How to Read Literature Like A Professor

Last Book Read: How to Read Literature Like A Professor - Thomas Foster

This book is a good read about reading.  While not revealing anything too earth-shattering, it does provide a good insight into the process of reading and story construction.  Foster emphasizes how each work of literature is part of the meta-story of humanity.  He shows the relevance of the obvious literary allusions to classical mythology, Shakespeare and the Bible.  The collection of myth is highly relevant to all of humanity, it is "a body of story that matters."  "It is the ability of story to explain ourselves to ourselves in ways that physics, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry - all very highly useful and informative in their own right - can't."  Foster points out Egyptian writing that complains that everything has already been written, "that papyrus describing the postmodern condition is forty-five hundred years old." So while everything is reused and retold, there is a collective wealth of meaning that is accessed by common symbolism and metaphor.  These pre-defined patterns can be used to efficiently place a story on a determined path, without reinventing all of human history and share understanding.  Foster discusses many of these common and cliche ideas: weather, seasons, sex, illness, geography, etc, while ignoring others, as a comprehensive attempt would be immense.  Written in a conversational tone, this book is not a referential text, but it makes an easy and enjoyable read.