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urven i iuuwwuto aimu ja^uu ^ Archdiocese of Atlanta GEORGIA BULLETIN SERVING GEORGIA S 71 NORTHERN COUNTIES GEORGIA BULLETIN BOOK SUPPLEMENT THURSDAY, MAY 30, 1963 Fiction Is A Subject With Life- It Should Be Taught That Way BY IRVING & CORNELIA SUSSMAN The proposition ("repugnant to most English teachers")that fiction if it is going to be taught in the high schools, should be taught as a subject and as a subject with history, is Miss Flannery O'Connor's simple answer to some parental ob jections to their children’s reading assignments. Miss O’Connor’s article "Fiction Is A Subject With A History - It Should Be Taught That Way" solves the teaching problem by a Pilate-like wash ing of hands, as if to say: "Don’t try to intimidate me with your objections about eighth and ninth graders read ing modern fiction— go read the fiction of the past; those wri ters are dead, you can chop them as you please, they won’t care." But unfortunately, sending disgruntled parents off to the greener pastures of the past merely evades the real problem of teaching fiction in our secon dary schools. "THF teacher’s ’work," writed Sr. Petra, O.S.B., who teaches in Covington, Kentucky, "is to open doors, build roads, erect ladders, through which, on which, up which the student may come into the possession of truth. The student can no more live without truth than a plant can grow in cement. It is an act of love for a teacher to put him on the road where truth can be found." So, though an author is tempt ed to theorize and a parent to take umbrage, the teacher must go on, must have courage to carry on with the work at hand, with the teaching which is his work. And teaching does mean to open doors, to help the child expand in perceptiveness, to help the child grow. The teach er is asking a continual ques tion of the young person; he asks it through all teaching and especially through the teaching of fiction — he is asking the young person to ask himself* "Do I have the courage to become involved?" lliis question is the core of learning; it is the core of grow ing up— and it requires first of all to know what you are becoming involved ini The an swer, of course, is "Life." Knowing about "life" means knowing WHAT man is and WHY lrr hr. But tkk takes learning. Hie child has to learn there are other worlds, must become aware of these other worlds inside other human beings. This IRVING SUSSMAN knowledge of reality is taught through fiction. FICTION is but one kind of learning in the educational pro cess; yet it is a most essential kind. Through fiction the young person becomes aware of others, comes out erf his SELF NESS, discovers what it means to be in another's predicament, to feel another person’s sor rows and indignations, and takes this back into the "own" little eggshell. Fiction is a kind of impregnation of the undeveloped self, the ego locked up in the eggshell. Through fiction, the single individual comes to re cognize others, to develop un derstanding, even, God willing, to break out of the shell, be a mature person, to grow up. CORNELIA SUSSMAN But to become involved with life through the means of fic tions requires learning to read both the fiction of the past and the fiction of the present. The two Georgia cases that seem to have frightened Flan nery O’Connor right out v of the present, so that she asks please that children be assigned Coop er, Hawthorne, Melville, but no moderns— could be parralleled by two California cases. The only differnece is the era in volved. The California parents were not objecting to their children’s reading assignments in modern fiction, but to their children's reading assignment in the "Grand-daddy" of all fiction, THE DIVINE COMEDY. Although Dante is a poet, many professors regard his DIVINE COMEDY as the beginning of the modern novel, THE California parents ob jected to their children’s being told about Dante and having to read an assignment from THE DIVINE COMEDY because these parents did not believe people are punished for their sins and they did not want their children reading the kind of fiction that portrayed hell as a truth. There are cases where par ents have objected to THE MER CHANT of VENICE, wanting Shylock delected; others have objected to BEOWULF as an example of drunken-ness amon gst "Anglo-Saxon" forbears and also because the gory de tails of Grendel’s death might influence a blood-lust in the young readers. A teacher in Arizona was censured by parents for permitting her 9th grade students to read THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, this un fortunate title having been in terpreted as praise of the Soviet Union. No doubt everyone has read of the parents in New York state who objected to their children's reading THE SCAR LET LETTER in the 9th grade, because Hawthorne dealt with adultery. They also wanted Mark Twain's HUCKLEBERRY FINN out because Huck is a bad example who might lead child ren to think it is better to be a happy bum than a success ful business man. IN THE light of the above, one ponders Miss O’Connors crack that "too frequently in high schools anyone who can speak English is allowed to teach it." In all charity, one assumes Miss O’Connor is kid ding, or better still, trying to irritate a precious pearl under the shell of an already much- irritated oysterl The teaching of fiction, whet her the subject be taught as a subject with a history going as far back as Beowulf and Dante, or a subject with life as re cent as Golding and Salinger, will always have a variety of objectors. The reason is not hard to find— fiction, like life itself, has many objectional as pects. Yet, we dare not keep life away from our children, no more than we dare keep our children away from life; nei ther teachers nor parents nor just plain citizens really want this. True, one runs the risk of having a fuddled student write that Lincoln was shot while at tending a movie. But even if he wrote "while attending GONE WITH THE WIND," teachers would just have to take that risk. All of life is risk, and education is the greatest risk of all. THE TEACHER’s work is to risk education; to risk arousing in the child an interest in read ing. It is indeed futile to talk of a young person's taste in reading, or to worry about whe ther or not the young person’s being consulted. If fiction is taught as a living experience, taste in reading, comprehen sion, perceptiveness will fol low as the night follows the day. Life is "a constant," in all ages— and so is love. In fic tion, as in life, love is an "ever fixed mark"; so is adul tery, whether it is portrayed as a sin, or as "an incon venience" (which Miss O’Con nor says is its portrayal in the modem novel—an evaluation not entirely just). Fiction reading, taught both historically and presently, brings the relatedness, of human existence into focus. The young reader who first reads of adultery, for instance, in the Bible, says: "Oh, that’s all past history.*' How often teach ers hear the remark: "In those days things were different. We’ re living in modem days." Like an echo from a hollow cave, the same remark resounds for ANNA KARENINA; centuries have been traversed but to the younger reader, it is all "Past history." Yet, when that same young reader sees these past histories fall into focus through the recognition of a similar human predicament in a mo dem novel, he does read the fiction of the past with new interest and understanding. A 9TH grade girl wrote, in a book report on Graham Greene’s THE END OF THE AFFAIR, that she found this story "so different** because she had never known that adul tery was a rival to the love of God. Now she understood the Bible, and saw why Sarah, the heroine of the Greene story, was unable to contribute in an adulterous affair after she fell in love with God. IN AN 11th grade class, stud ents were assigned selections from Thomas More’s UTOPIA. Characteristic cries of pain and agony were heard all over the school, and even though the colorful history of Henry VIII was stressed, the satire pointed —up, humanism and "how like our times" etc,; still UTOPIA did not come alive for these young people. Then a "mira cle" happened. A 10th grade English teacher mentioned THE LORD OF THE FLIES by Gold- CONTINUED ON PAGE 4 IRVING and Cornelia Sussman have several times combined their literary talents. He is Head of English Department, Palm Springs High School, Palm Springs, California, ( May 23, 1963, he received at a special meeting of the Board of Education a "Certificate of Ap preciation" presented to him "in recognition of distinguished and loyal service to the Palm Springs Unified School District" by the Board of Education and Superintendent of Schools) Author of plays (he was once head of the Drama Department at the Dominican Col lege of San Rafael, and was indeed the first to produce Claudel's "Christopher Columbus" with music by Darius Milhaud, in the United States. It was put on at Domincan College some twenty years ago by Irving, and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra came and played Milhaud’s music). He is also author of many articles including "Medieval Mystery PlaYs" (The Critic, January, 1961) and a very recent profile of Frank Skully in January, 1963 Catholic Digest. He is one the editorial board of The Bridge, edited by Mon signor John M. Oesterreicher, and in collaboration with Cornelia, has written for The Bridge essays on the crucifixion paintings of Marc Chagall, the religious sculptures of Epstein, an essay on Pasternak, and also one on J. D. Salinger, plus others. CORNELIA Sussman is the author of four novels, under the pen name of Cornelia Jessay. The Growing Roots, her first, was a Jew- ish Book Club Selection. This and Teach the Angry Spirit were both published by Crown, New York. The Treasures of Darkness, pub lished by Noonday Press, New York, and also by Collins, England, was among the books chosen to be included for discussion in the Lon don Times issue on the American imagination. Her latest novel Consuela Bright, was published in the U.b. by Sheed and Ward, and <n England bv Harvill She is on the editorial board of The Bridge, and has collaborated on the above names articles with Irving.