Synopses & Reviews
In this important book reconceiving the value and promise of reading, acclaimed author Edmundson dramatizes what the recent identity crisis of the humanities has effectively obscured: that reading can change your life for the better.
Mark Edmundson's Harper's Magazine article "On the Uses of the Liberal Arts" is reported to be the most photocopied essay on college campuses over the last five years. Ruminating on his essay and the intense reaction to it, Edmundson exposes universities' ever-growing consumerism at the expense of a challenging, life-altering liberal arts education.
Edmundson encourages educators to teach students to read in a way that can change their lives for the better, rather than just training and entertaining. He argues that questions about the uses of literature-what would it mean to live out of this book, to see it as a guide to life-are the central questions to ask in a literary education. Right now they are being ignored, even shunned. And if religion continues to lose its hold on consequential parts of society, what can take its place in guiding souls? Great writing, Edmundson argues. At once controversial and inspiring, this is a groundbreaking book written with the elegance and power to change the way we teach and read.
Mark Edmunson is NEH/Daniels Family Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Virginia. A prizewinning scholar, he has published a number of works of literary and cultural criticism, including Nightmare on Main Street and Literature Against Philosophy, Plato to Derrida. He is also the author of a widely praised memoir, Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference. He has written for Raritan, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and Harper's, where he is a contributing editor.
Nominated for the Frederic W. Ness Book Award (from the Association of American Colleges and Universities) In this important book, Edmundson dramatizes what the recent identity crisis in the humanities has effectively obscured: that reading can change your life for the better. Edmundson's controversial Harper's Magazine article, "On the Uses of the Liberal Arts: As Light Entertainment for Bored College Students," has been the most photocopied essay on American college campuses over the past five years. Here he picks up where that influential piece left off. First he exposes universities' ever-growing consumerism at the expense of a life-altering liberal arts education. In today's colleges, students get what they most immediately wantcountry club campuses, professional training, easy grades, "fun" classesrather than being challenged and inspired by great works of literature and art. But what can be done to change this sorry situation?
Edmundson is highly skeptical about most established forms of literary teaching and criticism, believing that they ruin students' chances of truly being influenced by the best that's been thought and said. Edmundson enjoins educators to stop offering condescending analytic technique and facile entertainment and to begin teaching students to read in a way that can change their lives for the better. He argues that questions about the uses of literaturewhat would it mean to live out of this book, to see it as a guide to life, to make it your secular Bibleare the central questions to ask in a literary education. Right now these questions are being ignored, even suppressed, yet the questions have never been so pressing. If religion continues to lose its hold on significant sections of contemporary society, what can take its place in shaping and guiding souls? Great writing, Edmundson argues.
At once controversial and vital and inspiring, this is a groundbreaking book written with the elegance and power to change the way we teach and read.
Nominated for the Frederic W. Ness Book Award (from the Association of American Colleges and Universities) "Edmundson calls for a new humanist education that stresses the importance of literary reading and teaching in making a life, and in ethical decisions. Expanding on his essay 'On the Uses of the Liberal Arts' (Harper's), he discusses the interpretation of literature as a process of understanding, identification, impersonation, and spiritual truth, which leads to the reader developing a final narrative or life vision. Using this framework, Edmundson describes his own method of teaching Henry James, Shakespeare, Homer, Dickens, and Wordsworth, and also considers the critical writings of Emerson, Orwell, Frye, de Man, and Matthew Arnold, among others. He criticizes America's consumer society and university culture, seeing the proper study of literature as a way to make the society more open, fulfilling, and democratic. Engaging and controversial, this book will lead to discussion and debate."Library Journal "Edmundson calls for a new humanist education that stresses the importance of literary reading and teaching in making a life, and in ethical decisions. Expanding on his essay 'On the Uses of the Liberal Arts' (Harper's), he discusses the interpretation of literature as a process of understanding, identification, impersonation, and spiritual truth, which leads to the reader developing a final narrative or life vision. Using this framework, Edmundson describes his own method of teaching Henry James, Shakespeare, Homer, Dickens, and Wordsworth, and also considers the critical writings of Emerson, Orwell, Frye, de Man, and Matthew Arnold, among others. He criticizes America's consumer society and university culture, seeing the proper study of literature as a way to make the society more open, fulfilling, and democratic. Engaging and controversial, this book will lead to discussion and debate."Library Journal "Reading literature nurtures our intelligence, our imagination, and our very soul. So believes Edmundson, a professor at the University of Virginia, as so many great thinkers have believed over the centuries, writers Edmundson quotes with passion and expertise as he places literature at the very heart of a liberal-arts education, which he fears is becoming an endangered tradition. An eloquent advocate, Edmundson continues the invaluable refresher course on the significance of the humanities that he's been so ably conducting in Harper's magazine and in his previous book, Teacher (2002). Here he objects to the commercialization of higher education as students are recast as consumers and instruction is reduced to job training. Edmundson feels that students deserve, and need, more. He avers, 'The purpose of a liberal arts education is to give people an enhanced opportunity to decide how they should live their lives,' and that literature is 'the major cultural source of vital options.' Edmundson's many-faceted argument is forthright, rigorous, and inspiring as he convincingly links literature with hope and humanism with democracy."Booklist
Review
"A National Endowment for the Arts study made news recently when it reported that more than half of American adults did not read a novel, play, book of poems or short stories in the preceding twelve months. The report frames with urgency the question: 'Why read?'—the title of Mark Edmundson's important new book. Edmundson argues passionately for a return, a rediscovery, of the possibilities great literature has to confront, challenge, and change the receptive reader. He begins by expressing his great concern about the increasing expectations of students to be entertained and coddled in institutions of higher learning. As Edmundson puts it: 'this generation of students—steeped in consumer culture before they go off to school; treated as potent consumers by the university well before they arrive, then pandered to from day one—are inclined to see the books they read as a string of entertainments to be enjoyed without effort or languidly cast aside.' If this book ever flags, it may be here, early, where Edmundson's language calls to mind a little too much an old-timer shaking his head, bemoaning "kids theses days." And yet it is difficult to argue Edmundson's essential point, that the 'culture of cool' and consumerism has created an atmosphere where the kind of passionate soul work that young students could most use is the one enterprise professors are loathe to touch.
From his critique of the contemporary educational scene, Edmundson's writing soars. His central point is clear, and he returns to it again and again: 'the test of a book lies in its power to map or transform a life. The question we would ultimately ask of any work of art is this: Can you live it?' Why Read? becomes a kind of manifesto around the compelling need to return to literature as a medium of transformation: he examines pedagogy, literary criticism, democracy, religion, and the creative drive itself all from the vantage point of the challenging possibilities self-discovery for the reader. Edmundson gets down to specifics as well: he offers readings of Wordsworth, Shakespeare, and the Iliad to demonstrate how, by becoming an advocate (even if just temporarily) for the text, a teacher can present an author's work in a way that matters here, and now, for the students' hearts, bodies, and minds. He does not reject theory, or further kinds of critical and historic readings, but rather urges that first the students must be given the chance to confront a literary work head on, as the author, were he or she present, might wish, as a possibly life-transforming event.
Jonathan Yardley, in a full-page review of Edmundson's book in the Washington Post Book World, criticized what he saw as a fundamental flaw in Edmundson's argument. I don't generally refer to other reviews of a book that I am reviewing, but in this case, because of the prominence of the review and what seems to me the perverse nature of Yardley's concerns, I will make a needed exception. Yardley, while praising Edmundson's writing and much of what of has to say, expresses two serious reservations. First, Yardley argues that great books need to be taught for their own sake, and not from some pragmatic program to improve the students' lives. Yardley quotes Keats' famous lines concerning the equivalence of truth and beauty being all ye need to know, which, lovely as they are as poetry, could scarcely be worse pedagogy. Telling a room of young, bright, questioning, and possibly (one would hope) rebellious students to read a book simply because it is great literature is too close to saying, 'The book is great because I say so.' At best the students would cry out for more and better reasons, and at worst would just tune out. Edmundson is explicit in his turn to a pragmatic philosophy of truth and value in reading, and I can think of no better value than, 'We're reading this book because, if you confront the text with an open mind and heart, it might change your life forever.' Some students, at least, would listen. But here is Yardley's second, and even less reasonable concern: Edmundson, he says, is still playing into the very consumer culture he criticizes by making his teaching strategy all about self-cultivation and self-discovery in the pages of great literature. It would be better, Yardley says, to point students out into the world, rather than back into themselves. But every good teacher, like every loving parent, in some form believes that nurturing and fostering the growth of individual lives is the key to building a better and wiser world. Edmundson says so repeatedly, and with great eloquence throughout his book. Yardley has misread a masterpiece, and doing so in such a prominent forum has done a disservice to a reading public that could profit enormously from Edmundson's insights." Reviewed by Peter Walpole, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
"Edmundson's many-faceted argument is forthright, rigorous, and inspiring as he convincingly links literature with hope and humanism with democracy." Booklist
Synopsis
In this important book reconceiving the value and promise of reading, acclaimed author Edmundson dramatizes what the recent identity crisis of the humanities has effectively obscured: that reading can change your life for the better.
Mark Edmundson's Harper's Magazine article "On the Uses of the Liberal Arts" is reported to be the most photocopied essay on college campuses over the last five years. Ruminating on his essay and the intense reaction to it, Edmundson exposes universities' ever-growing consumerism at the expense of a challenging, life-altering liberal arts education.
Edmundson encourages educators to teach students to read in a way that can change their lives for the better, rather than just training and entertaining. He argues that questions about the uses of literature-what would it mean to live out of this book, to see it as a guide to life-are the central questions to ask in a literary education. Right now they are being ignored, even shunned. And if religion continues to lose its hold on consequential parts of society, what can take its place in guiding souls? Great writing, Edmundson argues. At once controversial and inspiring, this is a groundbreaking book written with the elegance and power to change the way we teach and read.
Synopsis
In this important book, acclaimed author Mark Edmundson reconceives the value and promise of reading. He enjoins educators to stop offering up literature as facile entertainment and instead teach students to read in a way that can change their lives for the better. At once controversial and inspiring, this is a groundbreaking book written with the elegance and power to change the way we teach and read.
About the Author
Mark Edmundson is a professor of English at the University of Virginia. A prizewinning scholar, he has published a number of works of literary and cultural criticism, including Literature Against Philosophy: Plato to Derrida as well as a memoir, Teacher: The One Who Made a Difference. He has also written for such publications as the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, the Nation, and Harper's, where he is a contributing editor.