The Crafty Reader

Rating:
Summary: Readable, Smart, Convincing
Review: Scholes' prose is crisp and clear. His critique of the New Critics is hardly new, but it is efficiently done. Perhaps most interesting is the range of texts Scholes' approaches, from poetry to online posts by High School students to the Bible (read through Southern Baptists and the Pope, among others). He does a good job looking at Harry Potter and Edna St. Vincent Millay alike, and in both cases, he shows how satisfying reading can be when we strip away the demands of the New Critics and allow ourselves the luxury of a reading informed by an understanding of genre and history. One of the most useful things in this book for me was its neat description of the evolution of a genre (Scholes describes the renaissance, classical and baroque periods of genres like Fantasy and Mysteries).

As an English teacher, this book is something of a Bible for me. I refer to it often when I am trying to explain what and how I try to teach. That said, it is, admittedly, short on technique. It is not always (or even often) clear how to bring Scholes' ideas from the page to the classroom. To be fair, his intent was not to produce a manual, but still, as a teacher convinced by much of his argument, I often wish he had. In spite of his critique of "virtuoso readings", much of the joy of this book comes in appreciating Scholes' own considerable virtuosity as he takes on one underappreciated genre after another.

Scholes' readings are delightful and his language is refreshingly unpretentious. This is a fast read and well worth the effort for any interested reader and, especially, for any teacher of English.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The title and jacket discription of this worthy book is highly misleading. While purporting to explain the "craft" of reading (although disclaiming to actually "teach" that craft), it is merely a string of essays on items that are of interest to the author: how the New Critics estranged readers of poetry, how detective fiction plays with certain rules, what is the definition of science fantasy. The actually "craft" of reading is often thrown into the essays as an afterthought, when the author recalls that this is what his book was supposed to be about. While the essays themselves are not without interest and are clearly written, it is dishonest to advertise one thing and deliver another: a literary bait-and-switch. So let the reader (and buyer) beware.