ACADEMICS
WHY READ?
A Biased English Teacher Weighs In
BY DR. CAMERON WILSON ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, ENGLISH
E
very few weeks I find myself grabbing George Saunders’ short story collection Tenth of December from my bookshelf. Before losing myself in the collection’s longer stories, I read “Sticks,” a single-page
story of a man’s childhood memories of his father. In a page we witness the story of a boy, now grown, who never understood his father’s stoicism until the son sees, years later when he has his own family, the “seeds of meanness blooming” in his own heart. I’m in awe at how economically Saunders creates an entire world in a story no longer than a short newspaper article. “Sticks” is short, vivid, and delivers the emotional punch of stories ten times its length. After finishing, I had goosebumps on my
arm, an apple-sized lump in my throat, and an urgent need to share the story with others. I ambushed my wife one afternoon after work and read it to her while we were waiting at a traffic light. I bought a second copy of the book and sent it to my older sister, and then shipped a third to my parents. Often, friends confide they only like reading non-fiction– stuff that isn’t made up–or that most serious fiction is too boring or depressing. Others tell me they don’t have time. Or that there are
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simply too many good shows on Netflix. And I totally get it, I really do.
Life is hard and Doctor Who marathons are easy.
And while I would never disparage a good
Doctor Who marathon (I’m overdue for one myself), I hope we can keep in mind what we’re missing in reading good writing. Cultural theorists have long warned of
the easy and seductive distractions of new technologies, and I’m certainly not the first English instructor to complain about the decline of serious readers. Contemporary scholars bemoan the absence of “slow reading,” also known as “deep reading,” a practice that requires the reader to imaginatively engage a text for an extended period of time, translating the marks on the page into fully-formed worlds. Reading fiction engages the mind in ways that other mediums can’t. Fiction offers us an entrance into a world that we, on one hand, share, and on the other hand need to observe from another’s perspective to see afresh. While the descent into a text takes us,
briefly, away from others, forces us to quiet the world at large, the temporary retreat
has the potential to open the world up to us. Once we’ve inhabited the experience of another, we’re tuned to a new frequency, as if we’ve dusted away the cobwebs of familiarity, and are enabled to notice anew a spouse, children, parents, relationships, lost loves, co-workers, old friends. We emerge and can see the world with a fresh set of eyes, maybe even increase our capacity to empathize or relate to the experiences of others. Perhaps all this sounds too idealistic,
and maybe my bias as an English teacher has colored my perception of the whole reading enterprise. Speaking of my own experience, though, I know that in subtle ways I’m not the same person after reading a story like “Sticks.” Reading fiction seriously, or reading
serious fiction, is a challenging activity. It makes demands on us emotionally, physically (sitting still is hard work, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise), socially, and spiritually, but it is invaluable as a tool for discovery, growth, and renewal. I hope that a story recommendation from a book nerd like myself might encourage a skeptic or two to search out a life-changing story—one that draws the soul into deeper communion with God, His creation, our fellow human beings, and the pilgrimage of life itself.
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