A community burning to read

The Department of English in Arts & Sciences may be ranked fourth in national faculty productivity, but don’t expect faculty members to stay holed up in classrooms, discussing Chaucer or Shakespeare. Professor and Department Chair David Lawton, who, by the way is one of the world’s leading Chaucer scholars, says that reading isn’t an elite activity; it’s an essential one for the entire community.

The challenge of taking literature into the community through “The Big Read” is an opportunity Professor Lawton and his colleagues welcomed. The English Department is one of only 72 organizations across the country to receive a Big Read grant; and it is the only university department in the country to spearhead a Big Read.

The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), designed to restore reading to the center of American culture by providing people with opportunities to read and discuss a single book through organized book discussions, lectures, tours of art exhibitions, and theatrical and musical performances in their community.

Fahrenheit 451 was chosen for the Big Read in St. Louis because it raises the all-important question of the utility of books. It’s the futuristic tale of society gone awry, in which firemen burn books and the state suppresses learning. It’s an extraordinary fantasy that sticks in the mind, and has always struck a chord with readers. Now that the internet presents a more fundamental challenge even than Ray Bradbury’s fire to the continued viability of books, participants in the Big Read will have many opportunities to explore the themes of censorship and the role of literature in society.

As Professor Lawton sees it, coming together to discuss literature leads to exchanging ideas, which is one of the primary purposes of the English Department. Reading teaches us that there are more than two sides to every question. Gathering the community together to examine those questions and discuss their many answers in a variety of venues helps people disagree productively, not to achieve consensus. After all, he explains, the ideas that come about when discussing literature are the glue that holds our society together.

Reading is less than four millennia old, and during that time there have been battles for free access to books. Now that we have books in both printed and digital form, Professor Lawton explains, our danger is that we don’t have enough time to read the books around us. The Big Read helps encourage people to make time to read and re-connect with the value of it.

Professor Lawton kicked off The Big Read at a recent Assembly Series. An mp3 download of his lecture is available here.

The Department of English, which is part of Arts & Sciences, will partner with numerous organizations on the Danforth Campus, including Edison Theatre, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, the Washington University Libraries, the Assembly Series, The Center for the Humanities; as well as local governments, library districts, school districts, local television station KTVI-Fox 2, and other arts and literacy organizations. The NEA presents the Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest. Listings of all events in St. Louis can be found on the Big Read Web site.

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