Episode 267: “Best of” Series – An Experiment in Criticism, Ch. 8-9

Summary

**Summary of "The Literary Life Podcast"
Episode 267: “Best of” Series – An Experiment in Criticism, Ch. 8-9
Release Date: March 11, 2025
Hosts: Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks, and Cindy Rollins

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Introduction

In Episode 267 of The Literary Life Podcast, hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks, alongside lifelong reader Cindy Rollins, delve into chapters 8 and 9 of C.S. Lewis's seminal work, An Experiment in Criticism. This episode serves as a "Best of" installment, revisiting listener favorites and highlighting foundational discussions that underscore the podcast's mission—to explore the art and skill of reading literature deeply and effectively.

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Overview of "An Experiment in Criticism"

C.S. Lewis's An Experiment in Criticism challenges conventional approaches to literary criticism by advocating for reading literature as art rather than as vehicles for philosophical or moral lessons. The hosts emphasize Lewis's distinction between "using" art for personal or didactic purposes and "receiving" art for its intrinsic value and transformative potential.

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Discussion of Chapter 8: Misreading by the Literary

Key Themes:

1. Literature as Art vs. Literature as Instruction:

   • Lewis argues that literature should be appreciated for its artistic merit rather than for the truths or philosophies it may convey.
   • Cindy Rollins underscores this by relating it to teaching practices, lamenting how literature is often reduced to discussions about its moral or philosophical content rather than its artistic qualities.

2. The Dangers of the Worldview Approach:

   • The hosts discuss how educators and readers often impose their own interpretations and agendas onto literary works, thereby missing out on the authentic experience the literature offers.
   • Thomas Banks highlights the issue of students seeking to validate their preconceived notions through literature, effectively using books as mirrors rather than windows into different perspectives.

3. Criticism as an Obstacle to Artistic Reception:

   • Lewis contends that approaching literature solely as critics hampers the ability to experience and be transformed by art.
   • Cindy illustrates this with examples of classroom settings where the focus on extracting philosophical lessons detracts from engaging with the work as a piece of art.

Notable Quotes:

• Angelina Stanford (00:00): "We've grown quite significantly since our debut in 2019, and we've had many requests to highlight older episodes that new listeners may have missed..."
• Cindy Rollins (10:11): "Maybe I'm just a lazy commonplace. Or maybe that's what it boils down to. I just copied down the short ones."
• Thomas Banks (08:21): "St. Benedict assumes that the whole of the body, and thus the whole of the person engaged in the act of reading words are tasted to release their full flavor..." (09:44)

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Discussion of Chapter 9: Receiving vs. Using Art

Key Themes:

1. Imitation as the Proper Response to Art:

   • Lewis posits that the appropriate reaction to literature is imitation, which facilitates a deeper internalization and transformation.
   • The hosts correlate this with Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy, emphasizing the importance of narrative and experiential learning over rote memorization or critical analysis.

2. The Inefficacy of Forced Interpretation:

   • Forcing students to draw specific philosophical or moral conclusions from literary works results in a superficial understanding and stifles genuine engagement.
   • Cindy Rollins shares personal experiences of shifting away from the "worldview approach" to favor a more immersive and receptive reading style.

3. The Transformative Power of Literature:

   • Literature's true impact lies in its ability to subtly transform readers over time, rather than providing immediate answers or lessons.
   • Thomas Banks reflects on how repeated readings of complex works like Wuthering Heights eventually lead to a deeper appreciation and understanding, even if initial encounters were unsatisfying.

Notable Quotes:

• Cindy Rollins (26:08): "The user wants to use this content as a pastime for a dull or torturing hour. That's like the lowest on the totem pole..."
• Thomas Banks (25:35): "But if you are reading a book, let's say you're reading a book out loud, or you're reading a book in a schoolroom and you're looking at Monet's paintings, you're not going to have a worksheet at the end..."
• Cindy Rollins (39:49): "To value novels chiefly for reflection... is a flagrant instance of using instead of receiving." (39:49)

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Key Insights and Conclusions

1. Artistic Engagement Over Didactic Analysis:

   • The episode reinforces the idea that immersing oneself in literature as an art form leads to a more profound and authentic experience than dissecting it for moral or philosophical content.

2. Educational Implications:

   • The hosts critique traditional educational methods that prioritize critical analysis over narrative engagement, advocating for teaching practices that encourage students to experience literature rather than evaluate it prematurely.

3. Personal Growth Through Literature:

   • Engaging with literature artfully facilitates personal transformation and intellectual growth, aligning with the podcast's overarching theme that stories hold the power to "save the world" by enriching individual lives.

4. Challenge to Modern Criticism:

   • By adhering to Lewis's principles, the podcast challenges contemporary literary criticism to shift its focus from extraction of meanings to fostering a receptive and transformative engagement with texts.

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Implications for Literature and Education

This episode serves as a call to reevaluate how literature is approached both personally and within educational contexts. By embracing Lewis's advocacy for receiving rather than using art, readers and educators are encouraged to prioritize the intrinsic value of literary works, fostering environments where literature can genuinely transform and inspire.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Angelia Stanford (00:00):
  "We've grown quite significantly since our debut in 2019, and we've had many requests to highlight older episodes that new listeners may have missed..."

• Cindy Rollins (09:44):
  "Be separated from living."

• Thomas Banks (25:35):
  "But if you are reading a book, let's say you're reading a book out loud, or you're reading a book in a schoolroom and you're looking at Monet's paintings, you're not going to have a worksheet at the end..."

• Cindy Rollins (39:49):
  "To value novels chiefly for reflection... is a flagrant instance of using instead of receiving."

• Cindy Rollins (42:45):
  "Thus increasingly, we only meet ourselves."

• Thomas Banks (54:28):
  "We do not help the young to do this by forcing them to keep on expressing opinions."

• Cindy Rollins (68:37):
  "Yes, yes, yes. And that's one of the things Lewis is talking about that we have to talk about literature as art and not literature as this personal kind of experience."

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Conclusion

Episode 267 of The Literary Life Podcast offers a compelling exploration of C.S. Lewis's An Experiment in Criticism, particularly focusing on the critical distinctions between using and receiving art. Through thoughtful dialogue, the hosts advocate for a reading approach that honors literature's artistic essence, urging both readers and educators to foster environments where literature can fulfill its transformative potential unimpeded by reductive analyses.

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Join the Conversation:
For more insights and detailed discussions, visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com or MorningTimeForMoms.com. Engage with the community through our Patreon, Facebook discussion group, or member-only forum for exclusive content and ongoing literary conversations.

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Transcript

[Angelina Stanford]

Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. We've grown quite significantly since our debut in 2019, and we've had many requests to highlight older episodes that new listeners may have missed, as well as revisit listener favorites. To honor that request, I present to you this episode of the Best of the Literary Life Podcast.

[Cindy Rollins]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The Literary Life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Hello and welcome back to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford, and right next to me is the blonde bombshell herself, Cindy Rolf. Well, fresh off of your trip to California, you know, I'm imagining your extra golden bronze right now.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, it was a little cool. Chilly, but in a good way because we're having record 90 degree temperatures here throughout September.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, us too crazy.

[Thomas Banks]

And California, it did feel like heaven. You got out of the plane and you're in Santa Barbara, of all places, and the wind was blowing and it just, it felt like heaven. The whole time I was there. It was beautiful weather.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, that's. Well, that's. That's lovely. We are not having any of that beautiful weather here. I don't know what happened to autumn. But before we get sidetracked, just talking about the weather, making small talk with each other.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, the weather, the weather, the weather.

[Cindy Rollins]

The weather's lovely. So, js so we've got some interesting things going on over here. First of all, a big thank you to everyone who came out to Mr. Banks's poetry webinar, his introduction to the fundamentals of poetry. It was a huge success, and I'll admit I was swooning. That sound you heard in the background, that was me. That was my heart pumping. I was having, you know, palpitations and the vapors and all of it. And I learned a lot. I learned so much. And this is stuff I already knew, but he had just a fresh way of presenting things. And yeah, it was a really good webinar and we got such great feedback. So he's going to be doing another one. So on October 17, Mr. Banks will be giving another webinar, which you can go over to my website to find out more about. But this one's called Classical Mythology in English Poetry, which I thought was an awesome topic when he told me what he wanted to do. So he'll be going through how you find, you know, Ulysses and Icarus and all these classical figures in English poetry, and what do we make of them? What are the different poets doing with them, and how does that tradition play out in English poetry? So I'm really excited about that. And again, that's going to be October 17th, and so you can head on over to Angelina.com to find out more about that and to register Again, all webinars are available live or later. And we had it up. We had this one up within 24 hours. I was really excited about that. So we're getting it. It just takes a long time to download and process these files, but we're getting the replays available just as soon as we possibly can. So we've got that coming up. And I'm really looking forward to it.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm looking forward to listening to the poetry one. I was in California, so I wasn't able to listen.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, we are definitely looking forward to your feedback. Like, we're waiting with bated breath. So if you just like six months from now are like, oh, I never got around to it. I'm know what that means, Cindy.

[Thomas Banks]

All right, I will do it tonight. I have a couple other things to do, but I'll try to put it on there and listen.

[Cindy Rollins]

Foreign I'm going to briefly interrupt this.

[Jen Rogers]

Best of episode because it was recorded many years ago and I want to let you know what's going on right now in 2025 at the house of Humane Letters.

[Cindy Rollins]

If we had a word of the.

[Jen Rogers]

Year, it would be word. It turns out that so much of what we're struggling right now in the world of education and even in our culture at large, this experience we're having that some have called a crisis of meaning. Well, it turns out that the reason we can't figure out how things mean is because we don't understand language. Language and words is really at the heart of our entire struggle right now for meaning. And so we have put together a number of webinars, mini classes, and even a whole conference this year devoted to exploring this topic. How does language work? How is meaning made? And why does any of this matter? So right now, Jen Rogers is still in the middle of her Mini class on the language and literary theory of the Inklings. This is a once a week class, so it's not too late to jump in, view the recordings and catch up. Even if you're listening to this much after the fact, you're going to want to get these videos. Honestly, this class is blowing our mind. And what seemed like it might be a very esoteric topic has turned out to be incredibly practical as again, we are learning how things mean and why does it even matter? Next month in March, we have another webinar on the same topic, but this time applied to the language of nature. So we have a WEBINAR Coming up March 19th called the Living Learning to Read the Language of Nature. And this will also be exploring how things mean and how do we know what they mean and why does it matter? And then finally, in April, we'll be culminating with a conference on exactly this topic. The seventh annual Literary Life Online Conference is going to be about living language, why words matter. I'll be speaking. Jen Rogers will be speaking. Dr. Phillips will be speaking. Mr. Banks will be speaking. And I'm very, very excited to introduce to our audience a philologist of whom I am a great admirer, Dr. Michael Drought. And we will each be giving talks approaching this question, how does language mean and why words matter? As I said, I am more and more convinced that at the heart of all of the things that we are struggling with right now, this crisis of meaning really comes down to a crisis of language. And we're not going to be able to find our way out of this crisis unless we get to the bottom of exactly where we went wrong and find out what words mean, how meaning is made, and why any of this matters. I hope to see you at some of these events and you can find out about ticket [e-mail] and now back to our show.

[Cindy Rollins]

All right, so from classical mythology and English poetry, which that is actually a really good segue to C.S. lewis.

[Thomas Banks]

Absolutely, that's a really good.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's a really good segue because of course, we see classical myth and medieval myth in C.S. lewis's works. I mean, Bacchus shows up in the middle of Narnia, so that's the perfect subway. But before we jump into today's episode, this is episode 22 where we're going to be covering the last few chapters of An Experiment in Criticism. Lewis, work on how to Read a book. Before we jump to that, Cindy, do you have a commonplace quote to share with us today?

[Thomas Banks]

I do. And this commonplace Quote is. Goes along with what we're doing. So I'm just going to read it. It's just going to be a reiteration of all the things we're learning. But this is from Esther de Waal's Seeking God. Anybody who's heard me knows it's one of my favorite books. It's her look at the Way of St. Benedict. But here's her last chapters on prayer. And here's the quote. But St. Benedict assumes that the whole of the body, and thus the whole of the person engaged in the act of reading words are tasted to release their full flavor, weighed in order to sound the full depths of their meaning. It is not only that it was customary to pronounce the words with the lips in a low tone so that they were heard as well as seen. They were also learnt by heart in the fullest sense of that phrase, which again, we have lost, but which means with the whole being. So the scriptures are mouthed by the lips, understood by the intelligence, fixed by the memory. And finally the will comes into play. And what has been read is also put into practice. The act of reading makes the reader become a different person. Reading cannot be separated from living. I just love that.

[Cindy Rollins]

Be separated from living. Oh, I love that.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. I just. I really like how she talks about how it sounded like Charlotte Mason too. How our will comes into play also as we're reading because our mind is working on these things and it's just a beautiful. A beautiful life.

[Cindy Rollins]

No. Yeah, agreed. I also, of course, have picked a quote about reading. And it just strikes me that I always pick short quotes.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. And I could do long.

[Cindy Rollins]

Maybe I'm just a lazy commonplace. Or maybe that's what it boils down to. I just. I just copied down the short ones.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, some of mine I copy and paste, remember, from the Kindles.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, that's true.

[Thomas Banks]

That's why I'm not using my handwritten notes. I do write by hand, some of these, so.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, so since. Well, I'll go ahead and be honest. This whole last third of Experiment Into Criticism is my hill to die on. Okay. The whole reason I wanted to choose this book was because of this section. The first section is just a lead up to this stuff about how exactly do you read a book in a literary way and how do you not, and what are the things that hinder that? And so I chose one of my favorite quotes which really kind of sums up one of my passions. And I think that Lewis gets to this idea in Experiment and Criticism. So this is from A guy that you all have heard me quote from a ton of times. Northrop Fry. This is from his book the Great Code, which is a reference to a quote from William Blake, that the Old and New Testaments are the great code of art. So that, you know, all. All art comes from the imaginative world of the Bible. So he says that the right way to read is the way that conforms to the intentionality of the book itself and to the conventions it assumes and requires. Okay, so let me say that again. The right way to read is the way that conforms to the intentionality of the book itself, to the conventions it assumes and requires.

[Thomas Banks]

Wow. That's, you know, one of. I'm gonna be speaking. Of course, this will be past tense when people listen.

[Cindy Rollins]

So you will have spoken. Tell us about the past.

[Thomas Banks]

I will have spoken on liberty at the Wild and Free conference. I'm gonna be speaking on the concept of liberty. And one of the points I make is that, first of all, I take the idea that we need to get outside in the sense of nature study. But then I also expand that because we don't. That is almost a metaphor for getting outside of ourselves. So we get outside of our own heads.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Thomas Banks]

Inside the book. Not from our perspective, but actually from outside of ourselves. And I saw that all throughout this section with Lewis.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

And I just couldn't help thinking how important it is for us not to be trapped or enslaved in our own minds.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, yes. And not to make our experience be the standard. Right. He's making that case all over the place. And so one of the things I love about that quote is that I think it's kind of a foreign idea to us that a book places certain demands on us.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. And maybe that's why I don't like that saying this is a heart book for me, because it's so saying this book is all about me.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, I feel the same way. I am. And again, sorry. I know a lot of our listeners like that expression, but I also don't like that expression because I think one of the points Lewis makes is that if it's a heart book or not, heart book is irrelevant.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Irrelevant to the question of is it good art?

[Thomas Banks]

And when people first asked me that question, it took me by surprise because I couldn't figure out what that meant in regards to reading, because that's not how I read. Although there are books I love more than other books.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. And one of the things Lewis says, you know, he makes this case in the first two thirds of the book. That's not to say that you can't have a strong emotional attachment.

[Thomas Banks]

No, no.

[Cindy Rollins]

Or that there's anything wrong with that. There's not. And we do have those strong attachments, but that is an entirely different experience. That's an entirely different question than is this a good book?

[Thomas Banks]

And if it is a heart book, then that's. There's a good chance it's just a heart book for me anyway. So it's not something that's going to. If it' just a heart book for me, then that's a very narrow category. Whereas, you know, if it's a heart book, if it's a good book, then that's going to be across the spectrum.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. That's right. And that's one of the things Louis is talking about that we have to talk about literature as art and not literature as this personal kind of experience. Right. That, you know, well, I felt a certain way when I read. There's lots of things that make us feel a certain way. And again, that's not to say there's anything wrong with that. I mean, you know, Lewis is the one who says, you know, if we didn't have intense emotional experiences when we read books, we probably wouldn't read them. So that's not to negate.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. We all do that. That's.

[Cindy Rollins]

And it is a part of the reading life. It's just not the same question as what is a good book in terms of art.

[Thomas Banks]

And that's why you have Thomas, you're saying, oh, I love that book as a 15 year old, and I didn't like it, and now I know better than to really like it. And I had.

[Cindy Rollins]

We.

[Thomas Banks]

There was a list that we had going around on the Literary Life podcast Facebook page about those kind of books. And I had read. I had been like that about Jonathan Livingston Seagal in eighth grade. We read that book and, oh, it was so profound. Of course, you know, it's not even. That book is not a classic. It's not. You know, it came and went and there's nothing much else you can say about it.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. And so, you know, we have to be so careful to define our terms when we're talking about books, because sometimes we'll say, well, book X is not good literature. And somebody else will come back and say, but that's my heart book. That's. They're not. We're talking apples and oranges now.

[Thomas Banks]

Right?

[Cindy Rollins]

That's okay.

[Thomas Banks]

That's okay. It's their heart book.

[Cindy Rollins]

But that's Right.

[Thomas Banks]

It doesn't say or doesn't say whether it's good literature.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. So in terms of art, it would be like saying da Vinci is a good artist. And I say, well, no, my favorite color is pink.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

It's not relevant. It's just not relevant since we're talking about whether or not the book is worthy as art, which it could be a heart book, and it's worthy. Okay.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. Hopefully, you know.

[Cindy Rollins]

Hopefully. Exactly. But when we look on, like you were saying, you know, what did I hold dear when I was 15 or 12 or 8? I mean, you know, my favorite food when I was 8 is not my favorite food now. Thank God I've matured in my taste. That's right. So again, it's not to. It's not to condemn that you.

[Thomas Banks]

The heart book.

[Cindy Rollins]

No, we're not feel. I mean, that's such a good part of the reading life is to feel this intense emotional connection.

[Thomas Banks]

It's just not that he gets to that at the end where he says, of course, we all do that. That's important part of reading. So definitely not condemning that at all.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. And I think what he's getting at is how do you talk about literature as art in terms of what are you supposed to expect and what do you do with a book that's not a heart book? In other words, what do you do with a book that's not an intense emotional connection for you, but you can. Can you still say it's a good book even if you don't love it? Well, yeah. The answer is yes. You can say by these objective standards, I can say this is good art. This is a master, you know, of her craft, and she's crafted the story well and brilliantly. It's just, you know, not the story I would have preferred to hear. And that. And that. Those are. I have books like that. That's.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

I'm myself by saying it. That's how I am with Wuthering Heights. I have read it five times. I have written papers about its brilliance. I do believe it is a masterpiece of art. It's brilliantly crafted. I just don't like it.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I'm the same way. I always reread it, thinking, surely I will like it this time.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. And I've read it five times because I really did think maybe the flaw was me. And now I just think, no, I'm a good reader and I can see. See what's good about it. I can acknowledge that it is a good book. I would Never condemn anybody for loving it because it is a good book. It's just not the book for me.

[Thomas Banks]

Now, I did that with Till we have Faces, only I came to the opposite conclusion. I loved it. I did not love it the first three times I read it. And then finally, I kept. I kept trust. I trust Lewis, for one thing. So I kept going back to it.

[Cindy Rollins]

Mm. Mm. All right, so let's see, then.

[Thomas Banks]

Let's.

[Cindy Rollins]

Let's see if we can take apart Lewis's argument a little bit here in the last third of this book.

[Thomas Banks]

So he said, I'm gonna need you to hold my hand through this.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, I doubt that seriously, Cindy, you're such a good reader, but, well, you know, love language all over here, though.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I just. I find myself being, like, convicted by this book. And at the same time, part of. I do some of this accidentally. Let me say it that way. But other times, I just felt like, ugh, I need help here.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, okay, so let's start off with chapter eight on misreading by the literary. Okay, so he's gone through all the ways that an unliterary person can read, and now he's saying, okay, you lovers of books, you people who read, let's talk about some of the ways you get it wrong. And maybe that's why you felt him pointing the finger at you, because we are the audience for this.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, okay.

[Cindy Rollins]

Our readers. But we make some mistakes sometimes, and so he's trying to correct us on that. And I just. Who? I mean, I've spent. I've spent my entire professional life in the world of literature teaching. And, I mean, this is my hill to die on. I think that most people teach literature entirely wrong. I go into schools and say, you know, you guys are teaching it all wrong. And I'm speaking to a room of people who love it, and this is their life, right? They have been making so many of these mistakes, and unfortunately, the response is always really good. And they say, yes, yes, that is what I've been doing. That's where I've been going wrong. And Lewis, I think, offers a corrective to that. So the first thing he says, and, boy, this is all over the place, is that we have to remember literature as art, and we cannot confuse life and art. And he says sometimes even refuse to admit the existence of art at all. All right, so what does he mean by that? He means we are tempted sometimes to think a book is a good book because it gives us, quote, unquote, truths about life.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay?

[Cindy Rollins]

We hear this all the Time. I think people think that's what they're supposed to get out of a book. That we read it, and now we have some truth about life.

[Thomas Banks]

It changes us that way. Like it.

[Cindy Rollins]

So he goes on to explain what he means by that. He says, dramatists and novelists are praised as if they were doing essentially what used to be expected of things. Theologians and philosophers, okay. And the qualities which belong to their works as inventions, as designs, are neglected.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I underline that.

[Cindy Rollins]

Also, they are referenced as teachers and insufficiently appreciated as artists. So this is one of my absolute hills to die on. Books do not teach us. That's what he's saying. Okay. A theologian teaches us theology. A philosopher teaches us a view of life. An artist does not teach you.

[Thomas Banks]

Hmm. Yeah, I think that's really hard. I mean, I guess you could take it like this. Say Milton was writing a poem. He wasn't writing theology.

[Cindy Rollins]

And when there's a difference between a sermon and a poem. And like, I'm teaching Paradise Lost right now, and I always tell my students, we have to approach this as a work of poetry, not as a work of theology. We can't get all hung up in the theology of it. If you want to know Milton's theology, he wrote a million nonfiction, Right. As you can read, if that's what you want. But don't read Paradise Lost for that, because this is a work of poetry. And I've got, you know, all these commentaries that talk about how, because it's an epic poem, Milton had to make decisions as a poet that actually sometimes were at odds with his own theology because that was the only way to make the poem work. But that. That's going to get us under a whole other direction. So let me see if I can explain better what I mean when I say that a work of art doesn't teach because you're all thinking, yeah, but I learned things from art. That's right. We do learn from art, but it's not teaching us. Wow. Okay. That's a really important distinction. And Lewis makes that distinction. He says, look, yes, you are going to read books and your view of life is going to be changed. But it's not that the author tried to convince you. There's no thesis he's pressing for. There's no argument. He showed you a picture of something, and he talks about how the way that that changes you isn't the same way that listening to a sermon changes you. Right? So the experience of art becomes one of many, many things that will happen to you that will Shape you. But there's not an act of persuasion going on.

[Thomas Banks]

Now, this brings me to Charlotte Mason, and you've cleared this up for me immensely. So she is not. Charlotte Mason says the teacher should not get in the way of the student and knowledge. So that. And that the student also should get knowledge from a narrative. And not like, in other words, it might be factual, but it's going to be in a narrative form. And not a factual, like, bullet point form. We don't learn the bones of the body. You know that to rattle off the bones of the body does not make you a doctor. There's something else there. But I feel like her idea that the teacher should get out of the way goes along there. He's actually saying 100%. That's actually going parallel to this point.

[Cindy Rollins]

He says about 50 times in this book, get yourself out of the way. The goal of the reader is to get yourself out of the way. So here's. Now I'm gonna be kind of presenting things out of order. Then they come in the book because, you know, they're just coming up in the conversation.

[Thomas Banks]

But sure.

[Cindy Rollins]

So Lewis keeps telling us, the job of the reader is to get yourself out of the way. So one of the problems that happens when you think a book is going to be that the goal of a book is to teach you something. And I'm going in there to figure out what I'm going to be taught. What is this truth of life that's going to be shown me? He says what ends up happening is you just have what you already believe about life. You just have it confirmed. You just find yourself in the book. You're not really open to another experience in it. You're just finding yourself. It becomes this mirror. And you need to get yourself out of the way. And the only way you can do that is to meet the work of literature on its own terms. And so the very first thing. The very first thing you do is realize a novel is not a sermon. And that's hard. A lot of what Lewis talks about in this section, this whole truth of life thing, we have come to believe is our job, right? We think that when we're reading, we're supposed to figure out what truth, what view Lewis talks about, what view is it giving us. And then we're supposed to, like, evaluate the ideas. Is this a good view that we're being told, or is this a bad view that we're being told? But Lewis says that's not how art operates at all. You know, one of the examples I Give is, if literature is art, then you have to enter it in a very similar way to you would enter into a painting. And Lewis uses that same analogy in the first section of the book. Right. Do Monet's Sunflowers teach you something? Is he trying to persuade you or is he giving you a moment of beauty? Now, that moment of beauty, it could change your life. It could do all kinds of things, but it wasn't an attempt to persuade you to a view.

[Thomas Banks]

So if you are reading a book, let's say you're reading a book out loud, or you're reading a book in a schoolroom and you're looking at Monet's paintings, you're not going to have a worksheet at the end of Monet's, you know, I'm going to look at Monet's painting and now I'm going to fill out a worksheet on it, and that worksheet is going to guide me to what I should be getting out of this painting rather than. So this is why narration is so much better than yes.

[Cindy Rollins]

And did you see what Lewis said? The appropriate response to literature is imitation.

[Thomas Banks]

Imitation. Yes, yes. And that is exactly what narration sets you up for. You naturally imitate what you're reading, the style, and in that process, things happen to you and it changes you. But you're not saying, well, you know, what was Tom's attitude toward Jim, you know, or what was Huck's attitude toward Jim? You know, you're not over analyzing the story. Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

And Lewis is going to talk about that in the next chapter, about how we should absolutely not be teaching our children and our students to be little critics and we can define that term. But so just to go back to the idea that, you know, that what happens is when we think our job as the reader is to find the nugget of truth and then pull it out and evaluate it, we are doing something counterintuitive to the act of art itself. Right? Flannery O'Connor talks about this all the time. You cannot reduce the story. There is no nugget of truth to pull out. The story is the thing, the story is the experience. You enter into it. Lewis says, you have the experience of the book. It cannot, it's not ever going to be reduced to an idea. And when we kind of just take a step back and look at that idea that we're supposed to be reducing, finding that nugget of truth, that view of life, that comment on the world, that psychological insight, these are all the phrases that Lewis uses. When we take a step back and look at that, we realize once we kind of give ourselves permission of, no, that is not what the reader is supposed to be doing, we can all breathe a sigh of relief because we realize it's ridiculous. Right?

[Thomas Banks]

I mean, that's why some people aren't readers. They get tired of doing that.

[Cindy Rollins]

No, exactly. Right. You end up dissecting. Dissecting it. Looking for the nugget of truth. Okay, but the nugget of truth is in the Ten Commandments. Like, once I heard somebody say, well, Tolstoy in Anna Karenina teaches us, you know, the dangers of adultery. And I just think you needed 1800 pages. Adultery is bad. That can't be why he wrote this book. That can't be the way we're supposed to pronounce a work is good or bad. Well, you know, it told us adultery is bad. Or Lewis talks about in one of his letters, about how grading the awful freshman essay and that he got all these freshman essays that started the same way Sophocles teaches us the tragic view of life. And he would think, you don't need Sophocles for that, kid.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

All you gotta do is look around and see life's tragic and hard. So Lewis, I think, is giving us permission to stop looking for that. That is not the job of the reader, to find some nugget of truth. And I know that we do that. I know we think it's what we do. I know in our classrooms, we are listing ideas presented, well, let's talk about Achilles, anger. What do we think about anger? What do we think about wrath? You know, one of the things I say, and Lewis says almost the exact same thing in here. But one of the examples I give when I'm talking to teachers about literature is, you know, you might, in your class on the Iliad, have a great conversation. You might have a lively discussion about wrath. So you say, okay, so this is a book about the wrath of Achilles. So what do we think of wrath? And what does God think about wrath? And you might have a lively discussion, and you might think it's a great class. But it was not a literature class. You did not talk about the Iliad. You had a philosophy class. You had a theology class. You did not have a literature class. You never talked about the Iliad as a work of art. You never talked about Homer and his craft and what he was trying to do. You did nothing to lead yourself deeper into the work. All you did was take yourself out of the work. You took yourself out of the work to discuss all these philosophical and theological implications of wrath.

[Thomas Banks]

And just like in regular school, that puts the teacher. That gives the teacher a sense of superiority. It makes her feel like she has something to teach. It makes everybody feel better. Like what? You know, that we're doing something. We're not just, you know, letting the book do something. We're doing something to it. And it's a comfort to us to think that we're teaching this book.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right.

[Thomas Banks]

In that way. In that way.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right, right. But of course, that's not. And Lewis makes it very clear that is not what you're supposed to be doing with a book. That's not what you're supposed to be doing. But I know that one of the. I'm so sympathetic to when we do this because as Lewis says later, a lot of this is. Comes from the problem of making literature an academic subject. And as he says later, you know, forced to make literature something to talk about, what else can we do but make it something to talk about? And so we end up grasping for things. And one of the things we can grasp for is this sort of view or idea, our nugget of truth, to pull out so that we can have something to discuss. But it has nothing to do with it. Right. So, like, if I look at Monet's sunflowers, and then I end up, you know, talking for an hour with my students about the color yellow and that it came from God. That might have been an awesome conversation. It was not a conversation about that painting.

[Thomas Banks]

Wow, that's good. Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

Now when I start talking like this, people simultaneously feel relieved and panicked.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Because so many literature teachers come to me and say, I had a sense that that wasn't the right thing, but I didn't know what else I was supposed to do. So I'm like, I've taken away the one thing you think you're supposed to do, and I haven't yet replaced it. So we'll get there as we let Louis take us through there. Cindy, was there anything else in this chapter? I'm going to kind of flip through the pages here to see what else kind of stood out at me. Anything about you?

[Thomas Banks]

No. There's a couple. I have a couple quotes underlined. It seems to me undeniable that tragedy, taken as a philosophy of life, is the most obstinate and best camouflaged of all wish fulfillments just because it's pretentious. Pretensions are so apparently realistic. So we like to turn our tragedies into a philosophy of life. Because it makes us feel like suffering is worthwhile.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right? That's exactly right. And that's one of his points, is that if you want a comment on life, don't read literature. Because a tragedy is not actually realistic. We fool ourselves that it's realistic, but it's not. Because he makes the point of the tragedy. The suffering has ended. That's not real.

[Thomas Banks]

And he says it's not the fault of the tragedy. And traji. I can't say that word. But anyway, it's not their fault, the people who write tragedies. It's the critics who bring that out.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. Because by the rules of art, the tragedy has accomplished what it's. What it set out to do. It gave us the tragedy. And if we let it be what it's meant to be, we will have the experience that we're supposed to have watching a tragedy. But if we try to force it into a sermon, now we're getting all. Now we're getting all topsy turvy.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

Because it's not real. It's. It's real in terms of the literary form. Okay? But it's not real in the sense that.

[Thomas Banks]

So a story is built at, like he says, out of the realities, because that's how it works. But it isn't the reality itself of real life. It's something. It's art. It's out.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, exactly. Like when you hear people say, oh, you know, I don't like fairy tales because life doesn't really end in happily ever after. Well, duh. Yeah, because life doesn't end in that. That we. We need the fairy tales. But that's the rule of the fairy tale. That. That's how it works. You know, we. You can't get angry for it being what it. What it is. So he starts. He develops this idea in the second half of this chapter, chapter eight. And that's my favorite part. I've got all these stars and arrows and lots of yes, all caps. Yes, yes, yes. So he gets further into this idea, okay, so just like I was saying, we do learn something from art, but it's not, quote, unquote, teaching us. He talks about that too. He says we may also expect to find in them, meaning, art, many psychological truths and profound, at least profoundly felt reflections. Okay? So he's saying, yes, of course, when you read a book, there's gonna be some truths in there and there's gonna be some psychological truths. But all this comes to us and was very possibly called out of the poet as the spirit using that word in a quasi chemical sense, in the spirit of a work of art or play. Right. To formulate it as a philosophy, even if it were a rational philosophy, and regard the actual play as primarily a vehicle for that philosophy. This is my favorite part of the quote, is an outrage to the thing the poet has made for us. Now, that's strong language. So if we treat a work of art as primarily a philosophy, and the art was just a vehicle to get the philosophy to us, that's an outrage to what the poet has done. And I think that's exactly what we do. It's exactly what we do as readers. That's exactly what we do in our classrooms. We don't treat the work of art as anything other than a vehicle for some nugget of truth. We're supposed to get out. And Lewis says this is an outrage. It's an act of violence is what it is.

[Thomas Banks]

This is just so deep because it goes into everything we believe about education as moderns. It's not just literature that we approach like this. Yes, science, all of these things. We approach them as, what can I use them for? What can I get out of them? And we know that when we're talking about the definition of classical education, which I don't even want to use that word anymore more, it's so confused. But let's just say that, that the one thing we know about classical education is they were not concerned with using. They were. The ancient people were concerned with being, who am I not, how not. How can I use this, this material? It's very hard to tell modern people. No, no, no, no, no. We don't want to use this. This stuff is not for our use. It's for our enjoyment.

[Cindy Rollins]

And you got it. You nailed it. That's the heart of modernity right there. We want to be in control of the outcome and we want to be in control of the process. So we put ourselves in the driver's seat of everything. I mean, we put ourselves in the driver's seat of the Holy Spirit, too. Right? If I teach my children X, Y and Z about theology, they're going to be Christians. That's not how it works. You can't use theology to make anybody a Christian. Good luck. And, and, but, you know, I'm glad you brought up the using versus receiving that Louis brought up earlier. And he talks about this in the next paragraph. So. And this, this speaks to exactly what you're saying. So he said, okay, so how do we guard against this? How do we guard against this nugget of truth thing, this is what he says we should do. What guards the good reader from treating a tragedy as a mere vehicle for truth? Okay, is his continual awareness that it not only means, but is. It is not merely logos, something said, but poima, something made. That's where we go wrong. Right. We want to know what does it mean? Not what is it, what is it? The literary approach is what is this? What is an epic poem? How is an epic poem made? How does it work? What does it do to us? What are our expectations? That's why my number one rule of reading is always to know the form, because the form sets the expectations. So it's not just something that said, it's something that's made. It's not. Doesn't really just mean it is. Now, I think this actually goes to the heart of Christianity because Christianity is not a bunch of truths and comments on life. Right. It's a person. The incarnation was the abstract idea, took on human form. So Jesus both means and is. Right. Jesus is the truth, not some abstract idea, a person. And so we always have that tension in our heart to disincarnate, to disembody the word. And that's what happens in the story. A story is incarnated truth. I think this is the way we're meant to learn, right?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

We want to disembody that truth. When we go to the story and try to reduce it to the nugget of truth, does that make sense, what I'm saying?

[Thomas Banks]

Absolutely. Because that's what we do when we try to disembody information out of knowledge. We wanted to pull the information out of the knowledge. And as Charlotte Mason says, we have no organ to assimilate information. The organ God has made us to have is as fullness. Do we assimilate knowledge through the fullness of knowledge, not through the pulling out of the information.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right, right. So we have to resist our modern urge to reverse the incarnation. We have to resist the modern urge to disembody truth because I think. I think we're made. I think we're made for an experience with incarnated truth. I think that's why Christ came in a human form and didn't come as an idea or an. Christianity is not an abstract philosophical principle. Jesus is a person, not a. Not a philosophical truth. And we struggle with that, though. We struggle with that. Modern moderns want to turn Christianity into a philosophy, but it's not a person. It's about loyalty to a person.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes.

[Cindy Rollins]

And that it's Right. It's about love to a person, not about a philosophical commitment to a set of ideas. And, you know, and so that's Lewis's next sentence here. To value. Here he's talking about novels. To value novels chiefly for reflection, reflections which they may suggest to us or morals we may draw for them, is a flagrant instance of using instead of receiving.

[Thomas Banks]

Hmm, yeah. Guilty. Sometimes.

[Cindy Rollins]

We've all been guilty of it. We've all been. We've all been guilty of. You know, I spent a long time training myself. I was, you know, I was brought up in that. In that wave that was super intense in the 90s, you know, where we had to have the worldview approach to literature, right? We're gonna read a book, we're gonna reduce it to its theological ideas, and then we're gonna compare them to what the Bible says, and we'll judge them as either biblical or not biblical. And I thought that was my job as a reader. I totally imbibed all of that. It took a long time for me to get over that. Flannery oconnors essays was the first knock, first hole in my armor. And then this book was the second big one. And I keep coming back to this book and reflecting on those ideas. And as I've gotten more and more away from that worldview approach more, I've realized how much that reduces your experience with literature. But we think it's our duty. We think it's our duty, right? We go in there, we put the armor up, and I'm going to encounter these ideas, and I'm not going to let these bad ideas get a hold of me. And Lewis specifically talks about that in the next chapter, that you can stop being worried. It doesn't work like that. This book is not coming after you with a sword. And he gets into that. But first, you know, he talks some more in this chapter about the whole. The whole worldview approach. He doesn't. That wasn't the name back then, but that's what we would call it, you know, so he says, look, again, it's about distinction. We've talked before about how. I think Lewis is saying this is about a disposition of the mind. And he says the same thing here. He said, I'm not suggesting when you read a book, you won't reflect on things. There's gonna be so many interesting things to reflect. Of course, that's part of the experience, right? And he does this. This is great. We have put on mental muscle as a result of this activity. We may thank Shakespeare or Dante for that muscle, we had better not father on them. The philosophical or ethical use we make of it. Any of the comments on life which people get out of Shakespeare could have been reached by very moderate talents without his assistance. I love Lewis. A sense of humor. It's true. It's like saying we need Anna Karenina to tell us adultery is wrong. No, everybody knows adultery is wrong, except maybe the person in it. But every. I mean, this is. Everybody knows this. You don't need 1800 pages of Russian.

[Thomas Banks]

Literature to tell you even she knows it's wrong. I mean, there.

[Cindy Rollins]

No, exactly. Nobody thinks it's good.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

So again, he points out.

[Thomas Banks]

Look. But look.

[Cindy Rollins]

And here's the real problem with looking for that nugget of truth, Right. You're gonna go back to it chiefly to find further confirmation for our belief that it this or that rather than for a fresh immersion in what it is. So the real issue is, if we're reducing a story to its nugget of truth, all we're gonna do is find a nugget of truth to confirm us in what we already believe.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, that. And he says that here, thus, increasingly, we only meet ourselves.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. And the whole point of the book. Right. Is to get you out of yourself. But if you're reducing it to nuggets of truth, which you already believe to be true.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, right, right.

[Cindy Rollins]

I mean, the truth is somebody who wanted to find a justification for adultery could find it in Anna Karenina, if that's what they really wanted to find. They could say, oh, well, all this tragedy that she's going through is because you people just won't let her do it.

[Thomas Banks]

Right. If we just took away all the outward negativity of adultery, we would have a great. You know.

[Cindy Rollins]

And he says to look when it comes to. Because. Because literature works on multiple meanings and works on ambiguity of meaning, it. You could. You really could make a. You could make Anna Karen and say anything you wanted to. The point is, Lewis says, all you're going to do is meet yourself when what you're trying to find is the quote, unquote truth. Because we already think we know the truth and we end up seeing it confirmed. He goes on later on to say, too, students are really, really good at figuring out what you want them to say.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. Yeah. So they just. Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

So they will. They will say what you.

[Thomas Banks]

What. What you.

[Cindy Rollins]

They will tell you the nugget of truths that they know you want them to say. So every. You know, everybody will say, well, of course, Achilles shouldn't be mad. Wrath is wrong. And you're like, ah, yes, we've had a really good lesson and Homer has taught them no, now they'll never get mad again. That's right. They haven't learned anything except how to read you and give you what you want.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

You know, and we know that. He goes on to say, we're. This is one of, one of the money quotes for me. We are so busy doing things with the work that we give it too little chance to work on us. Thus increasingly we meet only ourselves. Right. So when you're, you know, when you. Just like you said, you're putting yourself over the work. When you say, I'm going to find the nugget of truth.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And Charlotte Mason talks about the acceptance or rejection of initial ideas. And a very intelligent person, she makes the point that very highly intelligent people with high IQs are able to twist anything into proof of what they want it to be. The smarter you are, the more weird conspiracy theories you can. You can believe because you can make yourself plausible arguments where the rest of us, the ordinary people, you know, we can't come up with good enough arguments to make ourselves believe that the world is flat. But. But someone who is really. So we have to be careful that we're not. We're not doing that when we're reading. We're not just mirroring ourselves.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, yes. And don't we see that, that. That even happens with the Bible? How many people use the Bible to justify all kinds of horrible evil?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. So that's why we have to be very careful with the Bible, because it has been used in unfaithful ways. And that's why it is the reminder. This is a personal relationship that we have with Christ based on his love for us and not on our codifying that in a way that's. That makes us very right.

[Cindy Rollins]

And talk about. I mean, to me, everything that I believe to be true about how to read a book is also what I believe to be true about. Read a Bible. Right. Get yourself out of the way. Don't just try to have your own beliefs confirmed by your reading of Scripture. It is so easy to do that. It is so easy to do that. But instead really enter in and like Lewis says, be taken out of yourself, be given a new perspective. Look around. I mean, you read the Bible not to find out what I think, but to find out what God thinks. I mean, I'm gonna quiet my inner voice as much as I possibly can so I can hear the Holy Spirit.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, the most convicting verse in The Bible, one of the most for me is the verse in Psalms where. And I forget which one it is, but he says, you thought that I was altogether like you. And we make God in our own image, and we make everything in our own image, our literature, our science, whatever. So to be a good reader, we need to recognize that we do that and step out of the way.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And so again, Lewis talks in this chapter about, you know, look, don't, don't be worried about what if I encounter bad beliefs. That's not how art works. And no atheist is going to read Dante and, you know, walk away. Not an atheist. That's not the way it works. He talks about how, like he read Dante before he was a Christian and he read Lucretius after he was a Christian. He says, basically, has it changed my opinion at all? It doesn't affect my beliefs because I've entered the work and I can appreciate the work of art as a beautiful thing, you know, and it's the same thing. I can look at a Greek sculpture that doesn't make me a Greek, can say, wow, what beautiful craft. That doesn't make me not a Christian. So he talks about that true lover of literature should be in one way like an honest examiner who's prepared to give the highest marks to the telling, felicitous and well documented exposition of views he dissents from or even abominates. Right. And then he goes on, this is one of my just smiley moments when he talks about English literature as an academic discipline. Because he's completely right. He's completely right. Forced to talk incessantly about books. What can they do but try to make books into the sorts of things they can talk about? And I think that's exactly true. I think we don't know what to do in our literature classrooms. So we talk about the worldview or the ideas or because you can talk, it's really easy. Easy to talk about that. Easy to, oh, Anna Cornyn is about marriage. What do we think about marriage? You know, that's easy. That's a no brainer. That's an easy way to fill an hour. It's not a literature discussion. Mm. So then he says this, which I think is the real significant. Hence literature becomes for them a religion, a philosophy, a school of ethics, psychotherapy, a sociology, anything rather than a collection of works of art. This is one of the reasons I am so opposed to the psychological study of literature. The people who read literature just define the psychological truth, or an example of this disorder or this, this you know, neurosis, like Lewis says, it might be in there. That is not the point of it.

[Thomas Banks]

Or people who take something they want to illustrate and put it in a story. That can be dreadful. Let me. You know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna illustrate this moral principle by this story. I'm gonna write. The story is just the worst kind of story.

[Cindy Rollins]

Mm. Mm. So, again, and talk about convicting. I know at different times in my life, I've absolutely believed literature was religion and philosophy. And I was supposed to treat it like that. And I was supposed to think of, you know, the author of a novel as a spokesperson for a philosophy that I needed to really examine and analyze and be on my guard against. But that is not how art works. That. That is not the way that you enter that kind. Fiction requires an entirely different kind of reading experience than an essay or a philosophy book or a work of theology. It is not the same experience at all. And then Lewis says this again. It's all about this. This disposition. Okay, because you might be thinking, yeah, but I actually do see people say this kind of stuff on. On the Internet or social media. I'll say, but, but, but, but, but, but. We had such a great conversation. I would never want to not have that conversation. I think no one's saying that talking about theology or philosophy is bad. Just don't mistake that for talking about literature. That's all. That's all he's saying. He talks about, like, well, what about people who write a psychological reflection? I read Book X and this is my profound truth. He said, if it's a brilliant mind, they no doubt have something brilliant to say. And it might be completely fascinating, but it has nothing to do with the work of literature. It's just. It's just they wrote their own. They wrote their own thing, and it might be good or might not be good, but it has nothing to do with. With the reading, which I absolutely. I absolutely believe. So. Yes. All right, Now, Chapter nine. He starts off reviewing this idea of the difference between receiving art and using art. And this is really what it comes down to. Because, of course, he's giving all these examples of how not to use art, which leaves us wondering, well, how do you receive it? What'd you think about this section, Cindy? I feel like I'm doing all the talking.

[Thomas Banks]

No, I'm sorry. But really, honestly, I'm swimming through thinking about this stuff, and I don't feel really. I really have. Don't have a lot of cohesive, coherent thoughts because I'm just, you Know, readjusting. Sure, I think.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

So, but I have a lot underlined here. I have a lot. I like when he says using is inferior to reception art if used rather than receive, merely facilitates, brightens, relieves or palliates our life and does not add to it. Yeah, I thought that was very helpful. A good quote, you know, it. It's not just reflecting us in a way that helps us feel cheery or, you know, makes us feel better or makes us recognize ourselves, but it's should add something to us.

[Cindy Rollins]

Absolutely. And so look at his broad category for what it means to use the content in a work of art. In literature. The user wants to use this content as a pastime for a dull or torturing hour. That's like the lowest on the totem pole, right? As a puzzle to solve, as a help to castle building or perhaps as source for philosophies of life. So he's got that all in the same category. They're all using it. The recipient, on the other hand, wants to rest in is for him, at least temporarily, an end. That way it may be compared upward with religious contemplation or downward with a game. Now this one of my favorite parts about this. And I do think that experiencing literature is very similar to religious contemplation. So what do I mean by that? So we all know that stories can change your life. We've all had that experience. Right. But when we, we have to think about how that happened. Because I think sometimes in the classroom we're trying to force that moment. Right. Force that life changing moment. Yes, on the lesson plan. And if I just, I don't know, give this worksheet, ask this question, you know, do this gimmicky thing, they'll have.

[Thomas Banks]

The life transform, everything will fall in place.

[Cindy Rollins]

Exactly. But of course, it's not like that in the same sense in which religious contemplation works. It's a mystery. And it happens over a long period of time. And it's a series of epiphanies, right? Where one moment you didn't understand, now now you do understand. And it cannot be forced. We all know that. We've all had the experience of having someone explain something to us. And we're in a fog of confusion with no idea. We're all frustrated, and then two weeks later, oh, that's what, that's what that meant. Right. And it just, it just comes mysteriously. And that's how a work of literature works. It transforms us over a lifetime. None of us finish a book, close it, and our life has changed. That is not how it works. Right. It's a long process. Over years, we go. Something about this book called us back. We can't quite shake it. We read something else, and now we realize another aspect of it. And over a long period of time, all of literature together has worked to have a transformative effect.

[Thomas Banks]

And we do try to steal that from other people. I see that all the time. That's the thing that really hurts me when I hear people over teaching books, how many moments are they stealing? Not just stealing them by giving them to somebody, but actually stealing them so that they never happen.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right, right. Or deceiving them into thinking they had the moment when they said the thing in class.

[Thomas Banks]

Right, right.

[Cindy Rollins]

You know, because. Because it's. That's just not how it works. So, yeah, you have to. You have to realize you're talking about layers of experience that will work together over a long period of time that will mysteriously transform you, but it's not going to be a single moment. There's no gimmicky way to have that, just like there's no gimmicky way in religious experience to have that. It comes when it comes. The wind blows where it will. And that is very true about literature, too. But we. That we all know, that's how it is. I have read Pride and Prejudice 11 times, about to start my 12th time, and I'm not the same person I was at 17. The book continually transforms me every time I encounter it. But, you know, the first time I read it, I wasn't. I didn't close the book and say, well, now I'm changed.

[Thomas Banks]

I had a friend once who had got, you know, had come along a philosophical path through a bunch of books, and that had led him to a certain place. And so in order to teach his kids, he wanted to take them through that exact same philosophical path that he had gone through. And he was very frustrated that when he did that, it didn't work. His kids didn't come to the same exact conclusions that he had come to through reading those same exact books in.

[Cindy Rollins]

That same exact order because they hadn't had his life. And that's also going back to. We're talking about with the heart book. That can be a danger with this whole heart book thing. Like, so he was sharing his heart books and he wanted him to have the same experience, but it doesn't work like that. It's the same thing where, you know, you had a. Somebody read you John 3:16 and you wept and repented and became a Christian and So then you read John 3:16 to somebody else and you're befuddled why it didn't work on them.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

And you're frustrated and upset and like, come on, come on, say the sinner's prayer. It just doesn't work like that. We cannot be in control of those transformative moments. You have to just enter into it and then. And then let it be. So, yeah. So let's see, what are some of the other things he talks about in this chapter? He talks.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, I'm kind of ahead here. I moved on to. But I like when he talks about that. When they demand a happy ending, it will not be for this reason, but because it seems to them in various ways, demanded by the work itself. I have gotten really upset with modern novels who refuse to put in the happy ending because I feel like they've been dishonest with their story. It's like, there is a happy ending, but because it's modern, you have to not have the happiness. Happy ending.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, because happy endings are passe. They're out of place.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. So now we take a perfectly good story that would have fit in with the happy ending and we twist it so there is no happy ending. And we think that is somehow. But it's false. It's a false note. And that really bothers me. I see that happen all the time. It's like you had a happy ending. It was right here in front of you, but you refused to take it because you're going to be so modern and up to date and anti happy endings. But then you should have written a different story because your story had a happy ending.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, that's right. That's right. And if we've ever read a story that doesn't feel satisfying, in the end, something felt forced. It's because some author tried to force an ideological framework onto a novel. And the form wouldn't carry it right. If everything about the story was saying, no, these two characters should be reconciled at the end. And you're just like, nope, I'm not gonna let it happen. We think feel it. Every one of us feels it in that story. And you think, oh, no, I didn't like the. We say things like, I didn't like the ending. You know, we know how to articulate it. But it's because the author was trying to force a work, trying to force a particular thing there, and it didn't work.

[Thomas Banks]

So as he goes on, he's saying, it's okay if a book, a piece of art, is for light entertainment and playful and as long as it fulfills that within itself. Right?

[Cindy Rollins]

Because that's, again, the form.

[Thomas Banks]

Right.

[Cindy Rollins]

It's perfectly okay to have a farce or something comical and to let that be what it is. But, you know, again, don't try to pull out the philosophy of life behind it. So then he gets into this idea of critical reading. And I think this is important because, again, this is one of the buzzwords we think we're supposed to be critical readers. This. I don't know if this is still the buzzword. When I was in college, this was the buzzword we need to raise. Critical thinkers and critical readers, right? And he says, well, this is a deeply misleading idea, right. That critical reading means we're putting ourselves in the position of the critic to criticize, to judge the work. I'm going to read this book and I'm going to pronounce some sort of judgment on it. Right? His view of life is wrong. Or the ideas presented are not biblical, you know. So I'm reading it to pronounce judgment. And he says, look, you can't. He says, I'm not saying you don't evaluate a work. Obviously you do, but you cannot evaluate it if you have not first received it. Right. You have to hear the whole argument before you can evaluate it.

[Thomas Banks]

And what kind of children are we raising when they think of themselves as, you know, a God looking down with big eyes into the book?

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. He says this. Unfortunately, this ideal is progressively less and less realized the longer we live in literary profession or in literary circles meet the ideal of we have to receive it before we can evaluate it. It occurs magnificently in young readers at a first reading of some great work, they are knocked flat. Criticize it. No, by God, but read it again. The judgment. This may be a great work, may be long delayed, but in later life, we can hardly help evaluating as we go along. It's become a habit. So he says that, you know, children are not naturally critics. When they. When they are blown away by a book, they want to read it again. I've seen that with all of my children. They're not interested in judging it. They want the experience again. The judgment comes later. It's long delayed. And look, we all have had the experience of talking to somebody. And you're talking and the person's being quiet and you're thinking. They're not actually listening to anything I'm saying. They're just preparing their response. I think we read like that. We've got pen in hand, we're marking up our book. We're arguing with the author, we can't hear a word they're saying.

[Thomas Banks]

Or you're talking and you're thinking, is she listening or preparing? Where's her response?

[Cindy Rollins]

Right, right. So when you, so when you read literature and you're having this argument with the author, you're not hearing. How can you even argue with them till you get to the end?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

You don't know what they've said. So I always tell my students, quiet yourself. Your job is to quiet yourself. The one job you have on this first read is to hear this story, the whole thing.

[Thomas Banks]

And this is, this is Esther De Waal's whole point in the book, Seeking God, is that we have to find a place of silence in order to hear, Hear God, hear the scripture, and hear anything that we're reading.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. And then, boy, just to get. He gets right at the heart of what happens in the classroom. Right. He says the failure is greatly aggravated if. While we know, while we read we know we are under some obligation to express a judgment, this is it. If your students know you're going to ask them to pronounce a judgment, then they're not going to be able to hear the book the whole time they're reading. They're preparing the response that you expect them to give in class. Right. He says the pencil gets to work on the margin and phrases of censure or approval begin forming themselves in our mind. All this activity impedes reception.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, go ahead. No, no. I was just saying in my copy of Araby, which was some college freshman book, it's really obvious that the notes are missing everything that's going on in the story because they're trying so hard to get ahead of, you know, what, the critique, the critique of the book. And to me it was comical. I enjoyed it so much, like reading these silly notes. But that's what happens all the time. It's like this person isn't even in the story yet because they're so busy critiquing these silly things that aren't even there.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, that's exactly it. And so anytime I run across some kind of gimmicky approach to reading, you know, chart and graph it, whatever. I'm thinking, okay, you have guaranteed they can't enter this story because you've given them all these tasks to do and none of them are listen.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

And so this is part of the reason why I love narration. Because what I think my students job is, is to hear what the author is saying. And I am trying to come up with all kind of ways that are just variations of asking them, what did you hear? And that's what narration is. You read the story and you say, what did you hear? And the act of reading from a little child to a scholar is essentially the same act. It's hearing. You just get better at hearing.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And he says here especially poisonous is the kind of teaching which encourages them to approach every literary work with suspicion. And I think this Lewis is the one who brings this point out in other places. But they become debunkers, and this is how we create men without chests. They become perpetual debunkers. They are always sitting in judgment of everything. And so they can never have honor, they can never have. Have all those good things that make a man with a chest because they're sitting in judgment. They're suspicious of everything.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's exactly right. He says, of course it comes from a good place. There are a lot of bad ideas out in the world.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

When we are so busy making sure we will never get taken in by a bad idea, we'll also never hear the good ones.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. We're impervious to bad writing, but it also. We become impervious to good writing.

[Cindy Rollins]

Exactly, exactly. And if we could just back it up just a little bit, in that paragraph, he says that he doesn't think criticism is the goal for boys and girls in school. We should not be teaching them to be critics. He says that the proper response is imitation to what you've read. And, of course, I think. I mean, I just tickle because, you know, this is exactly what homeschoolers do, so. Well, when I see your pictures of your kids acting out King Arthur or Robin Hood or whatever, I just think that is the perfect response. No worksheet, you know, no gimmicky. Find the theme or pick out the worldview or, you know, underline this word or whatever it's. They have had this experience, and they want to recreate the experience through imitation. And that's perfect. So he says, the necessary condition of all good reading is to get ourselves out of the way. We do not help the young to do this by forcing them to keep on expressing opinions.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

Thousand amens. So, you know, look, one of the dirty little secrets in classical education. And let me tell you, I have said this at so many schools, and every time I say it, there's all these nods, there's this relief as they all say, yes, okay, the dirty little secret of classical education is that we are graduating insufferable, arrogant students.

[Thomas Banks]

Eustace Scrubs.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. Not the humble, classically educated. Not the person who stands in awe of all of the wisdom of the world. No, the kids coming out of classical schools are arrogant and insufferable. And when I say that 100% of the time, the teachers say yes, yes, what do we do about that? But I think this is why. I think we have taught these children to be enamored with their own voices, to be enamored with their own opinions. We have taught them by our insistence on getting them to express an opinion about what they read. We keep telling them that their opinion is what matters, when the truth is they need to be told constantly their opinion doesn't matter. Right. There is no 13 year old in the world who has some kind of judgment he can pronounce on Plato. And that happens. I see it. 9th grade classrooms all over. Well, you know, I really think Plato got it wrong here. Really? Really. In all your 13 years of being alive, you understand everything and you can weigh in on this. I mean, it's just absurd. It's absurd that we are asking children all the time, you know, Judge, 2,000 years of wisdom, tell us what you think. You know what? No one, no one cares what you think. Homer does not care what you think. Plato does not care what you think. And I know that seems harsh, but I think that we need to get over this. You know, that the whole job is to make somebody feel good about themselves and their voice is valuable, that kind of thing, because that can lead to something out of proportion. And I'm not saying that our voice is not important. Okay? It's just what are we asking them to say? I mean, I am 100% think education should show students some mastery of some material and they should be able to articulate that. And they should be proud of themselves when their hard work results in a genuine body of knowledge that has been judged over time to be worthy. But I'm talking about my personal feeling, my personal opinion. The feeling like, you know, insisting that students. Well, sure, we heard what Plato has to say, but. Johnny, what do you have to say? Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

No, well, a wide and generous.

[Cindy Rollins]

Go ahead.

[Thomas Banks]

No, no, I just. A wide and generous curriculum should always humble the learner. The learner should approach. That's how you learn. You never start learning until you say, I don't know. All learning begins with I don't know.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes. And we do not see kids coming out of classical school saying, I don't know anything. You know, Alexander Pope, one of my favorite lines of poetry, a Little learning is a dangerous thing. That's what I.

[Thomas Banks]

We're teaching them that everything.

[Cindy Rollins]

That.

[Thomas Banks]

What do you. You know? And that we're not teaching them to say, I don't know. What. What does he say?

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. And so when I was in graduate school, I had a really good professor tell me this. She said that the point of my master's degree was to teach me how much I did not know.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. Amen.

[Cindy Rollins]

And I think about that all the time. The more we know, the more humble we should become because we realize how much we don't know. I know. I feel that as I age, wow. I'm going to die before I can know all these things. Yeah. So I am deeply concerned that we're graduating kids at 18 years old who do not feel, wow, there's a lot I don't know. Now, your education is not resulting in humility. You are doing it wrong. That's a hill I will die on a hundred times.

[Thomas Banks]

Amen. I agree. And I definitely think we have a problem in what we call classical circles. Not only do we elevate information above knowledge, but we also elevate the student above the knowledge. And that's why Charlotte Mason is such a beautiful. She has really captured this in her writings. Number one, with narration. Number two, with getting out of the way so that the work can do its job.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yep. Yep. And so, I mean, again, that's not to say that a young reader doesn't have a valuable insight about what they've read. Right. But it should come from a place of humility. And we should not presume and pressure them that the goal of their reading is to pronounce an opinion on it. Because that's just. To me, it would be like if your pastor ended his sermon with, and what did you guys think of what Jesus said? Honestly, no one cares what you think about. Jesus said. That's not the point. Right. Jesus said what? He said. Now, it's gonna work on your heart or it's not. You know, your opinion about it. And we. But that's the thing is we all know that insufferable person who's like, well, you know, I didn't think the Odyssey was very good. And, well, obviously there's something wrong with you.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

Because we have a lot of people who think it is good anyway. You know, look, I'll use a food. And I'm just so worried. People are at home going, what? What is she saying? Don't express an opinion. It taste. Lewis talks about this. Taste has to be developed and matured over time. Right. That's why when you're 6 years old, you think a frozen pizza is the best food in the world. I remember when I was a kid, I thought frozen pizza night. My parents would go out, my mom would make frozen pizzas, and that was like my favorite night, frozen pizza night. And I can. I will always remember my dad walking in the kitchen and he'd say, how can you eat that? It tastes like a piece of cardboard. And I looked at him and thought, what is wrong with you? I have pronounced judgment. This is the best pizza in the world. And then I grew up and I remember the first moment I tasted and thought, oh my gosh, my dad was trying to absolutely taste like a piece of cardboard. Right. My opinion was wrong. I did not need to be flattered that at six years old, I knew what tasted good and didn't taste good. Right. I had. I had a long way to go to mature my palate.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've all heard students say the most absurd things and. And I've heard myself and unfortunately say the most absurd things. I remember when I first got on class ed that email list that I talk about so much and I'm with all these intellig and I look back on the ignorance that I felt towards some of these great works of art. I was only judging them as theology or philosophy. I wasn't judging them as works of art. And I missed so much. And they did change my theology and my philosophy over the years, but in a good way. And not because I was taken in or I made a bad mistake theology, but because I could see it from a different place, a different from inside of the work instead of outside of the work.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's exactly it, Right. You have to go in and have that experience. And there's so many things we do as readers to jolt us out of that experience. And one of the things is, you know, really feeling this pressure to express an opinion. And so to get back to what you had said earlier, in this chapter, Lewis talks about the dangers of approaching a work suspicion. And that's exactly what you're talking about. I'm not going to get hoodwinked. I'm not going to get suckered. And so he talks about that and he says this, right? No poem will give up its secret to a reader who enters it regarding the poet as a potential deceiver and determined not to be taken in. We must risk being taken in if we're to get anything. The best safeguard against bad literature is full Experience of good. So that's the irony. If you go in there on guard, I'm not going to be taken in by any bad ideas. Lewis says the poem's never going to tell you its secret. You're never going to hear what this poem's about if you're so determined not to be taken in, you have to risk being taken in. You have to enter it if it's going to give up its treasure. Right. It's the irony of once you stop looking for the meaning and just go in and experience the story, the meaning reveals itself to you, but you can't control it, you can't demand it. You can't fill out a worksheet for it. You have to humbly enter it, and then it will give up its secret.

[Thomas Banks]

Wow. Well, that's. That's. That's wonderful. And I think we've gotten through two chapters.

[Cindy Rollins]

One last paragraph. Should we get that?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, let's do that. Let's do the last paragraph here, and then we'll put off the last two sections.

[Cindy Rollins]

Let's go ahead. And we'll get one more. One more episode. Because this is just too good to rush to. Rush through what, Louis? So he ends it saying, kids know. They know how to give you what you want. They know beforehand that they're supposed to like Shakespeare, not like Shelley. Right. That's classic worldview approach right there. Right? So he says, yeah, they're gonna give you the right answer, not because your teaching methods led to it, but because they already knew the right answer beforehand.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. Oh, that. That reminds me. And I may have already even done it on this. On this. There's a really great, great quote, great, great quote of Charlotte mason's newsletter by Mr. Gerard, where. Where she said, you're. You're. If you force people to have your opinion, they're still going to have their own opinion, but it's going to be unknown and unknowable by you. So in parenting, that works by our children. They see us, they know what our opinion is, they mimic it back to us, but then that means we never really know our children because they still are thinking these other thoughts. And when the teacher approaches literature this way and it becomes all about what the student is thinking about it, and the student's job is to find out what the teacher thinks and repeat it back to them. Then. Then the student. And the work itself is unknown and unknowable by the teacher. By the student. The work is unknowable in that scenario.

[Cindy Rollins]

A thousand times, yes. And you know that was one of the things that this book really convicted me of when I read it again in 2015. That was when I had to wrestle with the kinds of assessment I was doing in my literature classes. And I realized that I was testing students on whether or not they were having my experience and that that was unjust and was doing violence to them and the book. And so I had to stop. And I think that that's part of the dangers when you start teaching literature in a classroom. I think this is one of the great advantages homeschoolers have. They don't have to assess. You can just read the book and enjoy it. Right. But when you get in a classroom and you got to have some kind of paper trail for a grade, you run into all kind of trouble. Because if Lewis is right, this is a transformative work over the experience of a lifetime. How on earth can you assess that? How can you punish someone that they didn't have the life changing experience on the day of the test? That's not what art does. So I think that's also part of the reason why we have treated literature like philosophy, because you can test that, but you can't test an experience of art. We know that. So we run into all kinds of problems. So I really do think it comes down to nature honoring the nature of the book and honoring the nature of the reader. You have to keep asking that again and again and again. I hope we haven't left this episode on a down note that we've. Now that we've said all the things you're doing wrong.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I actually feel kind of encouraged because when I taught my kids, I didn't know how to teach literature. So I didn't. And I feel like that was probably a better place for them to be.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes, I see that all the time when people say, well, I don't know how to teach literature. I said, well, don't just read it out loud if that's all you can do, because better to do that than to do some bad teaching.

[Thomas Banks]

And my children all still love literature, so I feel like I didn't get in the way. At least I didn't get in the way.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. Well, hopefully next time we can see what it is, what it means to enter in a work, what it means to read literarily. Lewis doesn't get into that a ton because honestly, his argument is just to try to say that, that there's less of a purpose of arguing what's a good book than there is an arguing what's a good Reader, that is really, it's about the reader. But I have a lot of ideas, a lot of ideas what it means to enter a book and oh, good, good, good.

[Thomas Banks]

I can't wait to hear that.

[Cindy Rollins]

I have fit long time, A long time. And you know, it's one of my. It's one of my great frustrations is that I hear literary people talk about books in an unliterary way or an anti literary way all the time. Just absolutely drives me crazy. And I just think, nope, nope, nope. I mean, look, it's not a metaphor to me. When Lewis says you're doing violence on the work. It feels like that to me. When I hear people talking about books in an unliterary or an anti literary way, I feel pained. I feel like I've just walked into some shootout and there's blood everywhere and I'm gonna yell. I want to throw myself, my body in front of the book. Right? Don't shoot the book. That's how it feels to me.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, that gives us something to look forward to then sort of maybe I'll be like, oh, no, she's been shitting me all these times.

[Cindy Rollins]

No, no, not at all. Not at all. All right, well, that, that wraps up this episode. So again, then you can head over to our Patreon. You can find out more about that on the literary life. We got a link to the Patreon and of course we have show notes with links to all the books that are mentioned. We've got a copy of the poem there. You definitely want to go check out the website to get the full show notes. And of course, if you like this podcast, rate it, review, subscribe, give us some feedback, show us some love, as they say. That's kind of a corny thing. If you want to show me lovely.

[Thomas Banks]

Books, really, don't be suspicious of us.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yes, really. Surrender. All right, well, thanks so much. We're going to leave you until next time with another poem read by our own poet, Mr. Banks. And until then, carry on cultivating your literary life. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail]. join the Conversation at our member only Patreon forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[Angelina Stanford]

Rose Cheeked Laura by Thomas Campion. Rose Cheeked Laura Come sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's silent music either other sweetly gracing Lovely forms do flow from consent divinely framed. Heaven is music, and thy beauty's birth is heavenly. These dull notes we sing, discord's need for helps to grace them. Only beauty, purely loving, knows no discord, but still moves to light like clear springs renewed by flowing ever perfect, ever in themselves eternal.