This old house

Recently sighted on a campus near you: English majors who don't like to read. I've never understood why anyone who didn't like to read would pursue an English major, but on further examination, it generally turns out that the English major who doesn't like to read actually does like to read--just not the works we're assigning.

I sympathize. I had to read Main Street for my comprehensive exams and I resented every moment I spent with those insipid and predictable characters, but on the other hand, I knew that the novel influenced a whole generation of writers and therefore ought to be accorded some room in the mental space where my knowledge of literature resides, my internal House of Literature.

It starts small, a Little House in the Big Woods of the evolving mind, but by the time an English major completes a college degree and then a Ph.D., that House grows into an immense palatial library where the books hop of the shelves and converse freely at all hours. The foundation is built on books I may never use, if use is defined as incorporate into my research, writing, or teaching, but the House of Literature needs that foundation or it's in danger of falling down.

For instance, I'll probably never teach Pamela or Tristram Shandy. They're outside my field, and my colleague who has devoted many years to understanding them does a far better job of teaching them than I ever could. But that doesn't mean I regret having read them; they inform my understanding of the history of the novel. For the final paper in my Later American Novel class, I ask students to trace a particular idea or literary technique through novels published since 1900 and then predict what will happen next, but how can anyone speculate about where the novel is heading without some understanding of where it has been?

My internal House of Literature is built on reading, some of it dull and some unpleasant and some apparently pointless, but it's all there somewhere rattling around the attic or wandering the halls or rumbling through subterranean passages where half-forgotten texts conspire to create their potent home-brews that ferment and bubble and suffuse the entire House with fresh aromas.

When I open the door of that House, I never know who might be on the other side--Edna Pontellier or Captain Ahab, Huck Finn or Finn MacCool, Gandalf or Grendel's Mother--but I know someone will be there willing to sit down for a chat amongst the yeasty aromas. This House suits me just fine, but that doesn't mean I'm done building. I'll never be done as long as there are new books to read or old ones to rediscover. My greatest fear is that I'll someday knock on the door and find no one at home.

I enjoy watching my students build their own internal Houses of Literature, very different from mine but still impressive. Those who hate to read condemn themselves to cramped quarters where wind whistles through the cracks in the walls and the foundation constantly shifts, but that doesn't mean it's time to call in the wrecking crew. Shaky houses can be shored up, expanded, rescued from oblivion. All it takes is a willingness to read.