How do YOU read
HDCS6 who-is-at jetson.uh.edu
Thu, 14 Dec 1995 09:03:30 -0600 (CST)
The way I read now, thinking about it (which I never would have without
this thread) seems very much related to my early reading experiences.
When I was young I was engaged in reading activities like the ones
being described as middle class. My mother would read to me and ask
the questions like "What do you think is going to happen next." Looking
back on it, I had a funny reaction to how "important" reading was both
in my home and my school. Reading, at least for me, became an excercise
in getting approval. Reading was a good thing, it showed that you were
smart, they you had a good future (maybe a doctor!). The main purpose
of reading became to get this approval. I remember in my grade school
classes this color coded reading system. If you were red, you were good,
if you were purple, not so good. I remember that all of us read quickly,
ver competitively to see who could get to red first. The funny thing
about it was that I got no enjoyment at all from reading, except the
overt approval it brought. As I grew older, and approval moved from
reading to more specific tasks (e.g., how you did on the last algebra test)
reading became more and more of a chore (and subsequently I was not a very
good student). I could read well enough to answer the questions on the
test, similar to the questions for getting into the red category, but
I got away with as little as possible. What is interesting is that what
I did enjoy was, I guess you could call it story telling --- when the teacher
would gather us all around and read to us from some great book like
_A Wrinkle in Time_. But I never related the story telling to the
reading...they were two different activities. And as I grew older
story telling moved further and further away from reading, the exploits
of adolescent boys gathered around the cafeteria table.
I did not connect story telling and reading until late in my college
career, and that was by chance. I was spending a year in India and
suffering severe culture shock. And because I did not have my
normal escapes (music, television, drugs) I was forced to turn
to books. It was only then that story telling and reading merged
for me. To this day, I cannot read anything, and get anything more
out of it other than the ability to answer some GRE questions about
it unless I find the narrative line (i.e., the story), which most good
writers (or even bad writers with good ideas) put into their writing.
When I read something the book usually stays on my desk for more
than a year, and I keep picking it up, reading sections over and over
again until I find the narrative line. Only when this happens can
I read the whole book and really get something out of it. Some times
it takes me years, and I have to put the book back on the shelf and
hope I will get back to it (Kenneth Burke is an example of a writer
I have recently put back on the shelf because it all remains Greek
to me).
Michael Glassman
University of Houston