TRUTH DOG CHAPTER 3
OUTSIDE READING
Before I teach you anything, I want to talk to you about the most important thing I can’t teach you.
There isn’t anything any of your teachers can do for you in school that’s better for your academic development than reading outside of class—particularly if you read texts that challenge you.
How much do you have to read?
We have weekly assigned reading for this class. Oh yes.
On top of that, I need you to select texts for your outside reading. Students think I’m going to tell them how many books they have to read. It doesn’t work that way.
Mr. Stanford’s outside reading requirement
If you’re an “A” student, you should be reading academic texts germane to advanced English 5 hours per week on top of weekly assigned reading. How will I know how much you’re reading? Because I have clairvoyant powers and because I will see your book in your hand every day and because you will be compiling a list of the books you read and most of all, because you will have to see me face-to-face or respond in writing in order to receive outside reading credit. I plan to ask you questions!
What makes a text “academic”? An academic text is nonfiction with an academic bibliography, or literature.
What makes a text “literature”? It’s explained below.
How hard does the reading have to be?
It’s time to read college-level literature, not teen literature. Yes, there are many great books that have won awards like the Newberry Medal. And I’m not telling you that you should never read books like Lois Lowry’s The Giver. By all means, read what you want in your free time. I just can’t give you reading credit for The Giver.
The reading shouldn’t be too hard, either. I don’t want you to feel so challenged that you’re struggling and frustrated. But there should be 2-4 unfamiliar words on an average page that slow you down because you’re looking them up. Ideally you’re also slowed down a little by unfamiliar syntax (sentence structure).
Bill Shakespeare, you may have noticed, is brutal for the average modern English language reader. Surprisingly, it’s not so much because of vocabulary—it’s because of syntax. In one of Bill’s sentences, if you can find the subject and the verb, you can work it out. But unless you gain familiarity with Shakespearean English, you can’t read it quickly. Plus, it isn’t meant to be read by anyone except the members of a theatrical production. You’re supposed to watch Shakespeare being performed.
WHAT NOTES DO I HAVE TO TAKE?
I’m not requiring any notes or dialectical journals. You should think about what you’re being asked to do: spend time reading, and be able to talk or write about what you’ve read. If I interview you or ask you to write something, notes are allowed. You decide whether or not you’ll need notes in order to do that. And, remember that note-taking doesn’t count toward the time requirement, so spending 5 hours reading 20 pages and writing 20 pages of notes is not “A” credit.
If you take notes, take them sparingly. For The Great Gatsby, a single 8.5x11 page, double-sided, ought to be enough to remember the book well.
GENRES
genre (n.) a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter (Google.com)
Commercial fiction is a book written in order to make money. It’s not that literature isn’t written in order to make money, it’s that literature has other, more artistic purposes as well. In a work of commercial fiction the writer wants to tell a good story that keeps the reader turning the pages. The writer’s decisions are mostly content decisions, mostly to do with plot and characterization. These are “for fun” books written by the likes of J. K. Rowling and Danielle Steele and Stephen King and Tom Clancy. I need you to move toward something more literary now. Read commercial fiction for fun but not for credit.
Literature is less focused on telling a good story. So the writer’s content decisions are less about plot and more about conveying a powerful idea in an artistic way, carefully crafting the diction, the syntax, the tone, even aspects of rhetoric into a unified whole (if this sentence isn’t making any sense, we’ll be getting to it in the Chapter 7: How to Analyze a Writer’s Style).
Literature aims to show us something surprising or magical or poignant about humanity—about what it means to be human. And literature is almost always a reflection of something important about the real world, even if it’s not allegorical. A literary text’s universal theme is a message posed by the author that applies in all cultures, in all times. When asked to read literature, I often hear students say, “This is boring.” I understand that complaint to mean, “This story isn’t that interesting. I really don’t get why this book is such a big deal.” So if we’re not reading a novel together, as a class, then ask me questions. Ask me, “Why do teachers love this book?” Whenever I did that in my college English classes, I ended up falling in love with the book. Every time. Okay, almost every time. If you’re not sure whether something ought to be considered literature or commercial fiction, ask me. By the way, anything that’s won or been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize or the Booker Prize is automatically approved for outside reading credit.
Poetry books tug at my heartstrings. (Look, I’m a poet too. Okay, maybe not.) If it’s literary poetry, and not an anthology of kid poetry self-published by your little sister’s middle school creative writing class, I can be persuaded, but I want to know how you’re reading the poetry. Are you actually analyzing it? Or did you pick it ‘cuz it’s short? Remember, it’s not the number of books you read. It’s making me believe you’re spending the time.
Plays I regard much the same as poetry. What is the play? Are you reading it because you have a part in the play?
Popular nonfiction is in many cases academic, and approved for outside reading credit. How can you tell? Most of them tend to be written about scholarly subjects in the field of history, anthropology, sociology, business—there’s so many great books out there. Check out authors like Jared Diamond, or Malcolm Gladwell.
Political opinion books tend to be garbage. Avoid them. In any bookstore you’ll see them displayed prominently. Obama hero!!! Obama villain!!! Liberals suck!!! Conservatives are idiots!!! Rawr!!!
Memoirs and autobiographies are considered nonfiction, but they are not generally academic in nature, and so they are not approved for outside reading credit. Why? Because if I decide to write a memoir, I don’t have to do any research. Not surprisingly, authors have been caught exaggerating wildly in order to make their autobiographies more sensational, so that they can sell more copies. Though there are a few exceptions to the rule, such as landmark autobiographical works by Frederick Douglass, Elie Wiesel, and Viktor Frankl. There may be a few others. I’m cheerfully excluding the rest. No Tuesdays with Morrie, no A Child Called It, and leave Mein Kampf on the shelf. Enough about that guy.
Biographies are considered nonfiction, but whether or not it’s academic depends on who’s being profiled and who’s doing the profiling. Is it a biography of JFK, or a biography of Randy Macho Man Savage? You know what I’m going to say.
Historical fiction mixes a real-world setting with an invented plot, and actual historical figures with invented dialogue and behaviors. In other words, it’s “based on a true story.” But it’s still considered fiction. For your outside reading requirement I will not approve anything that is too commercial and not at all literary or helpful to your studies in U.S. history, particularly when there’s a mountain of excellent scholarly nonfiction that awaits you. What about James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me or Carl Degler’s Out of Our Past: The Forces That Shaped Modern America or Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States? Hello controversy!
School textbooks and other reference texts certainly count as scholarly nonfiction, but I have two problems: (1) for English we need to be reading about the human condition, since all of your writing prompts are about some aspect of the human condition, and (2) the text needs to be open to debate either because it’s argumentative in nature, or because it’s written from an expert’s point of view—an expert with whom other experts may disagree. Your biology textbook is not going to involve much controversy, nor is it much about the human condition, and it was likely compiled by a large herd of schoolish people representing a general schoolish consensus, rather than promulgating one biologist’s point of view. Now, if you want to read about evolution or science as it relates to the human condition, I have authors I can suggest, such as Edward O. Wilson and Charles Darwin. Hello controversy!
Science books, such as a book about the universe by the eminent Dr. Stephen Hawking, may not be enough about the human condition to count for outside reading credit.
Business books may be entirely appropriate, such as Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. I once used that book to get elected the foreman of a jury. It really works! So if you’re interested in business, it will be easy to meet this outside reading requirement reading business books. Watch out, though, because there’s much that won’t work. Get Rich Quick and The Kelley Blue Book Used Car Guide are good examples of books that won’t work. Again, the book should be buttressed by a scholarly bibliography involving some research, or it should have historical significance like Carnegie’s book. It should pose an expert’s argument about which other experts could potentially disagree. And it needs to relate to the human condition.
Self-Help books, or “how to” books, are not generally going to work. But if you can find something with a scholarly bibliography making an expert’s argument about the human condition, try me.