TEACHING ENGLISH AS THE MOST INTIMATE SUBJECT IN

THE CURRICULUM
On Twitter, John Warner offered a few reviews of his new book of short stories, Tough Day for the Army,
followed by this Tweet:
Warners comment is grounded in his being a writer, but I suspect also in his being a reader and a teacher.
I want to stress his #agoodthing and use this brief but insightful moment to push further against the
mostly dispassionate academy where New Criticism has flourished and laid the foundation for its cousin
close reading.
With a sort of karmic synergy, I read Warners Tweet above just as I was diving into a new Haruki
Murakami short story, Scheherazade, and the companion interview with Murakami about the story.
Scheherazade is classic Murakamiodd, awkward, and then ultimately an unmasking of the human
condition. As a writer myself (my creative, expressive writing exclusively now poetry), I was laid bare as a
reader and writer toward the end of the story:
It was also possible that he would, at some point, be deprived of his freedom entirely, in which
case not only Scheherazade but all women would disappear from his life. Never again would he
be able to enter the warm moistness of their bodies. Never again would he feel them quiver in
response. Perhaps an even more distressing prospect for Habara than the cessation of sexual
activity, however, was the loss of the moments of shared intimacy. What his time spent with
women offered was the opportunity to be embraced by reality, on the one hand, while negating it
entirely on the other. That was something Scheherazade had provided in abundanceindeed, her
gift was inexhaustible. The prospect of losing that made him saddest of all.
A recurring motif of my creative self is confronting exactly what Murakami states directly: Perhaps an
even more distressing prospect for Habara than the cessation of sexual activity, however, was the loss of
the moments of shared intimacy.
And it is this type of lucidity in stories, novels, poems, and films when I often cry because I am filled too
full of feeling deeply what the author has both expressed and felt (I assume), what I know as well.
If we turn to the interview by Deborah Treisman, however, we can see Warners point above clearly since
Murakami repeatedly deflects Treismans efforts to mine meaning from the story; for example, Murakami
replies to two separate questions with:
Sorry, but I dont know the exact circumstances that brought about the situation,
either.Because whats important isnt what caused Habaras situation but, rather, how we
ourselves would act in similar circumstances.
I dont know, but things certainly dont look very good for Habara.
What matters to Treisman as a reader (and interviewer) appears insignificant to Murakami.
These exchanges highlight that text has both author intent and reader inference (think Rosenblatts
reader, writer, text triangle)but the exchanges also allow us to consider (or reconsider) that text meaning
often depends on a power dynamic that involves who decides what matters and how.
Murakamis Scheherazade focuses on an unnamed character (called Scheherazade by Habara, the
other character in the story) who is a source of both sex and storytelling for Habara, who is mysteriously
restricted to his house:
Habara didnt know whether her stories were true, invented, or partly true and partly invented.
He had no way of telling. Reality and supposition, observation and pure fancy seemed jumbled
together in her narratives. Habara therefore enjoyed them as a child might, without questioning
too much. What possible difference could it make to him, after all, if they were lies or truth, or a
complicated patchwork of the two?
Whatever the case, Scheherazade had a gift for telling stories that touched the heart. No matter
what sort of story it was, she made it special. Her voice, her timing, her pacing were all flawless.
She captured her listeners attention, tantalized him, drove him to ponder and speculate, and
then, in the end, gave him precisely what hed been seeking. Enthralled, Habara was able to
forget the reality that surrounded him, if only for a moment. Like a blackboard wiped with a
damp cloth, he was erased of worries, of unpleasant memories. Who could ask for more? At this
point in his life, that kind of forgetting was what Habara desired more than anything else.
As readers, we share with Habara a brief journey through Scheherazades episodic tales of her own
adventures, leading to the end where Murakami appears to suggest that her storytelling is more intimate
for Habara, and thus more important, than the sex she shares.
Just as Murakamis interview reveals the range of what matters in text, that Habara enjoyed
[Scheherazade's stories] as a child might, without questioning too much (and we might add, as Treisman
does in the interview) speaks against the dispassionate ways in which formal schooling frames text and
dehumanizes the reading experience for and with children and young adults (hence, New Criticism, close
reading, and the enduring evidence hunt of reducing text to what canor shouldbe mined from that
text).
In her Language Teaching in a Changing World, Lou LaBrant (1943) warned:
Too frequently we give children books which have enough value that we call them good,
forgetting that there are other, perhaps more important values which we are thereby missing. It
is actually possible that reading will narrow rather than broaden understanding. Some childrens
books, moreover, are directed toward encouraging a naive, simple acceptance of externals which
we seem at times to hold as desirable for children.Let us have no more of assignments which
emphasize quantity, place form above meaning, or insist on structure which is not the childs. (p.
95)
LaBrant, then, builds to her key point: Teachers should consider carefully what they are doing with the
most intimate subject in the curriculum (p. 97).
Teaching English as the most intimate subject in the curriculum is connected to, as LaBrant explains in
The Place of English in General Education (1940), the essential element of being human: Language is a
most important factor in general education because it is a vital, intimate way of behaving. It is not a
textbook, a set of rules, or a list of books (p. 364).
Seven decades since LaBrant made these arguments, we must askespecially in the context of Warners
Tweet and Murakamis story and interviewwhy do we persist in reducing text to the dispassionate
responses demanded in the academy, whether that sits within the mechanistic processes of New Criticism
or the decontextualized demands of close reading? Where in formal schooling is there room to [enjoy]
[text] as a child might, without questioning too much?
In the answer-driven classrooms that have traditionally and currently mis-served both the text being
analyzed and the students evaluated by how they analyze those texts, Murakami sends a much different
message:
Habara is a man who has experienced an irrevocable turning point in his life. Was the turning
point moral, or legal, or was it a metaphorical, symbolic, psychological kind of thing? Did he turn
the corner voluntarily, or did someone force him? Is he satisfied with the results or not? I dont
know the answers to any of these questions. The instant he turned that corner, though, he
became a desert island. Things cant go back to the way they were, no matter what he does. I
think that is the most important aspect of this story.
As author of this story, Murakami is interested in the questions raised, what is left unknown to him: I
dont know. Scheherazade is a riddle to me, as wellwhat she is thinking, what she is looking for.
Fiction and poetry seek the mysteries of the human condition, the unknown, the unanswerable. As
LaBrant and Murakami tell us, language and teaching are about the intimacy of being humannot about
the dispassionate calculation of meaning, the objective pose that is both misleading and efficient as well as
manageable.
Unlike Habara, we are not in fact trapped in the house of such dispassion; we have chosen to remain
there. Instead we should step outside, to enjoy text as a child might, without questioning too much.