How to Read Literature Like a Professor (2003)

How to Read Literature Like a Professor (2003) is a very good book by Thomas C. Foster. I had never understood how English professors identified meanings in literature. The best I could do was memorize everything they said and repeat it for tests and papers. It was as if a secret master made up all the meanings and the purpose of the English profession was to disseminate them to the masses through memorization. Well this book, written so anybody can understand it, even me, an engineer, changed all that and explains how you, too, can actually analyze literature for yourself.

Since I took English for non-majors, my professors must have skimmed over analysis and focused instead on conclusions needed for papers and exams. That's very much like math for non-majors actually. Math professors skim over theory and teach the procedures needed for homework and exams. In contrast, math for majors teaches students to figure out the procedures for themselves. Had I taken English for majors, I suppose I'd have learned how to do my own analysis and reach my own conclusions.

The book ends with the perfect test case. It's an excellent short story by Katherine Mansfield that demonstrates many elements of literature and gives the reader a chance to try out his/her new analysis skills. I gave myself a B+, but I'm planning to improve that.

Reference: Thomas C. Foster. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Harper. 2003.

Literature: Experience by Proxy

40 years ago I was in high school. I thought I was so clever. I thought I was like electricity--always taking the easiest path.

I never read my English assignments and never paid attention in class except on the review day before a test. Then I memorized everything for 24 hours and passed all my tests. I thought I was so clever because everybody else worked so hard while I just goofed off--but they learned something and I didn't learn anything! What a waste of 4 years--not to mention the years of ignorance that followed!!!

Eventually I moved next to a library after a job transfer and discovered the value of literature. I started reading the books I was supposed to have read and realized I could have benefited from their lessons had I learned them years ago.

Now I have teenagers of my own, and as when my parents lectured me, I lecture them and it goes in one ear and out the other. People can hear a lecture or watch a movie, but most people won't really learn something until they actually experience it. With literature you can practically experience something just by reading--and learn from it. It's the commitment you make and the active participation your mind makes when you read a novel that's as close to experiencing the real thing as possible without actually doing it.

You don't really participate in a lecture or a movie or even in non-fiction for that matter. You might learn some facts, but you won't have a learning experience about life. You're just a passive observer. With literature, however, the subject is human and your mind is participating in the plot and the theme as if you are there, experiencing it yourself, and learning from that experience.

To me, learning by proxy experience is the greatest value of literature. It's a lot easier to learn about life that way than to try to figure it out on your own by trial and error. I wish I understood that 40 years ago!