Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation

by Peter J. Rabinowitz, James Phelan (Foreword)

Book by RABINOWITZ, PETER J.

249 pages, Paperback

First published November 5, 1987

Reviews

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, again, "liking" an academic text is culturally bizarre.

But this was a game changer. Peter--I can call him Peter because I know him, because academia is weird--does for literary interpretation what Kelly Gallagher does for comprehension. (Non teacher friends, that probably means very little to you.) He makes the case, convincingly and accessibly, why we read literature the way we do, how both readers and authors make use of a variety of "conventions" in order to analyze and interpret (and enjoy) fiction, and why the canon looks the way he does. Seriously--high school English teachers who try to argue for more noncanonical texts in the classroom need look no further than his final chapter. Without meaning to, he even makes the argument for why kids tend to resist the typical English class activity and/or texts. (I mean no disrespect to my English teacher friends; we all know I love you, but we all know that the system is, on some level, also flawed.) Unlike other academic texts about literary interpretation (like the one I wrote about yesterday that only uses Proust as a case study), Peter references a wide variety of 19th-20th century American fiction--including popular novels--to make his point. Because part of his point is that readers/authors of ALL genres and ALL texts do mostly the same things when we read/interpret.

Depending on what I have to teach in the future, this will be a must-assign for my students.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to read this book because there was a good excerpt from Chapter 1 in David Richter's The Critical Traditiona, an anthology of literary criticism. Frankly, I don't think the book offers much more than that excerpt, which encapsulates Rabinowitz's entire methodology. There are a lot of examples, notably from Russian classics and the works of Raymond Chandler and Alain Robbe-Grillet that do a little bit to help clarify the points. Also, Rabinowitz does a good job presenting a lengthier application of the ideas in the penultimate chapter. Overall, I found this to be a good explanation of a certain method of working with literary texts, though it's too drawn out to be really indispensable.

[Mendi]

I found this book in a book swap and picked it up. I'm only halfway through the introduction and am already thinking I wish I'd read it before teaching two of my classes.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rabinowitz's "rules of notice" explained by the originator. So glad to own my own copy at long last!

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Starting Points"