Why Read?

This is a short little book, but its brevity belies its significance. Here is one of the most clear-headed, profound, straightforward, well-reasoned, and eloquent arguments for the value of literature--as Literature, not ideology or entertainment or historical artifact or whatnot--I've seen in a long time. Since I was expecting something of a diatribe against critical theory, pop culture studies, and all that jazz, I also found this book to be admirably even-handed. Edmundson gives these things their due while critiquing the way they can get in the way of the matter at hand if given too much emphasis. And the matter at hand is of course literature's ability to expand the reader, to ask the big questions without providing pat answers or stereotyped solutions universally applicable, to challenge one to think and feel for oneself--to know oneself, in fact. Such themes could easily lead a writer to get self-inflated and pedantic, but Edmundson expresses himself with wit, dry humor, and a good sense of proportion. He is assured but not arrogant, and passionate but not apoplectic. He can discuss the most momentous issues in a flowing conversational idiom that is comfortably and unselfconsciously erudite. It's almost like being in your favorite professor's office as an undergrad having a good, interesting discussion, or (if you're a professor) talking shop with a friendly respected colleague. And if you indeed plan on becoming a teacher of literature, I VERY highly recommend this book; reflecting on what Edmundson has to say here should definitely help you define and refine your priorities and motivations...and teaching style, probably. And it will remind you of why you fell in love with literature in the first place.

I kind of got sucked into this book by surprise--literature and literary criticism are not at all my fields, and I've never really sympathized with people who would choose them as a field. (My own primary interests are religious studies, and the philosophy of science). I got sucked in by the author's suggestion that literature can be a new religion, a secular religion. I got sucked in by his comments on modern pop culture. And then, since it's a short book, I kept reading. One of the key issues in the contemporary university world, in case you don't already know, is how the humanities fields can justify themselves in comparison with science. Science has become the measure against which the humanities are judged and found wanting. So what can the humanities do? They try to deal with science in various ways. I like Edmundson's implied answer: ignore science. Almost no one from the humanities dares to take this approach. But after all, does poetry ever try to do the same thing that science does? I wager, never. Thus, poetry has value as poetry, and criticism as an understanding and appreciation of poetry, with no scientific pretensions at all. Many arts departments have managed to learn this lesson thoroughly, but evidently literature is not. Edmundson goes on: literature exists to help us become better people. (Science doesn't do this: if Edmundson is right, obviously we need more literature in this world!) Literature helps us find our way, existentially, when we are lost--the way religion used to. The role of a literature teacher, then, is to enable the student to encounter the literature, to be changed by the literature, and then to freely accept it or reject it. I teach literature occasionally, as if by accident, when it falls to me. I often tell my students that the best literature is stuff that one can read over and over and over again, and it gets better every time. Edmundson says the best literature is literature that changes our lives. A good idea; I think we both might have a point. I recommend the book fairly naively, without being aware of many similar options you might explore. I was happy to have a little (though obviously very biased) glance into the world of literature and criticism. I've read a few books by Harold Bloom, and I've recently been reading "A Jacques Barzun Reader" which has some essays along similar lines to Edmundson's thoughts here; and Italo Calvino's "Why Read the Classics," which you might want to browse as well. I suspect that, when I finish those two books, I may well decide that the book by Barzun was the best one, but this one will not be far behind.

Mark Edmundson's book will make you wish that you had studied English at the University of Virginia and that you had been fortunate enough to have been in one of Prof. Edmundson's classes. (I did not have this good fortune.) Edmundson's passion for life and learning, which no doubt makes him an outstanding professor, also makes this book such a pleasure to read. Edmundson's argument in support of the examined life is all the more compelling because it is so democratic. Edumundson believes that the life of the mind is available to all, not just to a privileged elite. Thomas Jefferson would be proud of Mark Edmundson and glad to have him on the faculty of his university. But you're already an avid reader? You read and you know why you read. Do you really need a book entitled "Why Read?" I think so. Edmundson's argument is really much broader than the title would seem to indicate, and he will also renew your interest in reading and reading widely.

In his book, "Why Read," Mark Edmundson writes that I once possessed "movie-star" good looks. That is not why I recommend the book. People who read to be sparked creatively, enriched and spiritually uplifted will be hard pressed to find a more satisfying book this season. There is one way. If you start by reading his earlier memoir, "Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference," so that you have a sense of who Edmundson is, you'll get even more out of this book. Mark Edmundson is an earnest, honest, intelligent and disciplined teacher. What's more, he loves his students and work in the purest sense. He enters into relationship with them with an open mind, which is to say he attends and listens without predisposition, motive or bias. When he tells us to approach literature in the same way, to allow it its "maximum advocacy," he is both modeling and advocating the same message. The man lives what he teaches and it makes for grace and power, whether speaking or writing. As Edmundson explains so elegantly, the real issue is not why we should read but how we should live. With the tail of our economic system increasingly wagging the dog of our political system - and swatting our freedoms in the process, it has become a critical question. Are we, as individuals as well as a society, going to proclaim our faith in ourselves and truly listen to one another, or are we going to give in to fear and assert to the exclusion of listening? Edmundson has the faith in himself to listen and he teaches us how to develop that same faith in ourselves by listening to ourselves through literature. Though short and sweet, "Why Read" is a profoundly wise and inspiring book.

Edmundson has written the most provocative essay on the "crisis in the humanities" since Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. Unlike that book, however, Why Read? is itself eminently readable-- in fact a great pleasure from first page to last. Teachers in particular will find Edmundson's diagnosis and prescriptions bracing; he reminds us what got us into books in the first place, and why reading great works is indispensable to living the good life. Whether you agree with him or not, Edmundson's swift, lively polemic is already ingiting a debate we badly need to have.