Some people spend the beginning of the semester re-adjusting to Madison, buying textbooks and trying to start the school year off on the right foot. I, on the other hand, spend this time looking for the most miserable people around me and doing what every smart American does in response to human sadness: figuring out how to profit from it. And I've found just the right misery-literature classes.
The curse of lit classes is universal, because from around the time we enter fifth grade until the time we finish college, students are saddled with the reality that if you're forced to read a book, no matter how great it is, you're probably not going to enjoy it. It's true in junior high and it's just as true in college. Literature classes are designed to make you resent the English language and anyone who tries to peddle it to you.
But since all of us Letters & Science students are required to take literature courses, we must face what I call \appreciation at gunpoint."" And inevitably, the genius of Shakespeare, Melville and Voltaire falls on deaf ears. As each semester wears on, students look for easy ways out, like Cliffs Notes and SparkNotes, as they look to the heavens and cry, ""Why can't school reading be magical, carefree fun like it was when I was seven?""
Well, boys and girls, I've heard your anguished cries, and now I have devised a solution. I call them ""Seuss Notes.""
""Seuss Notes"" are like all those other academic shortcuts, only they simplify the classics in a way that emulates the magical style of Dr. Seuss-the last writer many of us enjoyed in school reading, when we were assigned books like ""Hop on Pop"" and ""I Can Read With My Eyes Shut."" When getting good grades and passing is more important to most students than actually learning, who has time for the writing style of Dostoyevsky or Rousseau? Imagine how much easier Kafka would be if ""Metamorphosis"" read like this:
""My oh my, the shocking approach, when I looked in the mirror and sighted a roach! With wings and antennae and eight legs, to boot, I no longer sported my dapper zoot suit!""
Reading once taught us the English language and helped us develop our imaginations, but now classes teach us that the main reason to read great fiction is so that we will be able to write an essay about it when given 50 minutes and a blue exam book. Adults often look at young people and wonder how they can watch so much television, want to skateboard, or possibly care what happens on ""Real World/Road Rules Challenge."" But after more than a decade of having literature shoved down our throats, the truth is that many of us would rather do anything other than read. So instead of teaching us to appreciate wondrous stories and artful prose, literature classes mostly teach us how to beat the system with shortcuts.
At least ""Seuss Notes"" will make students hearken back to the days when school reading still had some life in it. When ""Seuss Notes"" hit stores, it will be good for everyone. I will become a millionaire, and college students everywhere will be able to say, ""I can pass my literature requirement with my eyes shut!""
amosap@hotmail.com.
