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Nov
12
On Reading Across Genres (all the cool kids are doing it)
2010 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
A funny thing happened while I was reading Siddhartha Mukherjee’s wonderful forthcoming book The Emperor of All Maladies a few weeks ago….I kept finding myself thinking of another book I had just read, one that I wouldn’t have guessed had anything in common with it. That book was Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From, which is a history of innovation.
As I read about the scientific discoveries that underpin our thinking about cancer and the development of treatments for it, I found myself borrowing terms from Johnson’s theory in order to put a name on what Mukherjee was describing. And I realized that this happens to me all the time and it is part of why I love reading nonfiction.
It also reminded me that one of the things I love most about being an avid reader is this occasional, serendipitous intersection of books that, on the surface, don’t seem to be related. I’m sure music people feel this way about recognizing patterns in songs and albums, and it’s likely foodies see it in the repeated use of ingredients in creative recipes. In fact, I’m willing to bet this happens in most artistic fields—when one reaches a certain level of exposure to/saturation of the content in the field, one becomes capable of recognizing patterns and is simply bound to run across materials that point back at each other even when they were not (especially when they were not?) designed with that intent.
The first time I noticed this happening in my life was in college, when the perfect mix of classes meant I had a beautiful semester in which everything I learned in one course related to something I was learning in another course, and for the first time I truly understood and appreciated why the Jesuit model of education (I went to Loyola University Chicago) requires students to take a broad core curriculum before specializing within a major: being exposed to multiple disciplines actually makes you better able to process and understand the particulars of one. (It also makes you more interesting at dinner parties, but more on that another time.) As I’ve read more these last three years than I ever have before—and worked through the material for deeply to write reviews—I’ve noticed many of these serendipitous overlappings. And it has me on a nerdy kick about the awesomeness of cross-disciplinary dialogue.
Case in point: some English teacher friends of mine have put together a “Reading Across the Curriculum” program with the history teachers at their school. It’s a beautifully simple idea: the English teachers design their standard curriculum to include several novels that will correspond with the time periods students are exploring in their history classes, and they teach the novels simultaneously with the history units. And they do it with classics AND contemporary literature, which is totally fabulous. Students learning about World War II in history will be reading Catch-22 and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society in English. The Vietnam War means Fallen Angels and The Things They Carried. The Harlem Renaissance means Toni Morrison’s Jazz and the poetry of Langston Hughes. These teachers bring history to life by tying in the art of and about the time period, and THEY ARE MAKING READING AND HISTORY RELEVANT AND COOL.
Where was this idea when I was in high school?
Of course works of fiction and nonfiction communicate with each other and inform each other all the time, and many writers striving to create authentic fiction do extensive research (i.e. reading of nonfiction) in the process, but it’s not often that we discuss this overlap, and I think it’s something we should be celebrating.
*steps onto soapbox*
If you’re not reading nonfiction because you think it’s boring, you’re just not reading the RIGHT nonfiction.
*end of sermon*
Reading widely across genres and topics makes us better informed citizens of the world, more likely to succeed at Jeopardy!, and better readers. When you know about history and philosophy and theology (all subjects I grumbled about studying in college but am now incredibly happy to be well-informed of), you pick up on references and allusions and subtle winks in fiction, and it makes the reading experience richer and more satisfying.
I mean, who’d have thunk that The Gargoyle and After the Fire would be related (vivid descriptions of treatment for severe burns) or that I’d think of bell hooks while reading Bezellia Grove or that a book about the history of Gone with the Wind would be relevant to the contemporary discussion of sexism in book reviews and commercial vs. literary fiction? It’s sort of amazing, and it’s the kind of added value you can’t get if you never branch out.
Tell me: what kind of book serendipity have you had lately? Looking for a novel to go with a recent nonfiction read, or vice-versa? Let’s see what we can do in the comments….
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This sounds like a feature I’ve been thinking about doing for my blog for awhile. There is a great deal of value to reading relationships whether it’s within one genre or across multiple.
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Sounds awesome! I’d love to see a feature like that.
Great blog! I love this idea! I’m reading a fictional account of War of the Roses, would love some nonfiction input.
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I love reading “coincidences” – or synchronicity, as I’ve seen it called. And the reading across the curriculum idea is one of the reasons I’ve loved homeschooling my kids. We’re studying World War II right now, so literature assignments include Number the Stars by Lois Lowry and Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.
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Love this post, and you are so right. I love reading an eclectic mix of books, especially with lots of non-fiction thrown in, because you can really make the most interesting connections that way.
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I asked Twitter and the universal response is that Allison Weir wrote a great one.
I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” a year ago, and it’s crept into my understanding of almost everything I’ve read since. It’s a nonfiction book about what causes some people to be phenomenally successful. I know there are some problems with Gladwell’s methodology (he tends to pick examples that support his theories). But I found it was interesting framework to think about biography, and history, and fiction. So right after reading ‘Outliers,’ I read a biography of Orson Welles, and I could pick out all kinds of things in Welles’ life that reflected the ideas that Gladwell talked about.
Gladwell also gives a great framework for thinking about what makes a hero in fiction. So, when I read Lois McMaster Bujold’s sci-fi books about Miles Vorkosigan, for instant, I could look at the traits Bujold gave Miles to make him a plausible and compelling hero.
Great post, Rebecca! My 11th grade IB English classes are doing an interdiciplinary project with their IB Biology class and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks! Fun!
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Oh, now there’s an awesome combination!
Wonderful post, Rebecca! And what a coincidence – I just read about The Emperor of All Maladies in O Magazine. It looks really interesting.
Now, if I can just finish the half a dozen books in queue!
[...] ~ The Book Lady’s Blog: On reading across genres (all the cool kids are doing it). [...]
I would agree that Alison Weir’s book on the Wars of the Roses is excellent; I definitely recommend it.
Also, Rebecca, I didn’t know you went to Loyola–for some reason, I thought Northwestern. I live right in your old neighborhood, then, on N. Winthrop.
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Oh, Winthrop! I lived on Kenmore for a year and then right at the corner of Kenmore and Granville (in the Sovereign building) for two years.
Ha, wow, my gym is in that building, and I’m just south of Granville. Nice!
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That’s crazy! It’s too bad we didn’t live there at the same time.
Amen to that! I don’t think I could ever teach “big kids” for the reason that I love criss-crossing subjects too much. I love reading books that overlap with science subjects which lead to fantastic art projects which lead right back to great literature and on and on and on
I love reading a variety of books myself, too, and love when seemingly unrelated topics connect in interesting ways. I read American Chestnut earlier this year never expecting to find material for my thesis, which is on Dr. Seuss’s book The Lorax. (Now, of course, it seems obvious!) Great post 
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