I enjoyed English class in high school, but not with the enthusiasm for words I now have. Oh, I did a lot of writing back then, both comedic and serious. Now, as I better understand the beauty and value of literature, I dearly wish I could visit my HS teacher to discuss the old and new books I now read. Sadly, she has passed, and I miss her so much, even after a 50-year absence. Below is something I wrote to her, though she never got to read it.
You probably have no idea how many times I have thought of you over the past 40 years, for it was you who told me that I should be a writer. Your words of encouragement thrilled my heart, and I went on to become a… pharmacist. Through various twists and turns of events and choices I pursued a career in pharmacy, married, had a family, and now enjoy grandchildren, but through it all – though my writing activity has waxed and waned – my passion for it has never been quenched, and I realize that you were right all along.
A couple of other things come to mind as I recall your class. One is our difference of opinion on Mark Twain’s short story entitled “Luck.” I continue to hold my opinion that the protagonist was a genius rather than a fool, but to each his own. The other incident is one I look back on with great amusement. We had been assigned to comment upon Ernest Hemingway’s use of sensuality and its importance in his writing. Subsequent to your reading and grading our papers, you went out of your way to clarify that you had asked about sensuality, not sexuality. I can only imagine what you had been reading from your high school students attempting to comment on that which they (ideally) had no experience.
If you’re out there somewhere, I would dearly love to speak with you again. God’s blessings to a teacher who made a difference!
“It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die”. This, from Howards End. Iiterature is how we connect. It is to exclaim, “isn’t that beautiful? I’ve always just felt it is good to tell good stories.
1965-66 in a suburb of Chicago, I took part in a program called Junior Great Books. We read books like ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ by John Bunyan, and the discussions followed open-ended questions that led us deeper into the material, instead of just trying to remember certain facts. I felt like I was part of something special. Even by the time I started college in 1970, a Liberal Arts or English degree was still something to aspire to, and which still had a certain prestige attached to it. I was an English major, and even though I ended up with a satisfying career in health care, I am still a book nerd, and lover of the printed word, be it classical literature or something less cerebral. Reading helps me to understand the human soul and psyche.
There’s been a formal decline in humanities studies, but increased informal engagement on a daily basis - people just tend to stick to what they like, rather than be exposed to many different things. The example of med students reading literature is what there should be more of, but many people really dislike interdisciplinary studies because it is harder and can impact grades. But only one unit can change your entire perspective on a discipline - I was a creative arts/humanities student who hated science and then did a philosophy of science elective - going beyond rote learning of facts into something more complex made it much easier for me to engage with science after that.
Superb distillation of the seemingly frenetic race to go visual for anything and everything~I, like many, have made efforts to read books to my 3-year-old grandson before screens have him swearing them off, but I had not realized the fading of English might have "cancellation overtones," too.
(Makes sense, though, that if many former European white males are to be canceled so might be their words.)
From the James Marriott piece:
"If sympathy with Jane Eyre once implied an expanded sphere of moral concern capable of enhancing a person’s feeling for all humanity, it now signifies attachment to the culture of an oppressive elite. The rise of electronic distraction has only tended to increase English’s political vulnerability."
In other words, literature is on the decline from both apathy (from the electronically distracted) and being outright dissed by those who see it as oppressive.
Thanks, Susan, for this section:
" .... they revered literature as the apogee of the human spirit— and the antidote to the dark forces of mass culture and totalitarianism."
To me, the "dark forces of mass culture" include violent video gaming, which simultaneously connect to what might be called "the UN-glamorous mysteries of the human heart. (The mysteries of the human heart can go either way, would you agree?)
Several years ago, when trying to raise my teenage son who tabled his Rick Riordan novels for video games, I knew the contest for the literary soul of youth was on.
My ongoing research in this area confirms this still to be true at the community and societal levels.
After I graduated high school in 1965, I enrolled at a vocational/technical school to study mechanical drafting. After one semester, I quit. It just wasn't challenging or engaging for me. I was just doing it because I thought it would lead to a job. I had no idea what I really wanted do, but it was the Vietnam era, so I enlisted in the Air Force. Four years later I had completed my service and still didn't know what to do with my life. A friend suggested I enroll at a nearby universtiy. When I had to choose a major I remembered that I always loved English in high school. So I said to myself, "Why don't I just study something I love, and forget about a future career for now?" So I majored in English. By the time I graduated, I had a wife and a little daughter and no career prospects. My wife got a teaching job and I went to work in a factory. Even so, I did not regret my Enlish major. Eventually my path led to Human Resources work, which eventually led to an engineering consulting firm, where I worked for the last 20 years of my career. They hired me because in their words. they needed someone with expertise in "human factors engineering." Besides me, three other senior level staff in that firm had been English majors. Now retired, I have a house with several full bookshelves and abundant time to read and write. I am forever grateful for my English major.
My grandfather - who immigrated from Yorkshire, England to the U.S. in his twenties - taught me to love British literature before I knew what he was doing. It was his library, in which I found Kipling, Dickens, the Bronte sisters, and Austen, but also his birthday and Christmas gifts. Pride and Prejudice, The Secret Garden, Great Expectations, The Jungle Stories, Green Mansions, How Green was my Valley. Simply typing those titles takes me back to being curled up in his library's leather chair, enchanted and reading the afternoon away.
I longed to be an English major, and looked longingly at people in the library reading Charlotte's Web while I struggled with large heavy anatomy and physiology books to become a nurse. But I made my way back eventually to medical editing and writing:) in something called plain language. My son chose English as a major at a large public university and an MFA in poetry. I think that may have all been to be a better song writer. Both my sons were avid readers, but now seem afflicted by the ADPD: attention deficit phone disorder :):) It is weird at my age that I seem to have the longest attention span in the family, and that may have been helped by reading (something other than a phone)
I was an English Literature Major in college, graduated in 1972. I think that reading fiction does increase empathy, as well as appreciation of the beauty of language.
Thank you for this interesting newsletter. I just was reading about a medical school professor that teaches literature ( including Chekhov and Lorrie Moore) to increase empathy in med students. I remember reading that reading fiction does increase your empathy because you learn to see things from another point of view.
My mother was a high school English teacher. My grandmother owned a bookstore and I watched her read and write almost daily for as long as I could rememver. My high school English teacher was the teacher whose class lots of us ask to be transferred out of. My mother, who taught that English class where I was a student said, basically, "no way are you changing teachers!" Today, I manage a bookstore and read and write daily. And, I'm thankful for the love of reading and writing that was/is imprinted on my soul. Yes, I love literature!!
I was an English major. It was the first time I got to study what I loved and was around other people who loved it, too. One thing that always fascinated me about it is how stories capture history, language, culture, religion, philosophy, the human experience. It's beautiful. I learned how to think critically about life from literature.
I totally related to James Marriott’s essay. I have built my life around this faith too. I feel very isolated and sad at witnessing its demise. I don’t know how to live my life fully in this post-literature world.
As a retired English teacher for 33 years, how can I not love this topic??? Literature will always be one of my greatest loves. Below is a piece I wrote over 25 years ago with my students in a writing-workshop assignment on the topic of beauty. The sentiment is still true, and literature will always be beautiful and cool in my book. ❤
For the Love of Words
I am in love with words. Yes, words. This affair started when I was in 2nd grade and wrote my first poem. From then on, I have always loved to write and read. Words have such power over our lives and truly affect us. And I agree with Rudyard Kipling when he says, “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” Words have the power to change us and are a source of beauty in my life.
A favorite childhood rhyme goes like this, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” What nonsense! Words can and do hurt. Conversely, they can also heal and inspire. They can build up or break down a relationship. They can start a war or end a romance. They can motivate men to action or to complacency. Words have such power over us that I think as humans we often overlook their influence in our lives. How many times have we been moved by a song, a commercial, a letter, or even a poem? Probably more times than we care to admit. The magic of language is truly a human phenomenon.
In another life, I probably would have been a linguist. I love to savor the language and feel words slide off my tongue. I actually have fun looking up a word’s etymology and find the variety of language patterns used quite fascinating. When you think about it, the fact that we, as humans, came up with an alphabet -- a symbolic code for the spoken word -- is truly mind boggling. And then to think how we use that symbolic code to communicate is also awe inspiring. Without a doubt, I believe man’s greatest invention is the alphabet.
I definitely am an “English” person. I’m one of those people who will remember what you said and how you said it, far more than what you were wearing or what you looked like. In fact, I have this eccentric habit of recopying poems, quotes, or sayings that I like. I must have thousand upon thousands of these “snippets.” Some are haphazardly thrown in folders, neatly written in journals, or well organized in my “quote” file on the computer. What I’m going to do with all of these words, I have no idea. But every now and then I like to read and linger over these sayings, mainly for relaxation and inspiration. I guess one of these days I think they’ll come in handy when I write my “great American novel” -- one of my dreams that began so long ago when I first fell in love with the written world.
Words are beautiful and when used well, they can be gorgeous! Words can move us to dance, sing, or even cry. After all, how many of us have gotten a little choked up from a sappy Hallmark commercial or when the dogs -- Old Dan and Little Ann -- died in Where a Red Fern Grows? And I wonder how many wars were prevented and relationships started because of some kind words spoken. Until we all learn the true power of words, as a species we will continue to resort to “sticks and stones” as a way to solve our conflicts. Yes, words are the most powerful drug ever created and used by man.
Your mention of it being mind boggling that humans developed a symbolic code for the written word, an alphabet, reminds me of a book that explores the early development of alphabets in various cultures around the world, and how that development really changed the culture afterward: The Alphabet and the Goddess.
As you allude to, "mere facts" and "mysteries" do not build a dichotomy but rather a spectrum. When we look back in our own life and in the history of humanity, many things we nowadays just see as mere facts have been awe-inspiring mysteries.
Let me make one theological example. The Hebrew word "olam עולם" for "world" or "eternity" stems from "alam עָלַם", which means "to conceal" or "to hide".
But when Jesus came, he called himself "aletheia", which we translate as "truth", but is better translated as "uncovering".
One significant difference between Judaism and Christianity lies right here. While God in the Hebrew Bible hides, conceals, lives in the dark, and cannot be seen lest we die, Jesus uncovers, brings to light, even is light, and walks among us.
This is not making Christianity any better than Judaism. I think that it is a trajectory of maturity. It is not by happen chance that the Bible tells us that when the time was ready, God sent his son. The archetypal biblical stories talk of different stages during our travel on the spectrum of facts and mystery, similar to a child coming of age.
There is this fantastic cognitive horizon beyond which mystery lives, and it is deeply individual. Yet, it only leads to mystery when we follow Paula Prober's counsel: "Let curiosity be your extreme sport."
This does not only work in English. I have been an avid reader of German literature in a time that reading was becoming unfashionable in the German countries (I am five years ahead of you). German literature did not serve as a bulwark against the ideologies of the Eastern Bloc, as German spanned parts of both the East and the West. It still served as a mark of distinction for the educated, though. I did not only read but was an actor in plays by Goethe, Schiller, and Brecht.
It would be interesting to exchange thoughts on the decline of the humanities, or the question of why we have stopped (or slowed down) our progress and maturing on this trajectory.
I enjoyed English class in high school, but not with the enthusiasm for words I now have. Oh, I did a lot of writing back then, both comedic and serious. Now, as I better understand the beauty and value of literature, I dearly wish I could visit my HS teacher to discuss the old and new books I now read. Sadly, she has passed, and I miss her so much, even after a 50-year absence. Below is something I wrote to her, though she never got to read it.
You probably have no idea how many times I have thought of you over the past 40 years, for it was you who told me that I should be a writer. Your words of encouragement thrilled my heart, and I went on to become a… pharmacist. Through various twists and turns of events and choices I pursued a career in pharmacy, married, had a family, and now enjoy grandchildren, but through it all – though my writing activity has waxed and waned – my passion for it has never been quenched, and I realize that you were right all along.
A couple of other things come to mind as I recall your class. One is our difference of opinion on Mark Twain’s short story entitled “Luck.” I continue to hold my opinion that the protagonist was a genius rather than a fool, but to each his own. The other incident is one I look back on with great amusement. We had been assigned to comment upon Ernest Hemingway’s use of sensuality and its importance in his writing. Subsequent to your reading and grading our papers, you went out of your way to clarify that you had asked about sensuality, not sexuality. I can only imagine what you had been reading from your high school students attempting to comment on that which they (ideally) had no experience.
If you’re out there somewhere, I would dearly love to speak with you again. God’s blessings to a teacher who made a difference!
“It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die”. This, from Howards End. Iiterature is how we connect. It is to exclaim, “isn’t that beautiful? I’ve always just felt it is good to tell good stories.
Excerpt From
Howards End
Edward Morgan Forster
https://books.apple.com/us/book/howards-end/id498910795
This material may be protected by copyright.
Beautiful article. I now have an even greater appreciation for my high school English teacher.
When I was in 7th and 8th grade in
1965-66 in a suburb of Chicago, I took part in a program called Junior Great Books. We read books like ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ by John Bunyan, and the discussions followed open-ended questions that led us deeper into the material, instead of just trying to remember certain facts. I felt like I was part of something special. Even by the time I started college in 1970, a Liberal Arts or English degree was still something to aspire to, and which still had a certain prestige attached to it. I was an English major, and even though I ended up with a satisfying career in health care, I am still a book nerd, and lover of the printed word, be it classical literature or something less cerebral. Reading helps me to understand the human soul and psyche.
There’s been a formal decline in humanities studies, but increased informal engagement on a daily basis - people just tend to stick to what they like, rather than be exposed to many different things. The example of med students reading literature is what there should be more of, but many people really dislike interdisciplinary studies because it is harder and can impact grades. But only one unit can change your entire perspective on a discipline - I was a creative arts/humanities student who hated science and then did a philosophy of science elective - going beyond rote learning of facts into something more complex made it much easier for me to engage with science after that.
Superb distillation of the seemingly frenetic race to go visual for anything and everything~I, like many, have made efforts to read books to my 3-year-old grandson before screens have him swearing them off, but I had not realized the fading of English might have "cancellation overtones," too.
(Makes sense, though, that if many former European white males are to be canceled so might be their words.)
From the James Marriott piece:
"If sympathy with Jane Eyre once implied an expanded sphere of moral concern capable of enhancing a person’s feeling for all humanity, it now signifies attachment to the culture of an oppressive elite. The rise of electronic distraction has only tended to increase English’s political vulnerability."
In other words, literature is on the decline from both apathy (from the electronically distracted) and being outright dissed by those who see it as oppressive.
Thanks, Susan, for this section:
" .... they revered literature as the apogee of the human spirit— and the antidote to the dark forces of mass culture and totalitarianism."
To me, the "dark forces of mass culture" include violent video gaming, which simultaneously connect to what might be called "the UN-glamorous mysteries of the human heart. (The mysteries of the human heart can go either way, would you agree?)
Several years ago, when trying to raise my teenage son who tabled his Rick Riordan novels for video games, I knew the contest for the literary soul of youth was on.
My ongoing research in this area confirms this still to be true at the community and societal levels.
I appreciate this wonderful post!
After I graduated high school in 1965, I enrolled at a vocational/technical school to study mechanical drafting. After one semester, I quit. It just wasn't challenging or engaging for me. I was just doing it because I thought it would lead to a job. I had no idea what I really wanted do, but it was the Vietnam era, so I enlisted in the Air Force. Four years later I had completed my service and still didn't know what to do with my life. A friend suggested I enroll at a nearby universtiy. When I had to choose a major I remembered that I always loved English in high school. So I said to myself, "Why don't I just study something I love, and forget about a future career for now?" So I majored in English. By the time I graduated, I had a wife and a little daughter and no career prospects. My wife got a teaching job and I went to work in a factory. Even so, I did not regret my Enlish major. Eventually my path led to Human Resources work, which eventually led to an engineering consulting firm, where I worked for the last 20 years of my career. They hired me because in their words. they needed someone with expertise in "human factors engineering." Besides me, three other senior level staff in that firm had been English majors. Now retired, I have a house with several full bookshelves and abundant time to read and write. I am forever grateful for my English major.
My grandfather - who immigrated from Yorkshire, England to the U.S. in his twenties - taught me to love British literature before I knew what he was doing. It was his library, in which I found Kipling, Dickens, the Bronte sisters, and Austen, but also his birthday and Christmas gifts. Pride and Prejudice, The Secret Garden, Great Expectations, The Jungle Stories, Green Mansions, How Green was my Valley. Simply typing those titles takes me back to being curled up in his library's leather chair, enchanted and reading the afternoon away.
I longed to be an English major, and looked longingly at people in the library reading Charlotte's Web while I struggled with large heavy anatomy and physiology books to become a nurse. But I made my way back eventually to medical editing and writing:) in something called plain language. My son chose English as a major at a large public university and an MFA in poetry. I think that may have all been to be a better song writer. Both my sons were avid readers, but now seem afflicted by the ADPD: attention deficit phone disorder :):) It is weird at my age that I seem to have the longest attention span in the family, and that may have been helped by reading (something other than a phone)
I was an English Literature Major in college, graduated in 1972. I think that reading fiction does increase empathy, as well as appreciation of the beauty of language.
Thank you for this interesting newsletter. I just was reading about a medical school professor that teaches literature ( including Chekhov and Lorrie Moore) to increase empathy in med students. I remember reading that reading fiction does increase your empathy because you learn to see things from another point of view.
My mother was a high school English teacher. My grandmother owned a bookstore and I watched her read and write almost daily for as long as I could rememver. My high school English teacher was the teacher whose class lots of us ask to be transferred out of. My mother, who taught that English class where I was a student said, basically, "no way are you changing teachers!" Today, I manage a bookstore and read and write daily. And, I'm thankful for the love of reading and writing that was/is imprinted on my soul. Yes, I love literature!!
I was an English major. It was the first time I got to study what I loved and was around other people who loved it, too. One thing that always fascinated me about it is how stories capture history, language, culture, religion, philosophy, the human experience. It's beautiful. I learned how to think critically about life from literature.
I totally related to James Marriott’s essay. I have built my life around this faith too. I feel very isolated and sad at witnessing its demise. I don’t know how to live my life fully in this post-literature world.
As a retired English teacher for 33 years, how can I not love this topic??? Literature will always be one of my greatest loves. Below is a piece I wrote over 25 years ago with my students in a writing-workshop assignment on the topic of beauty. The sentiment is still true, and literature will always be beautiful and cool in my book. ❤
For the Love of Words
I am in love with words. Yes, words. This affair started when I was in 2nd grade and wrote my first poem. From then on, I have always loved to write and read. Words have such power over our lives and truly affect us. And I agree with Rudyard Kipling when he says, “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” Words have the power to change us and are a source of beauty in my life.
A favorite childhood rhyme goes like this, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” What nonsense! Words can and do hurt. Conversely, they can also heal and inspire. They can build up or break down a relationship. They can start a war or end a romance. They can motivate men to action or to complacency. Words have such power over us that I think as humans we often overlook their influence in our lives. How many times have we been moved by a song, a commercial, a letter, or even a poem? Probably more times than we care to admit. The magic of language is truly a human phenomenon.
In another life, I probably would have been a linguist. I love to savor the language and feel words slide off my tongue. I actually have fun looking up a word’s etymology and find the variety of language patterns used quite fascinating. When you think about it, the fact that we, as humans, came up with an alphabet -- a symbolic code for the spoken word -- is truly mind boggling. And then to think how we use that symbolic code to communicate is also awe inspiring. Without a doubt, I believe man’s greatest invention is the alphabet.
I definitely am an “English” person. I’m one of those people who will remember what you said and how you said it, far more than what you were wearing or what you looked like. In fact, I have this eccentric habit of recopying poems, quotes, or sayings that I like. I must have thousand upon thousands of these “snippets.” Some are haphazardly thrown in folders, neatly written in journals, or well organized in my “quote” file on the computer. What I’m going to do with all of these words, I have no idea. But every now and then I like to read and linger over these sayings, mainly for relaxation and inspiration. I guess one of these days I think they’ll come in handy when I write my “great American novel” -- one of my dreams that began so long ago when I first fell in love with the written world.
Words are beautiful and when used well, they can be gorgeous! Words can move us to dance, sing, or even cry. After all, how many of us have gotten a little choked up from a sappy Hallmark commercial or when the dogs -- Old Dan and Little Ann -- died in Where a Red Fern Grows? And I wonder how many wars were prevented and relationships started because of some kind words spoken. Until we all learn the true power of words, as a species we will continue to resort to “sticks and stones” as a way to solve our conflicts. Yes, words are the most powerful drug ever created and used by man.
I too am in live with words. I believe books saved me from a sad and lonely childhood.
Your mention of it being mind boggling that humans developed a symbolic code for the written word, an alphabet, reminds me of a book that explores the early development of alphabets in various cultures around the world, and how that development really changed the culture afterward: The Alphabet and the Goddess.
interesting, Lori!!
As you allude to, "mere facts" and "mysteries" do not build a dichotomy but rather a spectrum. When we look back in our own life and in the history of humanity, many things we nowadays just see as mere facts have been awe-inspiring mysteries.
Let me make one theological example. The Hebrew word "olam עולם" for "world" or "eternity" stems from "alam עָלַם", which means "to conceal" or "to hide".
But when Jesus came, he called himself "aletheia", which we translate as "truth", but is better translated as "uncovering".
One significant difference between Judaism and Christianity lies right here. While God in the Hebrew Bible hides, conceals, lives in the dark, and cannot be seen lest we die, Jesus uncovers, brings to light, even is light, and walks among us.
This is not making Christianity any better than Judaism. I think that it is a trajectory of maturity. It is not by happen chance that the Bible tells us that when the time was ready, God sent his son. The archetypal biblical stories talk of different stages during our travel on the spectrum of facts and mystery, similar to a child coming of age.
There is this fantastic cognitive horizon beyond which mystery lives, and it is deeply individual. Yet, it only leads to mystery when we follow Paula Prober's counsel: "Let curiosity be your extreme sport."
This does not only work in English. I have been an avid reader of German literature in a time that reading was becoming unfashionable in the German countries (I am five years ahead of you). German literature did not serve as a bulwark against the ideologies of the Eastern Bloc, as German spanned parts of both the East and the West. It still served as a mark of distinction for the educated, though. I did not only read but was an actor in plays by Goethe, Schiller, and Brecht.
It would be interesting to exchange thoughts on the decline of the humanities, or the question of why we have stopped (or slowed down) our progress and maturing on this trajectory.