reader is not a
passive recipient but
collaborator
(In the name of transparency, I cannot tell you how this essay turned into a 10 minute read – I just started typing … but thank you in advance for the investment of your time)
It was over 40 years ago but I was thinking of something that happened to me when I was in college.
A lot of things, good and bad, happened to me in college (mostly good) and I was lucky to have gone to a college that did not just welcome independent thinking but demanded it.
I have often told how it wasn’t until I went off to Ann Arbor from my home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the center of famously conservative West Michigan, that I was asked not IF I was a Christian but WHY was I a Christian and a reasoned argument, based on fact, was expected from me to explain why.
I had the good fortune to got to GRJC, the local community college first so all of my 101 classes were out of the way.
I majored in United States history and for me, looking at the course catalog was like paging through the Sear’s Wishbook at Christmas time.
I remember thinking I GET TO TAKE THIS CLASSES!
Then thinking that as history major, I HAD TO TAKE THESE CLASSES, WAS SUPPOSED TO TAKE THESE CLASSES!
Back in the day students went through something called CRISP or Computer Registration Involving Student Participation.
I have been told by folks older than me that they went through pretty much the same thing but they had to got some huge room were cartons of computer cars were sitting out.
There was one carton for each class on campus.
There was one card for each place in each class.
Students were ushered through tables covered with cartons and if they wanted to take a class, and there was a card for that class, they took it and then took all their cards to the front desk and their schedule for next term was entered into the card reading computers.
CRISP was the same thing but in place of the cartons of cards, we sat with a registrar who had one of the many green or orange display computer terminals hooked into the main schedule database.
We would hand over a piece of paper with our course numbers on it.
The registrar would enter our name, student number and course selection and wait.
At some point, if the system was up, there would show up on the screen, what selections were available and what were not.
If the class wasn’t available, addition slots at different times would be listed along with the option to WAITLIST the class which meant you showed up to see if the Professor would let you into the class.
Because of the wait times in the system, this could go one for hours as you sat with the registrar and searched for classes that fit your schedule as well as your degree requirements.
But not for me.
No one else took the classes I wanted to take.
Like History 677 – The American Colonial Period Through the Documents (Meets in Clements Library).
In a student body of 30,000, there were 6 other students in that class.
I would get to the registrar and announce, “Betcha $5, this scheduled is accepted on the first try!”
The registrar, numb after doing this for the last week, would just glare at me.
The info would get punched in.
There would be a moment.
Then there would be a ding and SCHEDULED ACCEPTED would display on the screen.
EVERYTIME the registrar would look at me and say, “Well, that never happened before.”
There was an occasional class that might be in question due to the popularity of the class or the popularity of the Professor.
One such Professor was Gerald Linderman and his class, the American Experience at War.
The class dealt with all the wars in US history and how the people of United States at home, supported these wars.
Dr. Linderman was known for his lectures and his story telling style as well as his subject matter.
The class was huge for an upper level history course and as he was also known for signing off on any override, there were always over 300 students in his lectures.
The first couple of weeks of class was also a bit a scavenger hunt as more and more students showed up and he kept moving the location of the class to bigger and bigger lecture halls until we ended up in the one of the largest rooms on campus, the auditorium at the MLB or Modern Languages Building.
The size of the class never bothered me as I would get there early to grab a front row seat.
There was a group of us who grabbed these seats and we formed an informal ‘fellowship of the front row’.
After a few weeks of lectures, it was accepted that we of the fellowship had dibs on specific seats and for some reason, the other students in that massive hall left that row and those seats to us.
Along with the lectures was the massive (for today) assigned reading list and the weekly non-mandatory but heavily attended open forum where the readings were discussed.
(This is an awfully long story to get to where I am going but I am going to get there.)
One of the many books we had to read was an autobiography of a US Army Officer fighting Vietnam and it detailed this officer’s efforts to fight the war and save lives and how his efforts were hindered, obstructed and stopped by the US Army’s plan to fight the Vietnam War their way.
This officer told story after story about how dumb the army was and how he tried to overcome this dumbness.
He told how one time he was ordered to gather his unit in an open landing zone in the jungle so his commanding officer could fly in with a helicopter and deliver ice cream to the men.
This officer said that has soon as the CO took of, he stomped on the big round containers of ice cream, mashing them into hot jungle muck.
The book was filled with stories like this.
The stories of dumbness and such got to the point that I said to myself, ‘No Way!’
I had read some on the Vietnam War and what they guy was saying just didn’t ring true.
I took a black magic marker and on the cover of the book I wrote, ‘A GRIM FAIRY TALE’ in big bold letters.
I took my book with me to book discussion and took my seat in the front row and put the book on the fold-out desk in front of me.
Then Dr. Linderman came in and started the discussion.
He made a few remarks and then called for thoughts.
One guy shot out his arm and was recognized.
Well, this guy loved the book.
You couldn’t just raise your hand and say, “I loved the book” and this feller didn’t.
He had a long, well thought out, lucid defense of the book and the author of the book.
The author and the book showed just what was wrong about the Vietnam War he said.
That the author was not supported by the Army was what was wrong about the Vietnam War he said.
The author was a hero and again and again, he was defeated, not by the enemy, but by his own side he said.
This student was passionate as well as arrogant and well prepared with the smugness of knowing they are right.
As he made point after point defending the book, I sank lower and lower in my seat.
This student finished his words and sat back in his chair to no little amount of positive murmurs of agreement throughout the hall.
Several other students spoke out, echoing these this student’s thoughts.
Then there was a pause.
Dr. Linderman stood in front and held the fingertips of his right hand together and touched his lower lip which was his visible signature that he was going to to say something important.
He looked out at us with that look of college Professors that might be called benevolent bemusement.
He looked out at us and said that he always had an issue when he selected books for assigned reading.
He said that his issue was his concern that we (the students) would think that any book on his assigned list had to be good book.
He was concerned that, maybe, we (the students) would accept that any book he assigned should not be questioned.
Dr. Linderman had a way to speak softly that and still be heard though out the room.
His soft way of speaking was an aural definition of the word, earnestness.
He said that the book under discussion was one he had hoped we read and question.
In this case, he said, the book under discussion, was to be questioned because further examination of the officer’s story showed the stories to be false.
He had made most of it up.
So much so that the TV show 60 Minutes had started doing an investigative story based on the charges made in book and the story turned into a story on the lies in the book.
The question of truth would be resolved, Dr. Linderman said, one way or the other, as the officer was sueing 60 Mintues for libel.
In any event, Dr. Linderman said, he was sorry if he seemed disingenuous, but he wanted us to see a different point about the book than the ones just voiced.
I had stopped breathing about halfway through this.
Then the student next to me nudged me hard and reached over and pounded on the cover of me book.
I turned and look at her and she smiled with this great big smile and nodded.
Then she picked up my copy of the book with A GRIM FAIRY TALE written on it and held up for everyone to see in the rows behind us.
In a way, I felt that I had arrived or, at least, I could hold my own.
Like I said, I was lucky
Afterwards I pondered, how did I and that other student get such opposite opinions and feelings from the same book?
Don’t ask me why and it is certainly something I should have been aware of, but I had to realize that the message and meaning of a book, any book, would be different to different people.
Mr. Hemingway once wrote something once along the lines that if you could write in such a way that what you wrote about became a part of the conscious memory of the reader, then you were, indeed, a writer.
When I thought about this, I figured that the same feeling or thought would be applied to every reader.
I did not occur to me that what Mr. Hemingway was describing could and might, maybe only happen to a few or even just one of a writer’s readers.
That does not make it any less true.
And now, finally to the point.
I was reminded of the role of the reader in the in the New York Times guest opinion piece, Stepping Into Raymond Chandlers Shoes Showed Me the Power of Fiction By Denise Mina
(Aug. 26, 2023).
Ms. Mena talks about the Reader-Response theory or the view of literary interpretation associated with the American critic Stanley Fish.
Ms. Mena states that “… the reader-response theory posits that the reader is not a passive recipient of a literary work but a collaborator in that work, reading it through the prism of personal experience.
In effect, each reader, with each reading, creates a new work.
Each generation of readers brings a different sensibility to the text.
Boy Howdy!, but I all I gots to say is Boy Howdy!
The quiet time with a book.
The late night away with a book.
The Sunday afternoon with a book.
It has always been, for the ideal of the passive, peaceful time just to read.
BUT think about this way.
I am NOT the passive recipient of the book but a collaborator!
Reading it through the prism of personal experience.
Reading it through the prism of personal experience that will color my interpretation of the book.
Reading it through the prism of personal experience that changes with time that will color my interpretation of the book.
It is not a quiet time.
It is a look of work .
It is a lot of responsibility!
I accept this charge willingly.
I have read some novels over and over again.
I think I have read the Caine Mutiny over 100 times.
I say I always learn or see something new.
How could I not?
The book hasn’t changed, but I sure have.
At 59th reading, I am not the same person I was, my prism of experience has changed, since the 58th reading.
I am NOT the passive recipient of the book each time I read the same book but a collaborator in creating a new experience!
Maybe I am late to the party thinking about my role as a reader.
I think I understood it better as a student back in those days.
I was reading to learn.
But when does learning end?
More to say on this I am sure, but I have miles to go before I sleep and my shelves are full of books that are waiting for my input.
POSTSCRIPT: SO I have to ask myself, is there a passage of an author’s writing that can inspire, through the reader’s background and personal prism and somehow, arrive a common experience?
I offer the this little bit of text.
Please read it and tell me what you think …
“[Who] can help but remember the ecstatic thrill of eating this sensuous dessert fresh from the kitchen? Out it came, two thick discs of buttered biscuit pastry or sponge cake separated and slathered with warm crushed and sugared ripe strawberries that dripped in rivulets down the sides. If you wanted to be fancy, you spread a layer of whipped cream over the top and garnished the cake with a few perfect whole berries, but serious shortcake lovers demanded no further enhancements than pitchers of more crushed berries and thick cream to pour on at will.”
From Strawberry Shortcake in Villas at table : a passion for food and drink
by James Villas, (New York : Harper & Row 1988)
No Haiku For You 