Reading Resolutions

Andi Miller

For many years I began my New Year’s resolutions with the standard, “I vow to lose weight this year!” However, I soon grew tired of failing miserably and began to refocus my efforts on resolutions that related to reading. Some might wonder why I sully my reading with obligations and plans, but for an obsessive reader planning and setting goals can be one of the most exciting parts of the new year. Not only do I shuffle through my reading journal, look backwards and think about my favorite reading of the year, I also look forward to ways I might challenge myself or expand my reading choices. In the past my resolutions have included reading more female authors since I find myself drawn to male writers. One year I made a concerted effort to read a wealth of authors from outside of the U.S. and Britain. Like the years before, 2009 will be full of personal challenges in my reading, but one of my foremost reading resolutions for the new year is to read more essays. My primary concern when making any resolution is to expand my knowledge and become increasingly well-rounded in my reading and my general knowledge of the world. I find essays a fitting portal that meet both of these criteria.

I enjoy essays a great deal, and I am not sure why I don’t read more of them. In the spirit of speculation, I would say that fiction was the core of my reading interests for so many years that I rarely considered other types of reading. As I have gotten older, my interests have broadened significantly and I now embrace nonfiction as a whole far more than ever before. Essays potentially offer the emotional impact of fiction with a nice blend of facts. I feel intellectually satisfied by essays almost every time I read them. Looking over my stacks, I have plenty of essay collections. Of course, there is the obligatory David Sedaris. The only one of his I have yet to read is Naked, and I feel sure I will get to it at some point in 2009. In the past, I have enjoyed both critical and personal essays by Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt. I love essays about life, food, politics, and of course, reading.

One of the unread books on my shelves is Graham Greene’s Collected Essays, which deserves its chance at bat. I fell in love first with Greene’s short stories and then his novels, but I have yet to dive headlong into his personal ruminations. This particular collection includes personal essays as well as literary criticism on Henry James, Henry Fielding, Hans Christian Andersen and others. What made me fall in love with Greene’s fiction was the “readerly” quality of his work. In particular, I’m thinking of the short story, “The Destructors” and his novel, The End of the Affair. As I read Greene’s work, I fly through the pages with little effort and somehow come out on the other side enlightened, entertained, and moved. The simplicity is extraordinary and deceiving. My hope in reading Greene’s essays is to gain a greater understanding of the author himself—his life, his approach to writing, and his thought processes. I also find it entertaining and informative to read any great author’s opinions of other authors and their work. A writer’s mind is a delightful thing, and I often find that reading authors’ writing on others in their field helps me in my creative efforts and allows me to approach literature with a fresh perspective.

Another essay collection teetering high atop my stacks is Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why. Admittedly, I find Bloom wildly outdated academically. He continually rejects new movements in literary study and criticism and remains a defender of the traditional Western literary canon. In other words, he champions the dead white guys. While I appreciate Shakespeare, Cervantes and many of Bloom’s other favorites, my tastes and approaches to literature tend towards the contemporary.

But although my approach to literature and Bloom’s are quite different, I admire the vigor with which Bloom writes, reads, and promotes reading. I picked up How to Read and Why several years ago, and for whatever reason—being a finicky reader, I suppose—I have never given in to its call from the stacks. Just now, as I was flipping through the book trying to decide what to write about my particular interest in it, I saw that Bloom tackles Flannery O’Connor’s work and specifically two of my favorite short stories, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” and “Good Country People.” My literature class at the college will be reading both of those stories this semester so Bloom’s essay, written for a general audience, might be a nice companion piece to expose them to literary criticism. This collection is not high criticism but a collection of essays meant to evoke a passion for reading. Every English teacher hopes to instill some love of reading—or at least plant a seed for the love of reading—in the students. I also appreciate and savor any essay that prompts me to ponder my own passion for reading, so it is my hope that Bloom can stoke my passion for reading and that might rub off on my students.

Finally, I always feel an urge to re-read my favorite books, but I rarely get a chance with so many new books and review copies hanging around. Siri Hustvedt’s collection of critical and personal essays, A Plea for Eros, is one of my lifelong favorites. In both her fiction and essays I love the way Hustvedt can draw together disparate plotlines, memories, or analyses into a cohesive piece of writing. While her style might seem scattered at first, it always becomes something whole and beautiful in the end. Her essay, “Extracts from a Story of the Wounded Self,” begins with her mother’s fear for the young Siri’s health after her premature birth. Somehow along the way Hustvedt transforms the essay into a reflection on the urge to write and the internal turmoil she feels in confronting her characters:

The writing self is restless and searching, and it listens for voices. Where do they come from, these characters who talk to me before I fall asleep? My characters. I am making them and not making them, like people in my dreams. They discuss, fight, laugh, yell, and weep. I was very young when I first heard the story of the exorcism Jesus performs on a possessed man. When Jesus talks to the demon inside the man and asks for his name, the words he cries out both scared and thrilled me. The demon says: “My name is Legion.” That is my name, too.