Why Read?

In this important book, acclaimed author Mark Edmundson reconceives the value and promise of reading. He enjoins educators to stop offering up literature as facile entertainment and instead teach students to read in a way that can change their lives for the better. At once controversial and inspiring, this is a groundbreaking book written with the elegance and power to change the way we teach and read. Mark Edmunsonis NEH/Daniels Family Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Virginia. A prizewinning scholar, he is the author ofNightmare on Main StreetandLiterature Against Philosophy, Plato to Derrida. He is also the author of a widely praised memoir,Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference. He has written forRaritan,The New Republic,The New York Times Magazine,The Nation, andHarper's, where he is a contributing editor. Nominated for the Frederic W. Ness Book Award (from the Association of American Colleges and Universities) Edmundson dramatizes what the recent identity crisis in the humanities has effectively obscured: that reading can change your life for the better. Edmundson's controversialHarper's Magazinearticle, "On the Uses of the Liberal Arts: As Light Entertainment for Bored College Students," has been the most photocopied essay on American college campuses over the past five years. Here he picks up where that influential piece left off. First he exposes universities' ever-growing consumerism at the expense of a life-altering liberal arts education. In today's colleges, students get what they most immediately want--country club campuses, professional training, easy grades, "fun" classes--rather than being challenged and inspired by great works of literature and art. But what can be done to change this sorry situation? Edmundson is highly skeptical about most established forms of literary teaching and criticism, believing that they ruin students' chances of truly being influenced by the best that's been thought and said. Edmundson enjoins educators to stop offering condescending analytic technique and facile entertainment and to begin teaching students to read in a way that can change their lives for the better. He argues that questions about the uses of literature--what would it mean to live out of this book, to see it as a guide to life, to make it your secular Bible--are the central questions to ask in a literary education. Right now these questions are being ignored, even suppressed, yet the questions have never been so pressing. If religion continues to lose its hold on significant sections of contemporary society, what can take its place in shaping and guiding souls? Great writing, Edmundson argues. At once controversial and vital and inspiring, this is a groundbreaking book written with the elegance and power to change the way we teach and read. "Thoughtful . . . striking . . . Edmundson lobbies for demonstrating literature's importance by teaching it through asking big, risk-taking philosophical questions."--The Philadelphia Inquirer "Thoughtful . . . striking . . . Edmundson lobbies for demonstrating literature's importance by teaching it through asking big, risk-taking philosophical questions."--The Philadelphia Inquirer "Edmundson's writing soars . . . [He]demonstrates how, by becoming an advocate for the text, a teacher can present an author's work in a way that matters here, and now, for the students' hearts, bodies and minds . . . A masterpiece."--Peter Walpole,Virginia Quarterly Review "Why Read? is an encomium to literature and reading, a passionate argument . . . Edmundson is dead on target."--Jonathan Ya

Mark Edmundson is NEH/Daniels Family Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Virginia. A prizewinning scholar, he is the author of several book, including the widely praised memoir, Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference.. He has written for the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, the Nation, and Harper's, where he is a contributing editor.

“Thoughtful…striking…Edmundson lobbies for demonstrating literature's importance by teaching it through asking big, risk-taking philosophical questions.�