As with everything in life, the way in which we relate a text to ourselves, others, and the world goes through an evolutionary process. There are three different stages of reading development put forth; Text-Self is the most basic of the trichotomy in that the text’s only demand upon the reader/viewer is that they ask themselves if they like it and/or if it agrees with their values as a person. The other two are a bit more abstract in their demands upon the reader. Text-Texts seek out any relations that the text in question may have with previously published/released work, whether it be of the same medium or not. The Text-World model leaves the realm of art, and opens it up to all aspects of life: politics, religion, science, economy, philosophy, psychology, to name a few. One by one, I have learned to use each of these models in order to appreciate published works fully.
The level of reading development I was in previous to this class, I believe was a mixture of all three stages. Since I was little, every time I see a movie, see a new music act, or read anything, I always look to see if it interests me. I have a wide range of interests, so I’m pretty open to checking out new things, and therefore get to make that type of analysis quite often (I assume most people do the same whenever they are exposed to something entirely new). The stage I tap second-most often, I would have to say is the Text-World model. This is due in part to the past few years of my continued education. While my attempts at higher education previous to Cardinal Stritch were unsuccessful-for one reason or another-I was still engaging myself in heady conversations and classes that exposed me to, and helped me understand my own personal viewpoints of many different aspects of society, religion, and science. For example, in the fall of 2003, I took a wonderful English class at UW-Whitewater taught by a professor by the name of Bill Keelty. That semester, he had our entire class subscribe to The New Yorker magazine, which was definitely a step ahead of what my pleasure reading was, and it exposed me to some of the greater themes in our society. I too, have taken many different science classes which have exposed me to a deeper understanding of the biological systems at work on our planet, allowing me to draw similarities and conclusions from my understanding. However, school is not the only influence in how I read.
I spent two years after my Whitewater experience living on my own in Colorado in different mountain towns getting by as a busboy, but mostly by teaching kids snowboard lessons at two resorts out there. Whether it was on the job, or talking to my 42 year old roommate (while I was at the age of 19), I learned a lot about how the world works, and how to treat different situations. Living with a 42 year old, and hanging out with my 30 year old co-workers changed my outlook on the world entirely, specifically helping me to break down the concept of “age” as a social barrier. In that light, I’ve been working at a stained glass studio on and off (whenever there’s a commission to be had) for the last four years. My boss at the studio is 73 years of age, and has more life experience that you can shake a stick at. With her insight—some of which, I’d like to think, has been passed to me—alongside my life experiences in Colorado, boosted by a few years of higher learning has often landed me in a position where I can evaluate subjects on the Text-World level. The last stage that I arrived at was the Text-Texts level which I achieved last semester. In the spring, I took a Writing Comm. class with Sarah Schuetze; one of our final papers for the semester was a synthesis paper that involved the comparison of three different texts. I chose a Twilight Zone episode, a dramatic film you may be familiar with, “The 6th Sense”, and a Civil war historical fiction short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. I chose those texts, because I saw in them usage of a similar literary technique: that of using an abrupt, epiphanal ending to a story. That single writing assignment allowed me to complete the circuit of reader development, as it were.
I now, so far this semester, have moved slightly away from the Text-Self model, and have begun to foster a deeper understanding of the Text-Texts stage, while maintaining a good deal of the Text-World capabilities. Our unit on intertextuality thoroughly heightened my ability to analyze texts of all sorts. As a reader and observer in general, I was always more apt to compare a text to aspects of real life in the world we live in rather than to previous texts. I also probably wouldn’t have analyzed what movies an actor had been in previous to one that I’m watching, in order to get a better understanding of what’s on the screen. However, in my second blog entry (the one on Pulp Fiction) I mentioned something that wasn’t brought up in class, but had a significant impact on how I watched the movie,
While perhaps a bit more subtle (whether I'm right or wrong), I got a laugh out of this next example. At Jack Rabbit Slim's, Mia volunteers the both of them to perform in a dance contest. The only thing is that... her dance partner is none other than John Travolta, the leading star from everybody's favorite 1970's flick: Saturday Night Fever. This example may not be a direct reference, but anybody that knows anything about movies knows that John Travolta made a name for himself with those dance moves of his (Self, blog page).
Now, I’ve seen that movie at least a dozen times, and never had I made the connection between that scene and Travolta’s earlier success as an actor. It is, however, that very information that can promote a deeper appreciation for a book/movie/TV show/etc. Indeed, this is a tactic for deeper understanding that is new to me, and will definitely be something that I will look into from now on.
It was on my first blog post that I reaffirmed my understanding of Text-World to myself by analyzing Paul Auster’s writing style in relation to my own past education, and the education system at large. I discussed how any and all reading assigned to me in the past had a point that I was to discover and relate to my own life. It seemed that I was given a task similar to Quinn’s while he was a private eye:
What he has are lines and zig-sags that somewhat resemble symbols one may have seen before, but what it is is a man walking down and across rectangular city blocks over time, that are eventually bound to create some sort of geometric pattern. I believe that his task was hopeless, like trying to find some deeper meaning in the random pattern in clouds. I also believe that this story is going nowhere. I’ve been conditioned over the years to read stories that had a point to be made, and an objective to be accomplished. This book, it seems, is challenging everything I’ve learned about reading, and is putting “patterns” out there that I'm focusing on, trying to make sense of it all, but in reality, I’m just grasping at straws (Self, blog page).
Whether it was due to the assignments given, or due to some unconscious decision of my own, I have steered away from the Text-Self model and really focused on the Text-Texts and Text-World stages of reading development.
I personally do not agree with the way these paradigms are approached as “stages.” I, in fact do not believe that this trifecta of “stages” are not stages at all really; I see them instead more like three different methods toward understanding literature. You see, I believe that I achieved the Text-Self and the Text-World “stages” well before I really ever put much thought into the Text-Texts “stage.” Of course while we all judge something first by how much we like something, our understanding of our surroundings and our appreciation for things matures and evolves. In that way, I believe that in order to have a true understanding of oneself (and therefore a more meaningful Text-Self comprehension), we must gain a deeper self-understanding of how we feel towards the qualities listed in the Text-World discourses: the political scene, the world’s religions, science’s contributions, the economy, philosophy’s questions, and the psychology of the human race. Also, the “stage” paradigm suggests that one might leave one stage, somehow graduating the individual toward the next level never to look back. I think that’s just foolish, as each method has its own place in literary analysis, it just differs depending on who you’re evaluating the text for, and what aspect you’re analyzing the text for.
I thereby declare the “stage” myth of reader development debunked! The evolution I have undergone as a reader—and a writer—has (very much like biological evolution) left branches of literary techniques, each of which is accessible at any given time for me to use effectively and conscientious.
