A Meditation on Lite Reading
January 20, 2020 | Megan Andrews
Greetings, CenterForLit folks. I have missed you! As many of you know, and the rest of you should’ve jolly-well gathered by now, I recently took a year-long hiatus from CenterForLit to pursue another teaching opportunity. I am home in Northeastern Washington now, and feeling blessed to be back among fine friends like you. (I include you all in that warm rejoinder. Except, of course, those of you who never noticed I was missing…)
I was recently enjoying a coffee with my dear friend and sister, Emily Andrews, and our conversation took a literary turn. Now before you get all excited and prime your pipes for some serious intellectual pontificating, I’ll warn you that my recent forays into the world of classroom teaching have left my mind mushy. I’m good for nothing when it comes to “The Greats” these days. My nightstand is a hapless home to stacks of penny reads and quick reads and trash reads and literary “junk food,” but Emily assured me that there may be those of you out there who don’t always feel up to the Anna Karenina’s of this world and might be encouraged by a friendly reminder that reading can just be...FUN. (Please don’t tell my mother that I took Tolstoy’s name in vain. She’d disinherit me for sure.)
It all began when I nosed through a bookstore and came out with a comically dissonant set. I dutifully clutched a book of Dylan Thomas’ poetry in one hand, but my real fascination was with Bram Stoker’s Dracula in the other. Perhaps that title isn’t so very embarrassing. Surely his seminal work has earned classic status by some reckonings, never mind its questionable contributions to the progression of the American teen novel. Regardless, I felt a sort of sheepish glee. I brought my disparate titles to the counter and the bookstore owner raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips in silent judgment.
You might do the same when I tell you that I haven’t read either yet, because I had already ordered an even larger stack of guilty pleasures from Amazon on recommendation from friends…and strangers…and the New York Times bestseller list. Even as I write, my sister, Molly Kate, has her nose buried in a well-read, annotated copy of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. And here I am, craving a stack of trash reads and too tired to rally for good old Herman. I am a disgrace to the Andrews name and I’m losing my nerve here, people.
The truth is, in the past three months I’ve read two of three novels in the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness (which, though I could try to gild the lily and describe it as the bestselling series from a Fulbright scholar and History professor at Oxford who blends historical accuracy with sensitive character development – it is, nonetheless, just the newest riveting vampire story).
I felt sheepish for reading this series. (I still do.) And so, I found myself scanning the reviews on the back flap for moral support: “Romantic, erudite, and suspenseful…Harkness attends to every scholarly and emotional detail with whimsy, sensuality, and humor.” Not bad, I thought to myself. Erudite! Scholarly! These are words that can bolster a flagging sense of self-respect. The Miami Herald called it a superb work of “realistic fantasy…a Harry Potter for grown-ups,” which only made me feel slightly better about myself. At least none of these reviews compared the series to Twilight, am I right?
Who am I kidding? I devoured the first volume of Twilight shortly after finishing volume 2 of the All Souls Trilogy, and I enjoyed myself immensely.
The point is, in my line of work, it seems you can’t admit to having read a mainstream teen romance, and God forbid that you may have enjoyed yourself a bit in the process! Watching my own cloak-and-dagger act as I tried to avoid the shame of a low-brow read made me wonder if anyone else feels so covert when venturing beyond the pale of the classics?
Perhaps you feel especially horrified at the thought of a vampire romance…sure, Edward Cullen isn’t for everyone. But don’t tell me you’ve never grabbed a Stephen King suspense story in a crowded airport or maybe tucked the most recent Nicholas Sparks sob-story in the folds of your coat as you board your flight, already relishing the hours of easy-reading before you. Or that in that moment when the passenger next to you glances down at your page, you don’t wish, just for one desperate moment, that you had a classic title with which to shield your true text and save face?
Oh yeah, I’ve tried this tactic too.
It’s just that I so badly want to be seen as an intellectual. I want to be recognized for my mind, my wits, my keen ability to perceive the deeper meanings of great stories, and this desire tempts me to use my booklist as a bulwark for pretense. I want to be the kind of person who reads War and Peace, not the person who reads Twilight. Never mind the dissonant truth that I could read both titles simultaneously without negating the pleasure of either experience. But if one book title qualifies my identity...there’s the rub.
It seems that I have bought into the fad-pretense: you are what you read. Yet here in my confessional, a few things have come comically clear: If I am what I read then my identity is as changeable as a chameleon. One moment I hobnob with Chaucer and Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Austen, the next I’m slumming it with Louis L’Amour and Stephanie Meyers. But if my identity is safe with Christ, unshakeable in the face of his fixed love, then couldn’t I freely read for the joy of it?