Why do you read novels? What do you think about while reading? How does your relationship with a book change over time? These, evidently, are matters of concern to scientists. The study queried 500 academics to help define the traits of characters in 200 Victorian novels. The results of this research indicate that literature both mirrors and shapes a culture’s ideals. Leaving aside a number of flaws in its methodology, I at first thought the study’s conclusion was rather obvious. Then I recalled a number of conversations I’ve had, or overheard, in which it was revealed how little most readers glean from a novel, and how little they want to glean.
No marrow-sucker, the typical reader. Who in these harried times can spare the hours necessary to ponder such things as why a character chooses a particular course of action over another? Who, between American Idol and Dancing With The Stars, can string together enough consecutive thoughts on said character to wonder what said choice might mean? And who, indeed, might think, while sitting in traffic between cell phone conversations, how that character’s decision-making process might be brought to bear on some distant choices we will someday make right here in the real world?
Yet Oprah tells us to read. We read also, if we are feeling ambitious, for book clubs. Sometimes we luck out and a novel is adapted into a movie, so we can condense the many hours of reading and of nuanced storytelling into a tight little 2-hour film (3, if we’re feeling epic) for which we don’t even have to turn the pages. We study books in school, where we learn to neatly categorize heroes and villains and to identify irony and phalluses. Even younger, we learn from fairy tales a number of lessons in what is right and what isn’t.
To reconcile these two impulses–the impulse to skim that today’s media teaches us and the impulse to suck just the tiniest morsel of life’s marrow and thereby learn something from a decrepit old book–I suspect the typical reader reaches for the simplest literature available. Hence Harry Potter. Hence John Grisham and Dan Brown. Assuming that most of these oversimplified are simply remixes of better, more powerful stories, I do not begrudge these readers their books. There are other readers. There are better books. To each his own.
It took me some time to realize the long-term repercussions of settling for these diluted stories. I read in another study how a number of classic fairy tales are being censored or downright forgotten by parents. Little Red Riding Hood? Too graphic. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves? Not politically correct. The same goes for Rapunzel, and Cinderella, and even the tale of the poor, gormandized Gingerbread Man.
This complicates matters. If we willingly bowdlerize (and thank you, Dr. Bowdler) the novels we read as adults, our tastes and temperaments change over time until what was palatable to us as children becomes far too bitter to pass on to the next generation. Eventually children will see the world from a perspective first blunted, then atrophied into solipsism. I shudder to think what they’ll read their kids at bedtime. If there are still books.
If they are very lucky, these children of the future won’t have any decisions to make, won’t face any challenges. They would be singularly ill-equipped for it. Protecting children from failure is not a model they will find anywhere in the real world, which they will confront long before parents are prepared for it. Exposing a very young person to things he or she won’t understand, fearsome things, even, is the whole point, I would think. So why are the Brothers Grimm no longer permitted their dark-edged tales? If we learn from the start that some things are not to be discussed, not even to be thought of, then how do we ever become capable of challenging ourselves?
I agree with every single word. Maybe I can help shed some light on the children part of your writing.
As a mom of a 5-year old, part of me can understand completely why we want to protect our children from scary things. After all, when you have a small creature for whom you would willingly lay down your life, the urge to protect him or her from every small fear becomes overriding.
At the same time, I have a hard time understanding this impulse. The desire to lay down one’s life for one’s kids, yes. The rest? Well, I’ve always felt my job is not to protect him from every bump and scrape, but to help him become the best person he can be. That includes letting him experience things that might be a little scary, or confusing, or sad. My job isn’t to stand between him and life, but to help him understand it and make his way through.
Thanks for the parental insight. I tried to shy away from passing judgment on the choices a parent makes; there are justifiable reasons for any such decision. I don’t expect to have children but I can see why a parent would want to protect a child from scary things. I can see why a child would welcome that protection. As with most things, it is the degree to which these impulses are pursued that determines whether or not a parent’s intervention on behalf of a child is warranted.
The problem is that the cycle I described in my original post isn’t limited to the interactions between parents and their own children. It spreads. This week a Toronto father is upset that his 17-year-old son is reading The Handmaid’s Tale in school. This book and many others are perennial targets of attempted censorship, and I am thankful there are tireless defenders of everyone else’s right to explore new and challenging ideas.
It’s bad enough when parents try to set the academic curricula for all students, but yesterday I was reminded what’s worse: a teacher who seeks to shut down the study of difficult stories. An English teacher in Washington wants to strike The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men, and To Kill A Mockingbird–all of which he acknowledges are classics with much to offer–for the sin of containing the “N-word” in the age of Obama. Nevermind that Obama himself has called for and initiated a frank discussion of race. Nevermind that the English teacher’s students are high school sophomores and juniors ostensibly capable of understanding the difference between this day in history and those past. These books should be struck down, he says, because it’s too hard to explain their merits to either students or their parents. We ask much of our teachers. Granted, they should not be the sole cultivators of young people’s ideas. But when we’ve reached the point that even they are too frustrated to bother shining a light on truth, it’s time to reassses how we arrived here.
As an avid reader, it pains me when I see people doing things like this. It’s one thing to be afraid to talk about these topics yourself; but to impose that fear of ideas on other people, especially young people, is criminal. And to do it when it’s one’s job to help young people think about these ideas — well, those are people who really are in the wrong profession.