I’m not sure why I hated just about every literature class I
ever took. High school, college,
whatever. I still can’t read most of the
authors we read in those classes because of the bad memories. I got good grades. I just hated it. Didn’t see the point. Not sure if I wasn’t ready, or if they were
really that bad.
Since finishing school I’ve been a pretty active
reader. That’s probably not a
coincidence. I’d love to take a good literature class now, but I’m afraid that I’d have the same bad reaction (probably because of me, not because of the
class). So the next best thing is to
read books about literature. Not as
good, but better than nothing.
My latest foray into that genre is James Wood’s How Fiction Works. Wood is a book critic for The New
Yorker, and I often enjoy his pieces.
This is a small book that doesn’t pretend to be definitive on any of the
many topics he touches on. There are chapters on voice, on detail, on
character, on language, on dialogue, and on truth and convention. Woods refers to many works from the standard
canon, and he quotes quite a few at length. His discussions are almost always
telling. I particularly enjoy his ‘rewrites’
of some passages that he quotes, his attempt to show what it might be like if
the author did it a different way, and why the author’s way is better for what
he’s trying to accomplish. As someone
who doesn’t write fiction it’s hard for me to imagine alternative versions; I
just can’t put myself in the author’s place making decisions about how it might
go.
There are many references to books I haven’t read, and some
of the discussion is over my head.
Nonetheless I found it a very useful book. It has already changed the
way I read.
Was I just not open to this kind of thinking when I was in
school? I know I’m not especially good
at being open in situations where I don’t feel competent. That undoubtedly got in my way. Reading about it privately feels safer to me.
Or maybe I just ended up with the bad teachers?
Or some of both.
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