How to Read Literature Like a Professor - Thomas C. Foster

I most enjoy the kind of fiction that both entertains me and allows me to immerse myself in a world that I would never otherwise experience.  A good novel or short story can take me around the world to some remote location, some major metropolis, or just to the heart of the city I live in.  A good novel or short story is the only time machine I’ve ever been able to get my hands on.  A good novel or short story introduces me to the kind of people I’ll never encounter in the real world – and that’s the only way I would ever want to encounter some of them. A good novel or short story teaches me about other cultures from the inside, allowing me to see myself through the eyes of others.  

But I often find myself wondering if I’m not missing as much as I’m getting from the fiction I read.  And that’s why I decided to read Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, a book that promised to explain to me what an author really means when he says something.  Admittedly, I had mixed emotions about reading this one, fearing a bit that it might inadvertently ruin some of the fun I’ve always had with reading fiction, but it turns out that I was already “getting” more of the author’s clues than I realized. It helped, too, to see that Foster reassures the reader that his opinion is as valid as anyone else’s and that no two readers ever experience the same book.  

Thomas C. Foster

The revised 2017 edition of the book that I read is divided into twenty-seven intriguingly titled chapters, a Preface, an Introduction, a Postlude, and an Envoi, along with an extensive reading list for those who want to test their newly acquired awareness of symbolism and deeper meaning.  The author’s keen sense of humor and irony is apparent even in his chapter headings.  Chapter 2, for instance, is titled “Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion,” while Chapter 3 is called “Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires.”  One of my favorite chapters (and one of my favorite chapter titles) is Chapter 10, “Never Stand Next to the Hero,” in which Foster points out that things can get very dangerous, even deadly, around the hero of the story, but not for the hero.  Instead, it’s the sidekicks who will be the first to pay any price that is to be paid.

Another interesting one-two chapter punch comes from Chapters 16 and 17, respectively titled “It’s All About Sex…” and “…Except Sex,” in which Thomas contrasts sexual symbolism with the thought that when an author is writing explicitly about sex, they are actually writing about something else. As Foster cleverly puts it, “When they’re writing about other things, they really mean sex, and when they write about sex, they really mean something else.  If they write about sex and mean strictly sex, we have a word for that. Pornography.”

Bottom Line: There are lots of books out there like How to Read Literature Like a Professor, but as exemplified by the number of high schools and colleges in which this one is a regular part of the curriculum, this is one of the best of that type.  You want further proof?  It’s also the first of its type that I’ve ever managed to read cover-to-cover – and believe me, that’s saying something. 

Book Number 3,408