The Polliwog Journal

I got an IPod for Christmas and I love it. With 30 gigs, I know I could put more songs on it than I own, but that doesn’t matter. I have pictures there, too. And podcasts. About a month ago I subscribed to Stanford’s Philosophy Talk. Until today I had not listened. Until today.

Being the English teacher I am, I started with the episode on the Language of Fiction. Where was this discussion when I was writing my masters thesis for Lakeland? They were talking about all the ideas I was grappling with in that paper, all those years ago.

And then they even got around to this question (paraphrased): Does reading fiction create more moral people? My thesis question!

I’m not sure they answered that question; in fact they sort of skirted it. Well not really, but they didn’t answer it. Did I?

I think that books, fiction, when they are art (or moral as John Gardner says), give the reader, if he or she is ready for it, an experience in life that not only instructs, in a way, but more importantly, gives the reader a way of living life in pain, sorrow, or whatever it is, that is safe. And yet, this same experience is one we can learn from. What we learn is what it means to be human. We also can discover who we are in that human experience.

What I teach my students about books is that the stories of characters we care about matter. Those stories can change us. Those stories can make us better people, better in the sense of being more fully part of the universal and timeless human experience.

Still, of course, each person’s set of values is shaped by more than the books he or she reads.

But what can we know more deeply by reading fiction, great or good fiction? I think the gamut of human emotion, certainly.

In my thesis I listed the qualities I believe great books (and I meant fiction) embody. I have excerpted that list below.

Qualities of Great Literature

The following list is mine, though what I think is influenced by Gardner, Adler, Booth and unnamed others as well as my experiences as a reader and as student and teacher of literature. If there were a checklist one could apply to literature to measure its greatness, the debate about what is good and great would end. Of course there is no such thing. The qualities I propose here seem to me to be complete, though no doubt, as I look upon them again in the future, I will want to add or change what I think are essential qualities of great books.

• A great book shows us what it means to be human (and thereby connects us to each other).
• A great book shows us how to be better at being human. It shows us who we could be and how we could be better.
• A great book expresses great ideas, ideas that have engaged philosophers throughout history.
• A great book helps readers know more fully what beauty is, or truth, justice, honor, compassion, courage or love.
• A great book recognizes the value of life and honors it.
• A great book recreates archetypal stories for new generations to understand and own, remaking ancient heroes into contemporary heroes.
• A great book is over our heads. It challenges our thinking, inviting us to reread. We continue to be enlightened by a great book.
• A great writer is an exceptional wordsmith. Language as metaphor, imagery, and sound reveals truth.
• A great book changes us intellectually. We emerge from the experience knowing something we did not know before. We experience a cognitive realignment. The best books will leave us desiring to know more.
• A great book changes us emotionally. To be compassionately engaged in the lives and the conflicts of characters enriches us.

Well, beyond my astonishment at having a year of my intellectual life being replayed in a one hour podcast and having that year and those ideas validated (because to tell the truth, some of those for whom I had to defend that thesis thought it was fluffy and irrelevant) , I am also astonished (nothing new here, but I continue to be) at the value of the Internet and the various ways smart and creative people use it to learn and grow.

These philosophy podcasts are perfect tools for small Midwestern schools like ours to expand our resources, to leap beyond what we may have been able to think and talk about when our resources were limited to the books we could afford.

The Internet democratizes education in this way. Sheboygan Falls students have access to great discussions from one of the most respected universities in the nation.

Wow! And Yippee!!

Now, as I look to the list of what to listen to next, I can’t decide. But what I know for sure is that there is a discussion to fit every aspect of what we talk about in our classes. The uses are limitless. I hope my students will be as excited as I am.