Mariolina Rizzi Salvatori and Patricia Donahue’s The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty is a useful window into the minds of undergraduate readers. However, the author’s discussion of The Education of Henry Adams and Shakespeare’s Othello are particularly relevant to my experience as reader. As an undergraduate, I was forced to read both texts in various courses. Salvatori and Donahue’s description of the average reader’s reaction to the text mirrors my experiences as well.
In the case of The Education of Henry Adams, I distinctly remember using the words “long” and “boring” to describe the text. Although the text is an autobiography, Adams routinely uses the third person point of view. Combined with some rather lengthy sentences and unusual sentence patterns, the third person perspective made this text rather dull when I was an undergraduate. Salvatori and Donahue’s suggestion about writing a “difficulty paper” and exploring the reasons for my reaction would have been an interesting and enlightening experience. Ironically, the course that assigned the reading was a senior seminar English class that served as a capstone for the whole program. It would have been an ideal course for critically assessing the effectiveness of the text using concrete examples and analysis. Unfortunately, the course emphasized the text’s overall form within the autobiographical genre. Before class, most of the students would talk about the text being “long and boring”. As Salvatori and Donahue advocate, writing and discussing these difficulties within the class itself would have served as a useful analytical tool and possibly provided some solutions to the dilemma.
Shakespeare’s Othello was another assigned reading during my undergraduate experience. While a great deal of the vocabulary and terminology was alien to me at the time, I did not let the issue impede or slow my reading of the text. As Salvatori and Donahue point out about English majors, I was ignoring “what did not make sense” and moving on through the rest of the text (103). A quick glance at the text’s footnotes would usually reveal some of the definitions when it became necessary. The key point here is counter-intuitive. Few teachers firmly advocate the idea of skipping over confusing text to ascertain the overall meaning. For many students, the thought of ignoring words or lines may seem dishonest or insulting. Nonetheless, most experienced readers and writers ignore certain pieces of text and only return to them if they are curious or believe them to be vital the work as a whole. I always tell my classes to avoid getting stuck at any one point in a reading. It’s important to move on and understand the entire piece rather then spend several minutes figuring out an odd sentence or two.
As a teacher of English composition at a community college, I do not cover a great deal of literature. However, the class does respond to several short readings. One of the most useful discussions over a reading involves the text’s accessibility or difficulty. I make it clear that the text is not necessarily the authoritative final voice in the discussion. If the class finds flaws in the content or layout of the reading, we will explore it either in small writing groups or orally. I find that this exercise empowers students with the confidence necessary to approach new readings. In particular, developmental or “remedial” English students gain the most from this activity. Often, they are intimidated by unknown vocabulary and complex sentence patters. Once the students begin breaking down the text and analyzing it, they begin to realize that few texts are truly inaccessible.
Francois: I appreciate so much your comment about your developmental students being intimidated by unknown vocabulary and complex sentence patterns. I find that my ESL students, too, can be easily rattled when they encounter a text they don’t understand. They question whether they’ll ever improve their English language skills. I love your idea of telling students that the text is not necessarily the authoritative final voice. Great! I think, too, that Salvatori and Donahue’s emphasis on texts being difficult is one we need to make transparant to our students. I wish someone had told me that Othello was difficult. Don’t you? I had so much trouble with it back in 10th grade and assumed there was something wrong with me.
Francois- Your experiences with Adams and Othello remind me of my own with Moby Dick. To this day I describe it as “long and boring.” One of these days in my spare time (ha ha), perhaps I should re-read it with Salvatori’s difficulty paper in mind. This would be an interesting exercise because my pre-conceived ideas about this work are already so negative. Can I possibly change my own mind by working through the difficulties that I remember so well?
Edith
I imagine everyone–even avid readers–have an experience with that one “long and boring” book. Usually what we really mean by “long and boring,” though, is that it’s difficult. One thing I wish Salvatori and Donahue did more of in TEAPOD was discuss that transformation in student attitude from “long and boring” to “difficult” to “difficult but interesting.” After all, they do note that the difficult is often pleasurable. Maybe we’ll hit on this topic in class, how we can leverage a text’s difficulty into a pleasurable–and therefore engaging–experience.