There have been multiples moments – lapses – throughout my degree in which I have wondered (usually in the early hours of the morning when I have been frantically trying to meet a deadline), “Who even cares what I have to say about this? Why doesn’t my tutor just read a real academic’s writing, someone with a PhD who has a profound insight into the field?” But after tackling this module for several weeks now, there has been a few things I have come to realise about myself as a reader and my response to literature. And this response, I am happy to say, is rather more optimistic…

1. I dislike reading. ** An undeniably pessimistic start – bear with me. **
“How DARE you?!” I hear you bellow. An understandable reaction. As an English student – as a human being even– to not like reading is surely an insult. But it is not that I don’t appreciate reading or what I gain from it, I just find the physical act of doing the reading, well… tedious. My fingers start to twitch if I am forced to sit still for too long, acutely aware of the fairground world that surrounds me. If the first few pages fail to hook me, I grow tired and my attention span shortens to that of a goldfish. I should probably clarify that if I do find a book that manages to hold my attention then I do absolutely understand the delight and ecstasy that many people experience from reading; this is just a rare occurrence for me. Stephen King is one of the few writers who can seize me from the very first sentence, and suddenly I have no difficulty devouring the substantial 1000+ page monsters he churns out. I’m the Simon Cowell of reading: hard to please, quick to raise The Hand of Dismissal if I am not immediately entertained, and has an acquired taste for literature that just happens to generate mass profit. (It is a sad truth that I only put my trust in literature that has been deemed a best-seller or is a canonical work, afraid that if I search for diamonds in the rough I will have wasted valuable hours of my life reading mediocre work. Utterly pretentious and ignorant, I know.)
“But how have you got through 3 years of university without a love for reading?” one may ask. Which brings me to my second realisation…

2. I love close reading.
To be an English Literature student you don’t have to be an avid reader, which I’m often mistaken for in my tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles – the type that goes to old libraries and sniffs the yellowed pages of vintage prints of Jane Austen. If this was the case, then everyone who enjoyed reading would be suited to an English degree. Rather more accurately, to study English, one must have: a love for critique, a need to know “why”, and a delight in the discussion of books. This is where my appetite lies. And has been fed in surplus over the course of this module, debating and questioning the text each week with people from all ages and walks of life. My father, a bioethicist, would often say to me that a good scientist always asks “why” something is the way it is. I find this is not dissimilar to the study of English. Wordsworth argues in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, that the purpose of poetry is to “illustrate the manner in which our feelings and ideas are associated in a state of excitement… to follow the fluxes and refluxes of the mind when agitated by the great and simple affections of our nature”. Wordsworth thus renders writing pointless if one is unable to understand the feelings and thoughts of the speaker. He calls for the reader to ask why the writer has written it in the way he/she has. Close reading helps me to find a deeper connection with the writer and the words they have offered.

3. My critique is valuable.
In James Wood’s, The Nearest Thing to Life, it is suggested that a good writer is also a “serious noticer” i.e. they engage with the subject not only physically, but more penetratingly at a deep, metaphorical level; viewing every pulse of feeling, slight hand movement, or even still object, as though it were under microscopic lens. I have found that to be an academic reader one must also be a “serious noticer”. To question every word and decision the writer has made. Viewing reading in this way has helped to value my own critical eye, as no one else can see from my perspective. Wood further argues that “really we are all silent critics, since not everyone has a poetic eye but everyone has an opinionated tongue.” This I have found to be a universal truth. After all, everyone has an opinion, whether they decide to keep that opinion “silent” or not comes in varying measures. Being an English student provides a platform on which this opinion can be expressed, however, it is only valued if validated, and this validation comes from extensive reading around the subject. Through this act, a whole new range of thought and commentary is sparked, and each individual finds links between texts that no other person would make. This became apparent in our seminar group as we have all read the exact same texts every week and yet have manage to come to wildly differing conclusions.

4. Literature is truly sublime.
Although literature is indeed sublime in the literal sense of the word, I use it specifically in the Romantic sense, which Edmund Burke sets out beautifully here:
“The passion caused by the sublime in nature is astonishment, and astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror.”
The Romantic sublime is thus the witnessing of a terrible storm, yet from the safety of your living room; one is simultaneously aware of the horror and the beauty. This is how I view literature. It is a way of experiencing dark, difficult, or dumbfounding subjects that life often brings, but from the safety of my living room. If the story or thoughts of the characters become too real or relatable, I can simply close the book and set it aside. Art imitates life, so the saying goes, and it is the imitation that makes it so wonderful. Just as Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway finds himself to be both “within and without”, the reader finds themselves “within and without” the world of literature. They can relate whilst not having to truly experience the situation.

Ultimately, I think literature is essential in both simplifying and complicating the world. It manages to capture, what I like to call, That Awkward Stage Between Birth and Death. Life is as fleeting and ineffable as this phrase makes it out to be. Suddenly every moment of our life is subjected to the brief, blurry and baffled nature of memory, which literature manages to savour and put into words. My greatest frustration in life is not being able to fully appreciate the world. Through literature however, I am able to seriously notice everything around me, and for that, I will forever be in it’s debt.