Why You Need to Read the Book

Today, a student boasted she'd caught up on the Literary circles because she'd read the sparknotes. 

Now I use sparknotes to refresh my brain if I read the book and am mentally drawing a blank, they have a place.  I survived Faulkner by reading and rereading, and using the Cliffnotes to explain to me (or try to, see yesterday's post) what I actually read.   So I get using summaries to help put the whole thing together in my brain. 

However, this is a young lady who hopes to be a lawyer.  I told her, no one wants a lawyer to use the sparknotes of cases, they want a lawyer who delves into the law, who reads the cases and looks for subtext, for meaning beyond what is said on the page.

Another student flagged me down to look at a paper.  They've had a while to prepare, multiple days, multiple opportunities to craft a report.  There was one sentence.   Trying not to despair, I told her, I can't critique what she didn't write. She had the grace to start typing.

I know they have more thoughts than they give, more words than they share, and the stories we've read, warn about becoming sedated by technology to the point of losing essential knowledge, wisdom, connections, community.   (See Harrison Bergeron, The Pedestrian, and The Veldt).   They don't quite get, what is sci-fi, is a warning of what could be reality, if we substitute sparknotes for books, tweets for thoughts, and phones for actual people.   If all our art becomes derrivative and algorhymn driven, we shall eventually find ourselves at dead ends, with duller spirits. 

However, the oldest of the old may save us.   The day before one of those same students asked a question about the Odyssey, and immediately, the teacher and I were off to the races giving them the high lights.  We'd just made it to Ithaca when the bell rang.   There was a crew of students wrapped up in one of the oldest of stories being told in the oldest of ways.   "What happens next?" the one with the one sentence asked.  "How do you know this?" the sparknote reader added in.

"We've read it."
"Several times."
We'd given a summary of the Iliad and half the Odyssey.
For a bonus hit on the matter, I added, "You know, the poets who knew these by heart, knew all the lines. I'm just giving you a summary or shortened Twitter version."
"This is the short version?  How many lines?"
A quick google refresher of the numbers and I told her, "The Iliad has 15,693, while the Odyssey has 12,110."   and added, we still had the taking back of Ithaca to go to finish the tale. 

"Come back tomorrow and read the actual chapters."  I said. "This whole story was invented out of people's imagination, without books or the internet or Cliffnotes." 
"What are Cliffnotes?" 
"Sparknotes for my generation."  I'd planned on reading the sparknotes to catch up on her particular book, but thought a dare might work better. 

"I've not read your book yet.  I'll read as far as you're supposed to by tomorrow, no Sparknotes." 
She took me up on the offer.  Maybe we'll get somewhere in the story, maybe she'll find herself in love with the story.  Here's hoping.