Disliking Books free essay sample

â€Å"Disliking Books† is excerpted from the book â€Å"Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education† published in 1993. Graff wrote this article to make teachers aware of the difficult experience of growing up from a non-bookish person, even afraid of serious literary to an intellectual person. The article encourages teachers help students read critics. Students can benefit from critics become literary people and enjoy reading literature. Gerald Graff came from a Jewish middle-class family. His father was an intellectual person. Mr. Graff was disappointed because his son didn’t read literature. Graff knows what it is like to not understand literary works. While most people think reading comments from critics will contaminate the article because students may read with prejudice and not be able to think about article itself. In his article â€Å"Disliking Books†, Gerald Graff argues that reading critics will help shape their mind to a literary sensibility. We will write a custom essay sample on Disliking Books or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In Graff’s personal experience, critics didn’t ruin the excitement of literature. Instead, critics inspired him to think more deeply about the book and relate it to modern life. In college, he fought for his degree and read some books. Deep-down he felt these books were boring and tasteless. Gerald Graff had no interest in serious books before he got to college. But everything changed. When he read â€Å"The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn† by Mark Twain and the critics’ debate about the end of the novel, his interest was awakened, he reread this novel with surprise and passion. One of the critics implied Twain was cheating at the end of book. Graff thought cheating was a thing that usually happened to students; he never thought a famous author would make a mistake that even undergraduate students could demonstrate. Through this experience, he found the critics’ debate at the end novel was quite interesting. He became one of the critics, attended debate. His interest was aroused: catch literature â€Å"bug†. In this article, Graff claims that critics for him, are a necessary part of the path in beginning an intellectual person. If he did not read and participate in critics’ debate, his vocation would not be found. Critics helped sprout his interest in serious literature. He was a nonintellectual person who feared literature and even resisted talking like an intellectual. For him it was hard to find resonance in reading. Before he read and participate critics’ debate, he thought the story happened so long ago; it had nothing to do with him. For him, the story was â€Å"dead†. But the debate he made was like having a conversation with author and made story alive; so when the story happened didn’t matter anymore. Reading critics made him feel enthusiasm about books. He read books with passion and expectation. Graff insists that compared with just thinking about the reading. To read well, one must able to talk well about what you read; to talk well, you must learn literary language and ongoing critical debates, to read well and talk well about books can help you be an intellectual person. Instead of stumbling blocks, critics are stepping stones to help you become an intellectual person.