HOW OUR TASTES DO CHANGE!
Remember how as a child you hated spinach and now you quite like it? Tastes change.
Take books, for instance.
As a teenager, I positively loved Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. I read it—devoured it—and then promptly reread it. I sighed over the plight of Rhett and Scarlett and Ashley and Melanie. I was ecstatic when I at last got a chance to see the movie. It did not disappoint.
Five years ago I decided to reread this old favorite. Big mistake. Sometimes you really can’t go home again. I could not make it beyond the first few pages because I found Scarlett so absolutely insipid!
After graduating college, I discovered—and devoured—the works of Thomas Hardy. A few years later, assigned to teach Advanced Placement English to 12th graders, I was thrilled to find a huge pile of copies of Return of the Native. That book has everything! Marvelous descriptions of setting that provide mood for the action, carefully delineated characters, a plot that parallels Greek tragedy, and enough profundity and symbolism to satisfy even the most demanding pedant. As I say: I loved that book. My students hated it.
This month I reread ROTN. Here and now I want to offer my long-suffering AP students an apology. No wonder they hated it. Ponderous language. Complex, convoluted sentences that you have to read at least twice. A proliferation of passive verbs. Obscure references to classical studies. Mind you, I still found much to “appreciate” in the book. I did not hate it and I did finish it. But I certainly understood why so many students found it tough going.
And therein lies a dilemma for teachers of literature: How do we balance “great literature” with student interests?
No. Don’t look at me for an answer!
One thought on “HOW OUR TASTES DO CHANGE!”
Comments are closed.
February 4, 2015 at 10:50 am
As a student, I thought teachers HAD to assign those awful books because otherwise no one would read them. If a book is really good, I’d WANT to read it, right? I lacked any patience or perseverance. Sad to say I missed a lot of classics out of plain adolescent contrariness. I didn’t read To Kill a Mockingbird or Catcher in the Rye until well into adulthood.