Reading in Community: Does it Matter?
Guest post by Rachel Woodham
Preface by Dn. Nicholas Kotar
We’re starting a bit of a hidden mini-theme with our nonfiction pieces here on the Wood Between the Worlds. If I were a true C.S. Lewis devotee, I wouldn’t talk about it. I would just let it come through unannounced, like Lewis did (probably) with his planetary archetype theme, as described so beautifully by Michael Ward in Planet Narnia. But I want people to notice this, so I’m going to be the obnoxious and obvious Russian in the room. I believe, and have made the case, that stories are powerful tools for consolation, healing, and even spiritual growth.
The hidden problem in my premise is that reading is a solitary activity, and any activity that is not obviously community-building has limitations in our world of ever-increasing solipsism. So let’s start thinking about how storytelling in the context of reading a story or book can be more than simply upbuilding for an individual, and how it can help us build better, more rooted communities of people. Rachel Woodham’s piece today is a good introduction to this idea. Enjoy!"
This guest post by
was published by CiRCE Institute on July 10th, 2024, and is republished here with permission.
Reading in Community: Does it Matter?
When I pulled into my driveway the weather app on my phone, still set to Blowing Rock, North Carolina, showed a balmy 79°. As I opened the car door, a wall of 99° moist air engulfed me. My week of idyllic reading community had officially ended. I had driven home from the Close Reads retreat through rural Georgia in silence, contemplating the week. What made it so good? There was the obvious: we were gathered at a mountain resort for a week of good wine and food and thoughtful discussions about the beloved Pride and Prejudice. But it was much more than that, a little taste of heaven, a week of knowing and being known. Why?
Reading together is about much more than an interest in the same books. Ultimately, reading in community happens when you are facing the same direction, asking the same questions. This is essentially how C. S. Lewis describes friendship in The Four Loves:
It may be a common religion, common studies, a common profession, even a common recreation. All who share it will be our companions; but one or two or three who share something more will be our friends. In this kind of love, as Emerson said, Do you love me? Means Do you see the same truth? Or at least, ‘Do you care about the same truth?’ The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance, can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer.1
Reading well is, in the end, about loving well and that’s rather hard to do alone. Reading the great books from the Western canon tunes our hearts to love good writing. But it’s more than that – it tunes your moral imagination to see others. In The Power and the Glory, the whisky priest observes that hatred is a failure of imagination. While I think there is a bit more to hatred than that, those words have never left me. There are wrongs that I have forgiven because my moral imagination has been tuned through literature, times that I could imagine what it might be like from another person’s perspective. There are also times (perhaps more frequently) that I have hated because I would not imagine, instead thinking, “Well, I would never…”
When you are reading together, your moral imagination is no longer limited to the metaphors drawn from the images in your own memory; the experience is multiplied. Each has her own unique set of images from experiences, her own metaphors to share. In conversation these metaphors are joined together and we find a new way to see. This is not to say that everyone brings metaphors that are equally valid or true. At times, there are multiple interpretations that can be supported by the text or ways in which understanding can be nuanced. On the other hand, some interpretations are just wrong whether due to lack of skill, inexperience as a reader, or simply our own blind spots and biases. In these instances, reading in community opens us up to correction that we never would have found alone.
I first read Pride and Prejudice as a teenager and the story has worn a deep groove in my imagination. I was surprised to find how many different viewpoints there were of the characters whom I thought I knew so well. Take Mr. Bennet, for example. Though funny, he is passive and snide, two particularly undesirable characteristics in a husband and a father. At the retreat, I heard a new perspective: maybe Mr. Bennet is at a complete loss as to how to father and is doing his best. This perspective from a caring father gave me a new possible way to read Mr. Bennet. Though I ultimately don’t read Mr. Bennet that sympathetically, my perspective was refined as I realized that he is guilty not of things done, but of things left undone. The week was full of such examples – new ways of seeing, broadening my imagination from the experiences of others and, most importantly, agreeing on which questions were worth asking.
Most cannot go to the Close Reads retreat. And even those who can are left wondering what to do with the other 359 days in the year. The answer is closer than you think. My most precious reading community is the one that my husband and I have built together within our own four walls. A literary culture is inherent to the fabric of our home. The images and language from the stories have become a shared way of understanding and navigating the life that we have been given. Inculcating a love for great literature in our children has been pretty straightforward: we only read them good books and do so with contagious delight.
Last fall, during our family vacation to the North Carolina mountains, my twelve-year-old son planned to re-read the Lord of the Rings trilogy and asked me to read along beside him. We had “reading parties” in the evenings, wrapped in blankets reading Tolkien. A fast reader, I foolishly challenged him to a reading race, and he was well through The Two Towers before I had finished The Fellowship of the Ring. On hikes he proudly explained the legendarium to me. One evening, we lingered around the table. Though the steak was gone and the sun was set a little wine remained. I struck up a conversation about Galadriel’s mirror. What exactly was happening? If the visions they saw were not prophecies, then what were they? Was she tempting them? I don’t remember much of what was said; as much as anything I wanted to start a lively discussion. The evening faded but my joy remained, joy in having a middle school son who wants to talk about books with mom, even if only books by Tolkien. By God’s grace we are building the reading community in our home that I had longed for one page at a time.
C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 65-66.
Rachel Woodham
has a BA in Russian Language and Literature and is a graduate student of Great Books at Harrison Middleton University. A classical educator for the last decade, she now homeschools her three all-time favorite students.
Silent Reading Clubs are building up in popularity for communities of readers. The ones I've been to, we've introduced ourselves and what we are reading to the group, then read for 30 minutes, then usually have a light discussion with others afterwards. We aren't reading the same books, but by talking about what we're reading we are exposed to what others are reading and why, expanding our own thoughts.
I think even the reading in virtual community of Close Reads on Substack and Facebook has value, though I'm sure in person is even better. The second time I read The Brothers Karamazov, I did it with a friend's Facebook reading group which included a native Russian speaker and people from a wide variety of backgrounds. My friend kept us all on pace, setting weekly reading goals, and guided the discussion. It was a rich communal experience, even if it was virtual.
In our homeschool reading aloud has continued to be a cornerstone of our day even into the teenage years. We read the daily lectionary together and many literature and history and science selections. This year we've read Beowulf and The Odyssey and a Tale of Two Cities and now we are starting Moby Dick. I don't think most of my kids would have the patience to read any of these books on their own, but they make perfect read alouds and we have so much fun reading them slowly and savoring the language.