Need help learning how to get more out of what I read?
January 5, 2011 8:01 AM Subscribe
Can anyone recommend free websites for literature analysis/guides?
I am looking for well-written, knowledgeable insight into the themes, motivations, and characterizations within fiction. I don't necessarily want a book club type discussion, but something more pithy. I am a voracious reader, but feel like I'm missing a lot of depth when I read my favorite authors like Iris Murdoch or Robertson Davies. I want to learn to read for more than just a "good story."
posted by alexgrey to education (7 answers total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
In some ways these questions are at cross purposes. At the simplest level, this is because one of them is concerned with specific texts - for instance, "what is the theme of Iris Murdoch work X?" - and the other is concerned with general principles - "How is it that a reader arrives at an understanding of a work of literature?" But the difference may go deeper than that.
The first question, the reader's-guide one, thinks of literature as a series of puzzles with definitive answers - like a math problem, say, or a code. THE THEME is somewhere in that book, and if you're a good enough reader, you can ferret it out, but if not, you can skip to the back of the book and see the answers, and then you'll know.
To my mind, the biggest problem with this approach is in where it locates the meaning of a written work. If there's a one-sentence answer to the question "what is the theme of Iris Murdoch work X," then that theme is contained entirely in "Iris Murdock work X," regardless of who's doing the reading. The meaning of a book, though, floats somewhere between the book itself and the reader - or, rather, is something of a collaborative effort between the book and the reader. It isn't a static thing, but emerges from the process of reading.
The answer to the second question, then, and I think the best route forward for you right now, is to be very attentive to your own process of meaning-making as you read. One of the ways in which written works constitute meaning is through their plot, certainly, and as you read for a "good story," you're looking for exactly that kind of meaning - a narrative of particular events occuring in a particular order, with rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. There are other ways in, though.
You say you're a voracious reader, and I wonder whether you're racing through books for storylines, and paying less attention to anything that's not "story" related. Have you tried rereading a book you've just finished? That might be one way to start. If you're reading for the "good story," how do you read a book differently if you already know what the story is? Is there anything still there to keep you interested? If so, what? Do you find yourself noticing details more? Ask a series of questions around the plot: How does this particular event work to advance the plot? How does it not? If the plot is the "meaning" you see in a work, how do specific moments, and indeed specific sentences of that work, contribute to or frustrate your personal process of meaning-making?
There's a classic Monty Python skit about a television "how to" show. In it the host teaches you how to play the flute: "You blow in this end, and you move your fingers over these little buttons here." The "give me a guide to the themes of this book" question is exactly this kind of how-to - both completely accurate and completely useless. Instead, be introspective while you read, and find out how it is that books, to you, carry meaning.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 8:38 AM on January 5, 2011 [1 favorite]