A Reader's Confession

Reading is something I have always been fond of. When I was little, it was impossible to quench my thirst for books. Every summer, I would participate in the local library’s reading program and would read around ten books a week. As I’ve grown older, I’ve lost hours in which to read. With school, work, homework, and a social life, my reading hours have dwindled. Yet, I still have a passion for it. I still have a never-ending list of books I wish to read, and most of my shelves have been reserved for my own personal library.

Yes, reading, is something I’m very fond of. But, over the last school year I’ve come to realize that I don’t read the same way that I use to. Before this semester, I reached the conclusion that reading for pleasure had become hard for me to do. My English classes had taught me to dissect a book and I found myself doing that so much that I no longer really enjoyed reading. So, for awhile, I ceased reading. The only books I opened were the ones I was required to read. Then this last semester rolled around.

In my Introduction to Literature class, we read a poem by Billy Collins, titled Introduction to Poetry, and it really hit home. I'm not going to give you the entire poem, but there are a couple stanzas in Collins’ poem that says:

“But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They began beating it was a hose
To find out what it really means.”

I felt like Introduction to Poetry really summed up where I was with reading. I had reached a point where, instead of diving into literature and exploring it, I was trying to beat the truth out of it. I had been asked too many times in my English classes, “What did the author really mean by this?” and “What is the purpose of this symbol?” that I had disregarded the joy of reading and was more focused on discovering the answers my professors wished to hear. That’s not how one understands literature though. You can’t torture truth out of it. There is no right and wrong answer when it comes to the meaning of a story, and that is something I needed to be reminded of.

After reading Collin’s poem, I made up my mind to start reading for pleasure again. I bought some new books, set aside some time to read, and kept a pen close by just in case I did want to annotate something within the story. Of course, annotating is not the first thing on my mind when I’m reading, currently. It’s more of a habit, really. Something I picked up from being an English major. The real reason I’m reading is to rediscover the joy of it, and so far I haven’t been disappointed.

Thanks to this Introduction to Literature class, I have been able to reevaluate my reading habits and fix them. Now, though I am reading for pleasure, that doesn’t mean I am completely disregarding everything I’ve ever learned about interpreting literature. That pen I mentioned earlier is for more than just writing small comments I have about the story in its margins. It’s also so I can underline specific lines, translate words, and explore the possible meanings of phrases and symbols. I’m just not letting the meaning of those symbols get in the way of the excitement of the story.

Like Collins’ stated, we have the tendency to try to force truth out of literature, but it doesn’t take force to discover truth. You don’t have to look up every word, tear apart every symbol, and beat the truth out of the story. You just have to sit back, open your mind, and read. Get lost in the literature and the truth will find its way to you. Everyone can get something different out of every piece of literature and I’m enjoying discovering the truth in the book I am currently reading, which is The Fallen: The Fallen and the Leviathan by Thomas E. Sniegoski. When you sit back and just take the book as it is, you not only discover truth but you enjoy the journey to discovering it.