Porter Abbott on Teaching and the University (Page 8)
From UCSB English Department Knowledge Base
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Professor H. Porter Abbott (Emeritus) discusses his 40+ years of experience teaching at UCSB.
Why Do We Read?
Ryan Boyd: “Well, maybe [now I’ll ask] the big question of, why do we read?”
Porter Abbott: “It’s a complex question, because you could go both ways with it. You could interpret it as, ‘Why do we read literature?’ or as ‘Why should we read literature?’
“On the one hand we read for the sheer pleasure of it. We were talking about the erotics of reading.’ Well, erotic or not, there is this enormous pleasure of reading, enjoying the pulse of suspense and surprise or the extraordinary and always surprising grace of a good poet whose gift just blows your mind. I think there’s a lot still to be said about how this happens. It’s what’s called ‘the aesthetic’ and sometimes ‘art.’
“Wilde and many others have said that art is its own end. But as pure indulgence it is very difficult to defend, ethically. We have those examples of extraordinarily gifted people that George Steiner wrote about, people with a long tradition of the finest art and music, who could nonetheless look the other way during the Holocaust. But if the pleasure of the text is morally neutral, it is still an interesting question why we are equipped to experience it and want it so badly.
“I think another reason on the do version of this question is identity maintenance. Almost any text can be made into a mirror that reflects yourself in one way or another, even in your rejection of it. This is part of what I was getting at back when I spoke of motives for domesticating a text, in effect, appropriating it, making it an extension of yourself. It is a small triumph in service of views that you have. It allows you to remain yourself. So this is also a should not response to the question.
“Why should we read literature? My best answer is that, done properly, it is a way, and maybe the best way we have, of talking with ourselves about the most important issues that we face. Its power lies in the way it allows you to think and feel at the same time and with the greatest fullness. Aristotle made this point, and I think it is at least implicitly supported by people like [the neuroscientist] Antonio Damasio. The rhetoric of narrative and poetic art generates thought and at the same time calls up great stores of empathy, horror, fear, joy. Since narrative of any length is riven by conflict, it is an especially powerful tool for trying to adjudicate issues that are very hard to negotiate in the normal course of our lives.
“So, does reading make us good people? There’s no guarantee at all. Simply promoting Shakespeare won’t do anything unless you promote a kind of reading as well. You can read Shakespeare in a very bad way with ill effects.
“I.A. Richards called a book ‘a machine to think with.’ Used properly, it enables the best kind of thinking, the fullest kind of thinking, especially when you’re doing it together with others -- which brings us back to discussion groups, and how these can be really good for you.”
RB: “A way of getting outside yourself.”
PA: “Yes, dealing with alterity in many different modes."
RB: “Is this something we’re in danger of losing, if [...] Americans are reading less?
PA: “They may read less, but I don’t think the craving for narrative or fiction will ever end.”
RB: “It’s hardwired into us?”
PA: “It’s pretty close to that. I think narrative is. It’s how we understand time, how we make sense of what would otherwise be chaotic. It lets us talk about the future and the past.
“It also lets us get into other minds. Lisa Zunshine wrote a book called Why We Read Fiction, and her argument is that we want to be mind-readers. That’s one of the things that is pulling us through almost every fiction: ‘What are they thinking? What is going on inside them?’ This is another survival trait; we need to read others in order simply to stay alive and propagate. You can see it replicated in the new media, in multi-user games and hypertext narrative.
“But to repeat the main value of literature in my view is that, when it’s written well and we’re reading well, it helps us think, and to think communally and without pre-mature reduction, about the most important things in our lives.”
RB: [And so] if you found yourself someplace in the afterlife [and] you were forced to teach one text forever, what would it be?”
PA: “Probably Beckett’s Trilogy. It’s endless: I keep coming back to it over and over. I’m just constantly amazed at its inexhaustibility. I thought by now I’d be totally bored by Beckett. But I’ve been reading his work for over forty years, and I’ve written two books about it, and I don’t know how many articles and papers. I read many other wonderful writers, but when I get to working on a theoretical problem, I often come back to Beckett. There’s so much compression of feeling and intelligence in almost every square inch of what he wrote. We use that phrase ‘the real thing.’ When I hear that phrase, his name comes to mind before anything else. The real thing. The authentic guy. As a person and as an artist. That’s why I’m still a lover of Beckett.”
Page 8
Interview Date: February 18, 2008
Conducted by Ryan Boyd
