John Ramsey Miller
I got this e-mail the other day from a college student:
“I love your writing. Since I was little I hated reading books. I absolutely hated it. But the first time I read one of your books, I was hooked. So far I have made it through Inside out, Upside down, and Side by side. Not once have you disappointed me. Usually when I read your books, I have some sort of background music playing which really adds to the intensity, just like in a movie. Usually I just play the song “Anxiety” by the Black eyed peas and it’s so far worked pretty well. My goal is to try and hopefully read all of your books by the time I’m done with college. Thank you so much for your writings.”
Naturally I’m flattered, but ultimately I wonder why has he hated reading since he was little? Leaves me thinking if maybe it’s the music he’s really enjoying.
Some few do manage to live forever through their work, although I doubt they are aware of it. We can’t physically live forever, but a person’s work can live on after them, and that may be one of the reasons we write, or design buildings, or paint, or quilt, or run for political office. Last week, with the death of Edward Kennedy, I was thinking about politics, and how the four presidents whose faces are carved into Mt. Rushmore will certainly be there staring out at the landscape long after people forget who they were, and possibly even after there are no people left to puzzle it out. I was considering the great statesmen and orators I’ve seen in my lifetime, and the sorry crop of legislators I see in office now. Perhaps it has always been the case that there are a few shining examples of solid thinkers and unselfish statesmen, men and women of conscience and always doing what’s best for the country, and the rest have always been minor players (if not intellectually or morally subpar to the standouts of history). Conservatives and liberals may argue to the last man standing over which of their own were the greatest hits in legislative history.
In talking to students recently I got the impression that a lot of them think books are taught in classrooms based solely on the importance of the author’s work to dusty academics, and not how relevant their work remains, and certainly not based on what benefit students get from reading them. Let me say here that I think literary history is every bit as important as the U.S. history or art, politics or of music. I think every student ought to understand how important the first amendment to the Constitution is, and how censorship by one group has threatened the free exchange of ideas for all people.
Might it be better if literary history was taught the way art history is taught where students learn a little about a lot of artists and why their work was relevant to their period as well as ours. Do students need to read Beowulf, or won’t Cliff Notes Lite do for most of the classics. You don’t get two artists like Degas and Picasso in a semester’s worth of art history classes. In my mind, Melville, Poe, I get a picture of a bunch of now-dead authors on a carousel that has been turning faster and faster for centuries and decades until they are hanging on by their fingernails.
In high school I read Hawthorne and Melville, but what average high school student would read MOBY DICK were it not out of academic necessity. For me, reading the classics––especially CATERBURY TALES and any Shakespeare play was like taking Cod Liver Oil. If the idea is to instill an enjoyment in reading, toss them CARRIE, INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS, BELOVED, SOPHIE’S CHOICE, BULLET PARK, IN COLD BLOOD… make your own list. Save the true Classics for lit history and college courses. I think the idea is to get young people reading more than spending their free time glued to TV or computer screens where their minds aren’t making pictures to accompany the words.
I guess when reading is homework and the books more or less inaccessible and seemingly irrelevant to someone’s life, you are making pages filled with words an enemy. You say Beowulf and kids see spider webs. Some old peg-legged guy (an obsessive, self-destructive, revenge-seeking whale hunter) chasing the object of his rage across the oceans means less to most kids today than it did our grandfathers. We all have white whales that we are chasing, or running from.
As writers we understand the importance of celebrating great writing, and great ideas, and want to know how literature affected or reflected the time. So, do you believe educators should keep pushing the classics, or put more emphasis on works more relevant to the lives and interests of our young?
