The Art of Reading

3.3 3.3 out of 5 stars | 5 ratings

Price: 29.66

Last update: 08-12-2024


Top reviews from the United States

Brett Alan Williams
2.0 out of 5 stars Good for writers, not so much for readers
Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2021
For those who enjoy the Great Courses lectures, akin to audiobooks, this series would make a good listen if one’s interest were the art of <i>writing</i> fiction (non-fiction is not treated)—and it never hurts for writers to review. Ditto, if they are readers interested in the mechanics and many nuances of writing, like plot, story, style, scene, voice, character development, and the like. The series provided an occasional twist on the same topics one can find in the old Writer’s Digest sequence of 6 or 8 books on the <i>Elements of Fiction Writing</i>, or any number of other “how to write” books. But while this series may add to reader appreciation for the art of writing—and who would be opposed to that?—to practice what the professor urges readers to practice while reading struck me as the opposite of a positive reader experience. For example, stop reading, take some lines from the novel you read and rewrite or reimagine them in Ernest Hemingway’s sparse style, then do it again with William Faulkner’s florid descriptions—a standard course exercise for writers. To be carried away by a well-written book would be repeatedly interrupted, pulled from the page to try this or that task as advised by “The Art of Reading,” which seemed like a bad way to wreck a good book.
Camber
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but largely misguided
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2013
Though I’ve enjoyed the fiction I’ve read, I almost exclusively read nonfiction, so I’m certainly not the typical person who would go through this course. But I do have a general interest in “stories” (movies, plays, histories, myths, parables, medical patient narratives, etc.), so I was hoping that the course would shed some light there, and maybe even have some relevance to nonfiction reading.

Let me first say that I found Timothy Spurgin to be an excellent lecturer (on audio): organized, clear, well paced, personable, and engaging. So you shouldn’t have any difficulty in understanding what he’s trying to convey.

So what does he convey? The approach he recommends amounts to a fairly technical “formalist” analysis of works of fiction, focusing on their structure and details in terms of elements such as type of narration, classification of characters, methods of description, writing style, use of irony and ambiguity, plot and story structure, genre, organization of chapters and summaries, mixture of scenes (dialogue) and summaries, type of dialogue, implied subtext, use of metafiction, types and use of realism, and comparison of literature and movies.

Much of this is interesting and even useful, but Spurgin doesn’t really go into a lot of depth. More importantly, I think his approach is too “cookbook” and thereby misses the forest for the trees. After all, isn’t the main virtue of great literature (and other art) its ability to facilitate exploration of the human condition in a way that nonfiction can’t? If so, we need to look at the broader meanings and lessons potentially represented in a work of literature, rather than getting distracted by trying to unravel the mechanical details of how the work is constructed. To make a scientific analogy, we need to focus on the synergistic emergent properties of literature, which are largely destroyed if we engage in reductionism – literature professors shouldn’t emulate scientists!

As another reviewer noted, Spurgin’s focus may make more sense for writers rather than readers, but even there it seems to me that great writers (and other artists) are guided much more by intuition than formal rules – otherwise the work almost inevitably feels contrived.

All of this threatened to lower my rating to 3 stars, but Spurgin partly redeemed himself in the last lecture, where he effectively agrees with much of what I’ve just said, and recognizes that great literature asks for great readers who read perceptively and actively (but also intuitively), can bring a richness of life experience to the task, and aim to grow rather than merely be entertained. So I can give this course 4 stars (in a generous mood) and perhaps even recommend it to people with a strong interest in the topic, but with the caveat that the course emphasis is largely misguided and therefore the course is far from ideal.

Best Sellers in

 
 

The History of the English Language, 2nd Edition

4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 7
36.71
 
 

How Ideas Spread

5 5 out of 5 stars 2
13.08
 
 

Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women's Words

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 53
15.75
 
 

The Conquest of Happiness

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 1219
23.88
 
 

Skepticism 101: How to Think like a Scientist

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 9
13.08
 
 

Math Mind: The Simple Path to Loving Math

5 5 out of 5 stars 10
13.78
 
 

The Science of Mindfulness: A Research-Based Path to Well-Being

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 29
29.66
 
 

Talk to Me: How to Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers, and Interview Anyone like a Pro

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 194
21.25