THE DIFFICULT PLEASURE OF READING LITERATURE

William Diaz Villarreal 
wdiazv@myrealbox.com
Publicado en Capital Letter No. 5
Mayo de 2004


Teaching Literature involves many difficulties. The most important one is that students consider that through the teaching process the analysed works are reduced to a cold net of formal relations. Thus, they argue, the pleasure of creative reading is killed and the link between the reader's vital experience and the text is broken.


As a teacher of literature, I argue that sometimes (particularly when teachers conceive the study of literary works in a mechanical way) reading in the classroom may become a process of oversimplification. Nevertheless, killing the pleasure that literature provides is not as simple as one might think.


In the consumption of cultural goods, an individual may experience, at least, two different kinds of pleasure. On the one hand, we may experience easy pleasures, which are provided by simple contact with a cultural object. Most of the products that culture industries offer (like action films, soup-operas, light music or best-sellers) provide such simple pleasures. But, on the other hand, we may experience difficult pleasures, which are the result of an intense consideration of a work. Difficult pleasures arise after a deep process of analysis and understanding. 


Needless to say that difficult pleasures are more enduring and improves reader's critical skills. While easy pleasures demand a passive attitude on the part of the reader, difficult ones demand an active attitude. Difficult pleasures enrich and develop the possibilities of a given text, which is the aim of any critical reading. It is based on a deep formal analysis of a work, and the study of its social context as well as the differences and similarities between that context and our personal background.


The challenge that teachers of literature must face is to teach the students how to improve their ability to look for endurable pleasures in their readings. It is a challenge, not only because it is easier to get easy pleasures (the teacher must fight against the student's resistance to assume an active attitude towards a given text), but also because students tend to think that easy pleasures are the only ones that texts must provide. As we can see now, if we really want to enjoy a text, we must work on it. The work is hard, but the harder the work the higher the intensity and endurance of our pleasure.