Try answering the following “word problem”:
A student came into the Writing Center for help on a literature paper. The text he was required to analyze was Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, published in book form in 1902. The student said the novel was boring, and it put him to sleep. He hardly remembered a word of it. He was visiting the Writing Center on a Friday, and his paper was due on Monday. In the form of a percentage, what were his chances of doing well on the paper?
Listen to what two professors who teach writing have to say about reading:
[Effective] reading involves a fair measure of push and shove. You make your mark on a book and it makes its mark on you. Reading is not simply a matter of hanging back and waiting for a piece, or its author, to tell you what the writing has to say. In fact, one of the difficult things about reading is that the pages before you will begin to speak only when the authors are silent and you begin to speak in their place, sometimes for them, doing their work, continuing their projects, and sometimes for yourself, following your own agenda.
--Dave Bartholmae and Anthony Petrosky, Ways of Reading
The literature student’s required agenda was to find meaning in Heart of Darkness and to articulate that meaning. His preferred agenda was to avoid the pain of reading a difficult book because he had never learned how to wrestle with words.
How do you find your way into the “push and shove” of a challenging text you have not chosen to read but are required to read?
Keith Hjortshoj (pronounced Yorts-hoy) writes in his book The Transition to College Writing, 2nd ed., about the difference between “passive, linear” reading and “predatory” reading. The terms themselves suggest different body postures. For example, if you lie down to read a difficult text, what is likely to happen?