love literature. Pleasure reading is strongly correlated with stronger foundational literacy skills like vocabulary size—there's a pretty robust research literature demonstrating that. More people liking to read is pretty undeniably a social good, so if schools can make it happen, they should. And literature, as a form of writing that is distinct in that its primary purpose is pleasure, is, I think, a likely useful genre to encourage pleasure reading. (In my experience, it is extremely difficult to teach reading comprehension skills or rhetorical analysis to someone who does not already enjoy to read.)
The difference between English and math is that kids who love math generally love math class. But there is a substantial cohort of kids who love to read, but who hate English class, because English class makes them feel ashamed of the way they read and the books they read. That's what drives this anger later on towards English class--the feeling that something they loved was taken from them. And that's why they also feel anger towards the sorts of texts that get taught in English class, and often denigrate them as racist or pretentious or find other ways to justify ignoring them.
I don't know if that's a solvable problem or not. It seems like a poor state of affairs, but maybe it's simply a natural byproduct of how writing and reading skills need to be taught to the masses. But if it is a necessary byproduct, then English class should make sure it's doing a good job of teaching those skills!
There is something about English as a subject and discipline that makes comparisons difficult. I was thinking about responding to @Naomi Kanakia's recent posts (https://www.woman-of-letters.com/p/unfairly-maligned-or-over-looked ) more at length, but maybe a small comment for now, based on an exchange in the comments with @Isaac Kolding, where they were comparing the successes and failures of English and math classes.
There is something difficult about the comparisons between subjects or rather: disciplines.
The study of mathematics and mathematics are the same. There is no math outside math class--even if you are doing it out side of class, you are doing what would make sense to be done in class.
But the study of literature and literature (by which I mean reading and writing literature) are not the same. There is literature outside of English class and outside the study of literature.
Math class and English class are different animals. The institution makes them appear the same--but they are not.
So what Naomi is writing about is only partly about how bad English education is (I am not going to argue with that)--it also also about a strange set of expectations about a discipline--English.
The study of anatomy gives us no pleasure in our own or other people's bodies. It is not giving us the pleasure we take in running or in sex. It might make you more conscious of what you are doing, and make some improvements, but that is not what anatomy as a discipline is about.
On the other hand, we do expect English class to make us enjoy of the books we study.
Cultural expectations are what they are. A discipline needs to work with them. English is clearly not very successful at handling its situation, and it also appears to become less and less successful. (If that is the case, it is unlikely to have been the fault of close reading tho. Which does not make the dumb symbol hunting Naomi wrote about in an earlier post any more forgivable.)
But shouldn't the comparison be with say, film studies? Art history? And there we are talking about classes no one is required to take. Whereas everyone is taking English.
It might make sense to recognize that math and English are subjects that have a very different relationship to their objects.
A lot of people expect English classes to be book clubs. That is clearly in conflict with the idea of literary studies as a research discipline. Teaching English means balancing these expectations--and succeeding at it is a remarkable achievement.
In other words, the problem is not only that English profs are doing a bad job. Many of them are. They are also put in a position where they are unlikely to be able to succeed, no matter what their approach. The problem has a structural dimension.
Ok, this is way to long to qualify as short.
While I'm all for this discussion on how to be more inclusive...
The reason for the problems English departments are facing isn't because they scared off readers. I wish we had anywhere near that much power! It's a combination of the academy becoming a bloated monster demanding exorbitant amounts of tuition from scared young adults, the perpetual misconception that English majors don't get jobs, the politics English faces as the umbilical department for a lot of charged/controversial disciplines like Queer Theory and cultural studies, and, oh, the fact that big tech is dopamine-hijacking our brain through devices and continuous algorithmically-driven sensationalism*.
There are other issues specific to the culture surrounding the humanities and why we get questioned so much (and how that results in tons of self-abnegation), but I'm certain the cultural conditions we're facing are most of the issue here.
* People make fun of this last stance, but seriously. I am also a grad student and I have a box in my room that locks away my phone for hours so I can read. Yes, TikTok is one of the problems.
Yeah, this is all true, and I don't disagree with any of the points you raise. But if English professors are teaching in a way that alienates, bores, and repels students, that's still a problem, even if solving that problem won't immediately solve the bigger problems faced by higher education English departments (or, for that matter, high-school English classes). Teaching method is still a reasonable area for critique even if an improved teaching method will not save the humanities!
Also--it bears mentioning--plenty of STEM teachers are *awful*. So the bad pedagogy thing isn't this uniquely English issue.
At my extremely STEM-heavy school, the humanities are being funded because 1) they result in better graduate applications and 2) they improve student morale toward the university considerably, because rather than sit through some lecture class and do their homework, they're actually getting the experience of questioning and exploration that they want as undergrads. (You get that in STEM, of course, but my understanding is it happens at graduate level, and in the undergrad level bad teaching abounds. Good teaching just isn't much rewarded in STEM.)
Yeah, I've heard horror stories about some STEM profs. And you raise another good point--like music and arts education, there's probably good reason to believe that English classes improve morale and therefore student retention and completion rates. (I have had plenty of students who have never felt comfortable talking to a professor, and have never had a conversation in the classroom, except in English class.)
Agreed, I'm definitely interested in ways to improve. But I am quite unconvinced it's a pandemic-level problem. It's a problem with a certain, very important class of readers that has been neglected, and that is worth talking and thinking about, but the overall issue is way overblown here. We're all talking squarely in anecdata, but I spent a fair bit of time outside of the academy, in the working world. In the wild, I didn't meet a bunch of people who stopped reading because of English--they definitely existed, but I more often met non-readers who grew to appreciate literature a bit more in the classroom, or literature types who had fond memories of their classes. So: absolutely we should seek to improve, but there's no reason to think the whole profession is "sophistry." Talk about kicking a struggling puppy, lol.
See my windy rant above. I agree with you, Isaac. The dichotomies here are false. There are some egregious cases that illustrate the point, and these are in part the reason why humanities programs are struggling. But it doesn't have to be that way -- and isn't in many classrooms.
I agree. And I felt in my case that my refusal to counterfeit my reactions to texts was actually punished. What if, to me, there's actually no symbol. I do not perceive something as a symbol. How can I write a paper saying something is a symbol if I do not believe that is true? It just teaches that your own reaction is not good enough.
Certainly, something can be a symbol without seeming like a symbol to you because you lack the relevant historical context. (For example, the cross is a Christian symbol whether you know anything about Christianity or not.) But maybe the point of literature education is to fill in those gaps. The problem, as I see it, is that many of those "symbols" are force-read into the text: the author didn't intend it, and the author's target audience wouldn't have seen any particular symbol in there. And then there you are, rewarded for "discovering" a symbol that isn't actually there.
If it's a symbol to someone, then great. I can write a research paper talking about all the people who've read this particular symbolism into it. Maybe after writing that paper, I will come to agree. But if I'm asked to write about my own reading experience, then I can only write about symbols that I actually perceive.
The other thing: you can genuinely believe that you see a symbol in a text and be wrong about it. Right? So, the cross is a Christian symbol. Now suppose that, coming from a Christian culture, you read an old Taoist text (to take a completely random example) in which some sort of cross comes up. Maybe two chopsticks lying on top of each other at a right angle. If you think it's Christian symbol, or a symbol of suffering or redemption or what have you, then you're quite simply wrong. You read that into the text, i.e. you misinterpreted the text.
I get that literature is not mathematics, but there should be some measure of "correct" and "incorrect." A lot of it ends up being "anything goes, as long as you can say it eloquently and insert some quotations from the text." And the more you hallucinate, the better your grade.
Would it be better if literature papers were more of research papers than personal reactions?
I've no idea what would be better. I just think if they're meant to constitute a person's reaction to a text, then you can't be punished for honesty, no? My reaction is my reaction. If it's not deep enough, then it is what it is. To ask a student to counterfeit a deepness they don't possess--that's dishonest.
So this brings your concerns from the previous essay into some relief, and I again have a few comments.
1. The issue with the MFAs not liking old books doesn’t have much to do with the techniques of literary criticism at all, imo. It has to do with two things: the aesthetics of modern contemporary fiction, which are often quite stringent and antithetical to old books’ aesthetics (at least on the debut-novelist level), and the MFA's version of literary criticism, which is “reading for craft” and associated ethos.
When I was in an MFA program, I too loved old books. I came into mine absolutely having done my homework with regards to contemporary fiction (I read plenty of _Conjunctions_ and _Tin House_), but my reading was very scattered, very subject to my whims and inspirations, and I found that my aesthetic inspirations were really, really unfashionable. Fiction-wise, the people that made me want to write were the modernists, and modernists did a lot of things that the MFA programs were not okay with: stylistic wildness, messing with narrative, philosophical investigation, etc. They did not say this overtly, but pushed me tirelessly in a very specific aesthetic direction, under the aegis of “craft.” Talking about how a piece "works."
It’s not that I can’t talk craft—I can. People loved my critiques and I even got an award for them. I see the purpose of craft. But it’s at cross-purposes with talking about the ideas a work is espousing. You don’t give literature the benefit of the doubt when you read with a craft lens, like you do with literary criticism, so when certain aesthetic styles go out of fashion, it’s hard to appreciate them, because you can’t mine them for “technique.” That’s not “unfiltered appreciation of literature”—it’s craft.
I also wasn’t much good at writing fiction then! For many reasons. But I digress. It used to be the case that many more creatives actively engaged in literary criticism (some still are; Brandon Taylor does, but it’s rare). But sometime when the ascendancy of MFA programs began, which of course came after the ascendancy of English departments, a huge rift developed, and to my thinking it has nothing to do with approaching the literature in the way you’re describing, because neither discipline does that by default.
2. To move away from MFA world for a second: the place I went to undergrad had a Great Books introductory course that every freshman had to take. We were all absolutely browbeaten with literary-critical and philosophical takes to literature, and let me tell you, a huge number of us—from all majors, STEM and humanities and social sciences—absolutely loved it. The immersiveness, the insistence that we talk about big ideas with each other, the introduction to new layers of the texts from a multiplicity of perspectives. It was all very Secret History. The syllabi was terribly unfashionable by modern standards (and I would certainly make some adjustments if I taught something similar), but it genuinely electrified us. And the methods for reading rewarded were absolutely _not_ some sort of unfilitered access to pure art—quite the opposite.
3. The purpose of close reading is largely to keep students from projecting their preferences and biases all over the text, to keep them focused, and to keep them thinking in terms of evidence. They frequently have a lot of issues with this; there is an attitude that literature is entertainment in some places, and this helps nudge them out of it. Your green light example aside, I think it works as a place to start, because my experience is that many students don't know how to approach old texts at all. They need some sort of foothold. (So do I--I religiously read the introductions to everything!) Close reading was, of course, a pedagogical tool at its inception, and in the context of an argumentative paper the point _is_ to close read with a view to the bigger picture of a text. I edit for a literary journal, and while it depends on the article, maybe 20% of a given article on average has to do with close reading. That is about how often I’ve seen it done in the classroom, too, though of course different professors have their preferences. Of course it sounds like your experience was much different, but fwiw I don’t notice any broad forest-for-the-trees problems with close reading.
4. As I said in the other post… I appreciate this as an account of _your_ experience, and I absolutely appreciate it as an account that might help other readers like you come to appreciate the likes of Chaucer or other difficult authors. But you're using this as a crusade against the English classroom, and you're doing it in a way which just does not jive with the experiences of plenty of avid, devoted readers. Some people do need scansion of Chaucer. Some people do need historical context. Some people come preloaded with dispositions that lend themselves to thriving in an English classroom. And some don't. I simply don't see the need for the sensationalistic headlines here. We can correct the assumption that there is only one way to read, provide tools for lay readers, and move on.
This is one of the best articles I’ve read in a while. In my early 20s I would have definitely argued that I prefered contemporary literature over older literature. This could technically still be true for me, but part of that calculus was likely in part due to variables you discuss here: when I read these older books, my teachers and professors seemed to fishing for specific kinds of insights, an experience I then associated with all literature written before a certain point. But with a recent book, I didn’t feel that external or internal pressure, and could enjoy it moreso on my own terms.
Thank you! I'm glad it resonated. Yeah I think people just feel like newer books are theirs, whereas older books belong to the professors.
I appreciate the intent here and agree that the argument holds in some cases, but the recovering professor in me recoils from generalizations like this: "In other words, English class, even at the college level, doesn’t necessarily teach the skills it purports to teach. It teaches you something, but the form in which that thing is taught tends to get in the way of people actually learning to love and understand literature."
Just as you can't claim that all English classes at Harvard will reach the same level of quality (you might actually experience more rigor in a class taught by an excellent professor at a state university), so you can't claim that all profs are doing this. I've witnessed what you describe while observing courses during my stint as a department chair (for instance, one colleague did not really allow students to read "Goblin Market" as anything but a queer text, which I found quite problematic, even though I kept those reservations to myself). But that's not how I taught at all.
The reason older texts are more difficult to read is that people knew more of the Western canon then and could be expected to track allusions. I was raised in an evangelical home where television was forbidden and an entire chapter of the Bible was read before every mealtime (including all the begats). So I had the opposite experience: I hadn't read Marx as a college freshman, but I did know the Bible inside and out, which gave me an unfair advantage over my peers in close reading. I quickly saw how learning a little Plato and Aristotle -- pretty much any philosopher -- upped my game exponentially.
In that context, close reading was the best way to synthesize my entire liberal arts education. What is so terrifying about that? It's often quite delightful. I did not go to an elite school, but I wrote a paper I'm still proud of comparing Shakespeare's kings to Plato's rulers in the Republic. (Henry V is the philosopher king)
As a professor, I tried to recreate the conditions for discovery. I took my seniors to the Willa Cather Archive in Lincoln, where they got to read her last will and testament, could see typescripts edited longhand by Cather's partner Edith Lewis, could review the film contract for "The Lost Lady" (where the director wanted to cut the whole second half of the novel because it was too depressing).
I think scholarship in its best sense is just a heightened form of close reading. Cather might drop a reference to the "Jewel Song" in "O Pioneers!" and you can read right over it if you don't know about Faust. But if you catch something like that and do a little digging, Cather's texts will reward you amply. In the best scenario, a professor helps a student refine close reading with careful attention to context and evidence.
I do not think any of this has grown stale. In fact, these are still the tools we need to evaluate information authoritatively.
Sorry for the rant, but I think there is still a way to teach literature with delight and discovery at the heart of it -- and with some scholarly parameters that help everyone become a better reader without feeling stupid.
I am sure you are a good teacher, but you've observed that other classrooms are not so good. In fact you left English academia because you felt like the institution as a whole wasn't good. Moreover, it is undeniably the case that most people are turned off by literature, no? It is also undeniably the case that most peoples' main contact with literature comes through English classes. I am telling you my experience that the way I was taught literature was a turn-off, and that I had to ignore a lot of this teaching in order to really enjoy it.
I am speaking for all the people who never came back to literature. They cannot speak in a way you'll trust, because you would just assume that they have a poor sensibility or are uneducated or mulish somehow. But I obviously love literature, and yet I don't see much value in the way it was taught to me (at a fancy Catholic private school, at Stanford University, and at Johns Hopkins). Maybe it's something that bears thinking about.
Clearly an emotionally charged topic for us both. There are a lot of statements here that I disagree with, but I’ll desist from further rebuttal. I am curious though if you think literature can be taught in an academically rigorous way, and if so, what that would look like?
My understanding is that the main purpose of English classes is to teach people how to express themselves effectively. Whether or not this task is being done well is something English teachers can decide for themselves.
My task is to help people appreciate literature, and I find that for a large subset of people this means unlearning lessons they unconsciously imbibed in English classes. Whether it's possible to teach English without teaching people that literature is austere and unapproachable--this is something I can't say, because it's not my trade. I suspect it is, but if you tell me it's not, then I suppose I'll have to believe you.
You didn't ask me, but I'll answer anyway! Maybe it shouldn't be taught as a separate subject at all, or at least not as a mandatory subject? Of all the subjects taught in school, literature is probably the one that encourages bullshitting the most. You are rewarded for making stuff up and punished for refusing to do so. Perhaps most assigned reading should be non-fiction, with an occasional work of fiction used to supplement the non-fiction.
A lover of older books myself, I find I prefer contemporary writers who manage to achieve something similar though in a different way, i.e., people who love sentences. The sounds of the words, their rhythm, the complexities they can hold together, and the images they arouse. I also love listening to a good reader with an older book. I have listened to Juliet Aubrey's read of "Middlemarch" twice, many happy hours, as well as reading it myself first. Shirley Hazzard and Penelope Lively are two more contemporary writers who give me similar pleasure. I love many contemporary writers as well. Lauren Groff, Anne Michaels, Paul Lynch come to mind.
I love an audiobook re-read. Thanks for these recommendations!
Great, thoughtful article. Books were popular before they were literature because reading is pleasurable. Physically and mentally pleasurable. Like walking or singing--the activity taps into our human nature. Some people just want the story to spin out in their heads, and that's enough. Later, the truths hidden in the story may whisper to them in a time of need. I think there is room for English courses taken by non-majors or courses in continuing ed that focus on reading great literature for pleasure. Honestly, universities could probably make a dollar off of it, which certainly enhances the appeal. There's a hunger for great works. There's not so much of a hunger to dissect them, unless of course you want to be an English professor.
Loads to digest here and I think I need to give it another read… but I was prompted by your comment that the term ‘close reading’ was invented by critics rather than supporters.
It’s far from the first time a label intended to be derogatory has been repurposed. It happened with the Quakers (Society of Friends) and it happened with The Big Bang, originally coined by Fred Hoyle, then a household name, at least in the UK. To the end of his days he continued to promote the ‘Steady State’ theory, but was an increasingly lone voice.
These are good facts! Thanks. Wait, so Quakers was pejorative? That kind of makes sense.
I’m so glad you have written this and I feel lucky about finding it and reading it. I am an engineer, who’s mother tongue is Spanish, but still continue reading more and more good books in English. And yes, some are difficult and specially the old books, but I won’t surrender !! Because there is hope for me. Thanks !
I can't speak to the specific criticisms of English academia here - I didn't take many English classes in college - but I always love to hear people making this point:
> whatever literature has to teach is most easily learned by simply reading a lot of it.
I've often thought that, if your goal were to get people to appreciate reading, the thing you'd focus on is getting them to read a lot. Which means letting them read stuff they like. My imagined English curriculum is like "talk to the student about whatever book he's most recently read, listen to what he thought about it, and suggest another book that might also be appealing," over and over again until he tires of reading Animorphs* books and is ready for something more challenging. Instead we try to force people who have taken a lot of joy in Animorphs books and we force them to read Romeo & Juliet in horrendous conditions :(
My actual experience of high school English, fwiw, was largely quite positive. I was a substantially more advanced reader than necessary for the books we read and enjoyed most of them. But I had already done the prerequisite work of reading hundreds of books that I liked!
* (without loss of generality)
I liked high-school English well enough, but was similarly a committed reader by that time. Also I had a couple open-minded and charismatic teachers whose own love of writing conveyed. But mainly I was already comfortable with the idea of reading diverse and challenging books.
Very interesting essay and comments. I studied Comparative Literature and really struggled with all of the literary theory: postcolonialism, Marxism, structuralism, etc. I did not understand the necessity for reading literature through these lenses, I just wanted to slowly read and enjoy the beauty and complexity of books, learn about their historical and cultural context, the biography of authors, discussing what an author tried to do and if they succeeded. But I know that a lot of my classmates really enjoyed this type of stuff, and it made them enjoy the texts more. So to me, it feels like personal preference. But I know that I love to read older literary criticism from before literary theory, because that is the way I relate to texts.
I also know that after my studies, it took me years of reading Harry Potter (this was 10+ years ago) and Hunger Games before I could slowly find my way back to my real love for an author like Virginia Woolf. For me, it feels as though maybe literary studies eventually wasn’t for me, I would be better off loving literature and reading more essayistic pieces of criticism. Maybe it would be nice if there was more room in university for studying literature in this way, but I don’t know if that is possible, because it isn’t ’scientific’ enough. Thank you for making me think about this, and making me feel less alone.
How much old literature had the other students in the MFA program read?
I went to a school, St. John’s College, that abandons any attempt to teach methods of study and just assigns students a lot of books to read. So that extreme is at least possible in academic institution. It creates interesting characteristic differences with students who are taught through lectures and textbooks. (For instance, Johnnies are more at risk of insane hot take misinterpretations of philosophers. Conventional philosophy majors are more at risk of having “knowledge” of certain philosophers that does not go beyond knowing how to repeat and manipulate orthodox verbal formulas.)
I think the problem with close reading, and literary analysis in general that goes beyond interpreting the literal meaning of a text, is that it's taking methods from biblical hermeneutics and applying them to works that are not religious, which in some ways makes the whole enterprise fall apart, particularly when you don't have the context of understanding how biblical hermeneutics works. You're allowed to do a really kind of brazen type of close reading when it comes to religious texts because you're operating within an internal tradition system that is assumed to have real meaning imbued by God. You're then allowed to ignore historical context, etc. because you are trying use the texts available to you in order to say something theologically meaningful, even if it obviously isn't the literal meaning of the text.
You can see this kind of thing all over the place in the rabbinic tradition (a favorite example of mine is in the Talmud where a rabbi answers the questions "does God pray?" by willfully misinterpreting a phrase that literally means "my house of prayer" as "the house of my prayer," and so says, yes, God does pray), and I think having the context of that kind of interpretation both makes it more understandable what's interesting about close reading and why we do it (it's fun, it's theologically compelling, it allows you to interpret a text to mean almost anything you want it to mean if you can twist it in the right way, and we've been doing it for a long time), and also makes you more measured about applying it to literature, which does not have a tradition of being theologically meaningful, and so therefore you can have fun with close reading but make sure you can still interpret the text literally and understand what the author is trying to communicate.
Anyway, I didn't major in English so I have minimal experience doing close reading in a classroom, but I do find it fun to use those methods on my own whenever I read. I did not like reading most old books in high school but I love to read old books now. I'm not sure I was developmentally/academically prepared to understand those books when I was assigned them (and I didn't like being assigned to read things in general) and I think that had a much bigger part of why I thought old books we're boring/felt anxious about trying to read them than being forced to do close reading. I had to really get over the assumption that reading Dickens as an adult would feel the same as it felt when I was 14. I'm not sure what the right answer is about when to introduce which texts to kids (I'm a math teacher, not an English teacher - but I do think we introduce some math concepts to some kids too soon), but part of me also thinks that being familiar with the biblical hermeneutic tradition and understanding that literary hermeneutics descends from that could be helful in better being able to use it and understand its benefits and its limitations. I agree though, that just reading a lot is the best way to go - it's all just practice anyway.
Thank you for this. I also really have trouble coming back to any book I was assigned in school--it's a major barrier I have to work to overcome, even though I know by now that actually I'll enjoy most of those books
You don’t need literary criticism to read and enjoy books. It’s a niche independent activity to be done and enjoyed for its own sake. I agree that it’s a mistake to teach students that understanding a book requires a technique that has nothing to do with the book.
I don’t think anyone whose interests are restricted to contemporary literature can be considered serious readers, students, scholars, etc. whether they’re a National Book Award winner or a BookTok star.
I agree! However, I doubt either my former classmates or this NBA winner would admit to only being interested in contemporary literature—it was just an observable fact that they never willingly read older books and didn't get excited about them. I'm glad that our culture still pays at least rhetorical homage to the idea that older books are worth reading
To the first part of your discussion, I think a major factor in the frustration at close reading is the fact that classes tend to proceed chronologically book by book, rather than focusing on a single work. But in an actual critical scenario, it would be more typical to read a work, sometimes several times, before actually reflecting on it enough to write. It could take several weeks just to finish reading, writing up notes, find references and connecting other sources, and beginning to articulate something meaningful.
This doesn’t work in a normal class structure so teachers just immediately start on analysis, proceeding directly to critical commentary, which is… ridiculous frankly.