The English Record Spring 2009 vol.

59 issue 2

Re-reader Response: The Illusion of Teaching Literature 1

Tom Liam Lynch

New York City Department of Education and
Teachers College, Columbia University

In many discussions of teaching reading, there often exists a crucial, unstated

assumption: that students read. By this I do not mean that students are functionally literate,
but that they read when teachers ask them to. If on Monday night Mr. Englishteacher
assigns to read pages 1-20, Tuesday’s lesson is built on the assumption that students indeed
have read. To assume such readership is naïve, and potentially detrimental to students'
development as readers, our own teaching methods.
While we might like a clear definition of what "reading" means, or at least some
conglomerate of meanings of reading, defining it is met with the same mixture of
technicality, metaphor, verve, and even skepticism. For example, in two widely read works
on reading, we get two very different descriptions of the reading process, which draws
attention to the elusive nature of such a definition. In her book Proust and the Squid (Wolf,
2007), professor of child development Maryanne Wolf explores what happens in the brain
when a person reads. She traces the history of reading, noting not only neurological moves,
but also cultural twists in the act of reading. Though she does so with an acute appreciation
for both the cultural-historical and the scientific, Wolf nevertheless posits a neurological
framework for reading: "all human behaviors are based on multiple cognitive processes, which
are based on the rapid integration of information from very specific neurological structures,
which rely on billions of neurons capable of trillions of possible connections, which are
programmed in large part by genes" (10, emphasis in original). Wolf's work primarily
attempts to appeal to the scientist in the reader, decorating the neurological explanations
with references to Suma and Socrates. Or, take Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading
(Manguel, 1997), which draws to our attention the many ways one can read at all: "First, by
following, breathlessly, the events and the characters without stopping to notice the details,
the quickening pace of reading sometimes hurtling the story beyond the last page...[and]
Secondly, by careful exploration, scrutinizing the text to understand its raveled meaning,
finding pleasure merely in the sound of the words or in the clues which the words did not
wish to reveal..." (13). Whereas Wolf writes from a confident biological and neurological
standpoint, Manguel's perspective of the act of reading seems to center on the reader and
how he is affected by the written text. How one reads is not a scientific question; it is a
subjective one.
Using Wolf and Manguel’s viewpoints on reading, we can briefly create a simple
continuum: On the left end of the continuum is Wolf’s neurological view of reading; on the
right is Manguel’s reader-based view of reading. Off the continuum completely might be a
work called How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read (Bayard, 2007) by a French professor
of literature. For him, you don’t have to read books to talk about them; talking about books,
after all, makes up most of the reason why we read them anyway. (Before you dismiss
Bayard’s premise, think about your own college literature courses, or even current teaching

1
This article is a slightly modified version of the original. The original citation in formation is: “Re-reader Response: The illusion of
teaching literature.” The English Record. June 2009. Vol.59, Iss. 2, pp. 40-47.
 The English Record Spring 2009 vol.59 issue 2

practices, and the amount of talk that takes place.) As famous examples of non-readers,
Bayard cites Oscar Wilde and Montaigne: the former ostensibly reviewed books he didn’t
read and the latter was unable to recall his own published essays when a partygoer quoted
them to him.
What do we mean by “read” in our own classrooms? If classroom teachers use the
word "read" with students and assume that it is self-evident, I suggest it is not evident at all.
Students, rather than becoming readers, might instead hone their skills as illusionists.

Students as Illusionists
The illusion of reading refers to the way students sometimes feign readership,
understanding, and interest in fulfillment of their role as students. Significantly, illusionists
are not those students who clearly resist or struggle with reading; I’m talking about those
who seem engaged. In a piece I wrote recently, I explored what it meant to "read" for
English class with 10th grade students in my New York City selective public school (Lynch,
2008b). A few points came to the forefront of my work with the class. Firstly, the word
"read" provided sufficient room for interpretation so that a student might do with it what he
wished. If a student thought that reading Book 2 of The Iliad meant slowly studying every
line of Homer's poem, then that's what he would do; if it meant just opening and closing the
book, so be it. Next, an informal poll of my students suggested that many of them
interpreted "read" many different ways. Finally, students expressed disenchantment with
reading literature, which seemed to begin in middle school, where they recalled first
analyzing books instead of "just reading" them. The accuracy of their collective memory is,
as memory tends to be, questionable. Nevertheless, because it is the way they perceive
themselves as students and readers, it's worth taking seriously.
Since first writing about this experience, I've come to think about such students as
illusive readers. I use this term in direct comparison to the more authentic types of readings
students recalled when they were younger. Before becoming illusionists, students shared
stories of being read to on the subway en route to school, about sneaking a copy of a
favorite book into bed to read more, and about sharing reading experiences in the context of
family holiday meals. Now, I was fairly sure most students didn’t actually read for class at
all! When I posed the question, "What does it mean to read for class?", students replied
mainly in one of four ways: 1) not reading at all; 2) opening the book and flipping through
the pages while "drifting off"; 3) Honestly trying to read the literary text, but not
understanding it; and 4) reading each section of the text until they felt like they understood
what they were reading. I cannot convey the great effect this had on me as their teacher.
Whereas I had become a proponent of fast-paced and heavy reading loads, all in the name
of academic rigor, my students suggested that such illusory rigor was being met with illusory
readings. Illusive readers might eagerly talk in class discussion, answer reading questions in
complete sentences, ace quizzes, and have their books in class every day. None of these
illusions mean students are actually reading.

Students are not Readers

A discussion about how students read literature might well begin with Literature as
Exploration (Rosenblatt, 1983), not because it contains all the answers to all our questions,
but because it seems one of several touchstones in the teaching of literature. In her book,
Rosenblatt explores how and why to study literature with adolescents. While her ideas are
often termed Reader Response, she herself uses the term transactional theory to describe what
happens when a student reads a work of literature. More recently, scholars have revisited
 The English Record Spring 2009 vol.59 issue 2

and reevaluated Reader Response and its place in English classrooms. One scholar notes
(Purves, 1993) that "Student readers have also been acculturated into habits of reading, into
dealing with literature in school in particular ways...By secondary school, the large majority
of students in the United States report that they are moralizing symbol hunters... that they
read to take tests on what is read" (349). He emphasizes, too, that the context for reading is
not simply in school or in the classroom. Rather, there are many contexts in which students
might read. These contexts apply not only to the local ones of readers, but to the global
contexts as well--now more than ever, literature can help readers become more aware of
other cultures as they study texts as artistic products of other peoples. In his conclusion,
Purves proposes an approach to the teaching of literature that
should follow the principles of Rosenblatt: It should seek to allow students
to explore the poems that they make sense of the texts; it should allow them
to explore the cultures of the world they read about and their own culture
through the artistic uses of the medium of language. It should not simply
assert that there is one meaning (that of the author and the textbook) nor
that there are limitless meanings, but that the world of the text and the world
of the reader intersect in complex ways so that there are a set of
contemporary and communal readings of the text (360).
While I agree with Purves on most points stated above, I am concerned not by what is
stated, but by what is not stated. He makes an assumption that Rosenblatt too makes in her
work. He assumes that students read. Based on my own experiences, this is a dangerous
assumption for a teacher to make.
Throughout her work, Rosenblatt uses two words interchangeably: student and
reader. While Purves does use the phrase "Student readers" in the above excerpt, he leaves
the distinction between the two un-discussed. The two words are hardly the same--
especially when the latter can mean so much. “Students” might safely be called those who
study a subject in the contexts of a school or apprenticeship. “Readers” is much more
elusive. For sure, the ability to read does not mean a student is a reader--it means he is literate.
Only a student himself can identify himself as a reader. While we might have tricks for
pressuring students to read, we cannot make them; while we might teach as if students read
for homework, we cannot know for certain. That students' eyes scan over lines of a text
does not mean they are readers. That students scour the pages for answers to specific
reading questions does not mean they are readers. That students' hands shoot up with
quickness and confidence in response to a teacher-posed question about the author's use of
alliteration does not mean they are readers. “Students” are not “readers”, necessarily.
Rosenblatt misses this point often in her book (Rosenblatt, 1983). Take, for
instance, her chapter entitled "What the Student Brings to Literature," in which Rosenblatt
unpacks all the experiences that a student draws on or can draw on when interacting with a
text. Throughout the chapter, Rosenblatt strays from her focus on the student and discusses
the reader: "It is easy to detect the influence of the reader's preoccupations and past
experiences when, as in the preceding instances, they lead to an interpretation unsupported
by the text" (81). No distinction is made between students and readers, which suggests that
for Rosenblatt the two are one. The seemingly innocuous nature of my point is anything but
innocent, however. The assumption that students are readers--whatever an individual
teacher decides "reading" means--leads to choices in pedagogy that then run the risk of
creating a classroom, not of readers, but of illusive readers who personate precisely what
they know the teacher wants.
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Replacing Illusive Readers with Allusive Readers

Rather than this illusion of readers, I suggest that we consider allusions of readers.
To clarify what I mean by "allusion," I turn to the writings of literary theorist, Robert Alter,
whose definition of literary allusion might correlate to the readers of literature. Throughout
his book The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age (Alter, 1996), in a chapter called
Allusion, Alter discusses how literary allusion calls to the reader’s mind two separate works
simultaneously. That is to say, the author alludes in order to conjure the literary past in the
present reading, which creates layers of meaning depending on the reader's familiarity with the
texts alluded to. Take Milton’s (Milton, 1667/2005) opening proem in Book I of Paradise
Lost, for example. One reader might see clearly how the poet's evocation of the muse--"Sing
Heav'nly Muse"--hearkens to the epic form, made famous by Homer and Virgil. Another
reader, more versed in Judeo-Christian teaching, might also suspect "That shepherd" to be
an allusion to any of the great biblical figures who were also shepherds, like Moses. Allusion,
as Alter means it, does a couple significant things: 1) It draws attention to long historical
context of, not just a specific literary work, but an entire literary tradition; and 2) It allows
for various levels of interpretation depending on the reader's familiarity. Whereas Allusion
can often be understood as an author's intertextual wordplay, Alter emphasizes it as the text's
unique ability to transcend the individual reader and literary history in a moment of pleasure.
It is for this reason that Allusion might serve well as a counterpoint to the illusion of
readers. While Alter discusses what occurs in the text when allusion is enacted, I suggest
that the readers of texts, too, are allusive in their own way.
Students have long and mixed histories with reading. While most educators might
agree that "readers are likely to have problems if they are not motivated or if they have a
history of reading failure" (Ericson, 2001, 3), to what extent do we infuse our curriculum
with sufficient and authentic chances for students to confront their reader-pasts? The
individual student we see staring listlessly at a book in our own English class has had years of
encounters with literature in other classrooms with other teachers teaching other books for
reasons other than our own. Students have been responded to in myriad ways when they
haven't understood a reading, asked a question in class, or wrote about a particular work.
They carry all these experiences with them. It seems to me, based on my own students’
confessions, teachers of literature often leave such experiences unaddressed. I suggest the
significance that Alter applies to allusion in reading--the mixture of literary past and
individual reader--might also be applied to the allusion in readers: an allusive reader might
draw upon his own past acts of reading in order to more deeply understand his present
reading moment. Allusive readers, rather than illusive readers, would have opportunities
created by the teacher that allow him to access and learn from his own historical context.
One way a teacher can guide students toward being allusive readers might be in the reading
and writing of a little-known sub-genre called Re-readings.

Re-thinking Reading: Re-reading

The idea of re-reading a work of literature is sometimes met with skepticism. It
seems fluffy at best and redundant at worst. As teachers, we are often implicitly or explicitly
encouraged to read in a progressive and linear way, never revisiting, for example, Charlotte's
Web after elementary school (Lynch, 2008b). Though Rosenblatt doesn’t clearly distinguish
between students and readers, she does suggest the value of re-reading in an important way.
One section of Literature (Rosenblatt, 1983) is of interest for the first point. Though
Rosenblatt doesn’t refer to a previous reading of the same work, and therefore isn’t a re-
 The English Record Spring 2009 vol.59 issue 2

reading per se, a reader’s historical associations with reading itself are of central importance:
The reader’s fund of relevant memories makes possible any reading at all.
Without linkage with the past experiences and present interests of the reader,
the work will not ‘come alive’ for him, or rather, he will not bring it to life.
Past literary experiences make up an important part of this equipment with
the reader brings to literature, but these have usually been emphasized to the
exclusion of other elements derived from general life experience. (81)
By “past experiences and present interests,” Rosenblatt seems to mean that when a student,
for example, in a reading of Othello, a reader draws upon his own experiences with love and
jealousy when transacting with the text. Strangely, Rosenblatt makes no mention of
exploring critically the context of such previous experiences. They are stated as essential to
reading literature, and yet are left unexamined. I suggest, however, exploring these previous
experiences more critically is essential for one simple reason: If the reader's "fund of relevant
memories" is what makes reading at all possible, then these memories can also be what
makes a student's non-reading possible as well. In the same way Rosenblatt admits that
relevant memories are used to help reading "come alive" and that "other elements derived
from general life experience" are too often excluded, the student's memories of the act of
reading itself--regardless of text and author--seem likely to affect whether or not a student
opens a book in the first place. In sum, if memories of life experiences help bring literature
to life, then memories of past reading experiences can bring reading to life.
In addition to a reader’s historical experiences, Rosenblatt describes how students’
re-reading of a poem open new questions about characterization and tone: “They reread the
text more carefully and decided that these elements provided an emotional background…”
(116). It seems clear from this excerpt that Rosenblatt recognizes re-reading as a way to
deepen one’s understanding of literature, but it occurs immediately after the original
reading. It’s an exercise in revisiting a text multiple times in order to see what successive
readings unveil about a literary work. Understanding the literary text is privileged over
understanding the student as a reader.

The Allusive Teaching of Illusive Readers

A Reason for our Current Methods
One teacher educator (Blau, 2003) describes the "anxiety of the right reading"
experienced by teachers of literature. Blau asserts that English teachers are caught between
the desire to encourage students to interpret literature for themselves, in the spirit of
Rosenblatt's "admonition that taking somebody else's interpretation as your own" only yields
an empty reading (187), and the desire to teach particular books because they themselves
have already determined them to be worth teaching. It is this latter point that brings the
anxiety of the right reading to the surface: Teachers of literature believe deeply that there is
in fact a right and a wrong way to read a text insofar as they deem it worthy of teaching in
the first place. For English teachers, while "right ways" of interpreting are myriad, they are
not limitless, which makes the anxiety all the more felt. It's for this reason that Blau sets out
to show how "some readings can be wrong and many may be inadequate" (190), not due to
the reader's foolishness or stupidity, but "ignorance, inattention, lack of experience, or in
some cases the vagaries of a momentarily mistaken perspective" (190).
I agree that the reading skills of students are often in need of guidance from a more
experienced teacher. I also think that to only focus on reading strategies and skills
overshoots where students are and assumes a certain degree of readership. Sure, an
instructor might work on particular skills of approaching a poem in class--and these skills
 The English Record Spring 2009 vol.59 issue 2

might be effective for an in-class activity--but when an instructor treats a student like a
reader, he might well assume that such skill- or strategy-based instruction is sufficient. It is
not. It might, perhaps, resonate for some; but it would be foolish to assume resonance for
all or even many. We English teachers must approach our students as students, not as
readers. There is no anxiety of right reading if students’ histories as readers have led them
down the path of non-readership. What is needed, then, are methods for teaching illusive
and allusive readers as such.
A Brief Suggestion for a New Method
As a way to explore this interplay between illusive and allusive readers, I’ve written
curriculum (Lynch, 2008a) that explores students' past experiences with reading. These are
some questions that have worked in my classroom: 1. What's your earliest memory as a
reader? 2. How and when do you first recall reading or being read to? 3. What books did
you and your friends talk (or whisper) about? Why? 4. When, if ever, did you lose the joy of
reading? Why? 5. Why do you think schools make you read? In addition, writing about their
reading past might help students overcome their resistance to reading. Asking students, for
example, to re-read books they remember enjoying gives them a chance to problematize
their own relevant memories of reading, perhaps opening new possibilities as readers. Begin
with the conversation and ask students how they can confront themselves as past, present,
and future readers.

Thoughts to End On
We as teachers must help students move from illusive reading to allusive reading.
To start, I propose guided explorations of students' past experiences with reading through
re-reading, building critically upon the work of Reader Response theory. What I’ve
suggested, I think, might be termed Re-reader Response theory. At it’s core, Re-reader
Response posits students’ histories as readers (including reading at home, reading with
specific teachers, reading non-literature), students’ present state as readers (what exactly they
do if/when they read for class, how they fake reading for class), and students’ visions for
themselves as readers in the future (comparing print-based literature to new literacies,
reading books when they don’t really want to). Re-reader Response might offer both
teachers and researchers new ways of looking at students’ reading practices. It might not be
easy to justify the re-reading of past books and focusing on students as readers in a data-
driven educational climate so thirsty for assessments, test scores, curriculum maps, and skills
taxonomic skill sets. To ignore Re-reader Response, however, might well be to encourage
illusive reading, which will likely yield only illusive learning.
 The English Record Spring 2009 vol.59 issue 2

Works Cited

Alter, R. (1996). The pleasures of reading in an ideological age. New York: W. W.

Norton and Company.

Bayard, P. (2007). How to talk about books you haven't read (J. Mehlman, Trans.). New
York: Bloomsbury.

Blau, S. (2003). The literature workshop: Teaching texts and their readers. Portsmouth,
New Hampshire: Heinemann.

Ericson, B. (2001). Reading in high school classes: An overview. In B. Ericson (Ed.),

Teaching reading in high school English classes. Urbana, Illinois: NCTE.

Lynch, T. L. (2008a). I remember that book: Rereading as a critical investigation.

Retrieved January 9th, 2008, from
http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=1150

Lynch, T. L. (2008b). Re-readings and literacy: How second readings might open third
spaces. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 52(4).

Manguel, A. (1997). A history of reading. New York: Penguin Books.

Milton, J. (1667/2005). Paradise lost. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.

Purves, A. (1993). Toward a reevaluation of reader response and school literature.

Language Arts, 70, 348-361.

Rosenblatt, L. M. (1983). Literature as exploration. New York: Modern Language

Association.

Wolf, M. (2007). Proust and the squid: The story and science of the reading brain. New
York: Harper Perennial.