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apologize. It simply isn t true. In fact, we ve only scratched the surface here. It now strikes me as highly
peculiar, for instance, that I could have brought you this far with no mention of fire. It s one of the
original four elements, along with water, earth, and air, yet somehow it didn t come up in our
discussion. There are dozens of other topics we could have addressed as easily and as profitably as
the ones we did. In fact, my original conception was for somewhat fewer chapters, and a slightly
different lineup. The chapters that wound up getting included reflect the noisiness and persistence of
their topics: some ideas refused to be denied, crowding their way in and sometimes crowding out
those that were less ill-mannered. Looking back over the text, it strikes me as highly idiosyncratic. To
the extent that my colleagues would agree that this mode of reading is at least a strong part of what
we do, they would no doubt squawk over my categories. Quite right, too. Every professor will have a
unique set of emphases. I gather my thoughts into groupings that seem inevitable, but different
groupings or formulations may seem inevitable to someone else.
What this book represents is not a database of all the cultural codes by which writers create and
readers understand the products of that creation, but a template, a pattern, a grammar of sorts from
which you can learn to look for those codes on your own. No one could include them all, and no reader
would want to plow through the resulting encyclopedia. I m pretty sure I could have made this book,
with not too much effort, twice as long. I m also pretty sure neither of us wants that.
Second, a felicitation. All those other codes? You don t need them. At least you don t need them all
spelled out. There comes a point in anyone s reading where watching for pattern and symbol becomes
almost second nature, where words and images start calling out for attention. Consider the way Diane
picked up on the birds in The Garden Party. No one taught her to go looking for birds per se in her
reading; rather, what happens is that, based on other reading experiences in a variety of courses and
contexts, she learned to watch for distinctive features of a text, for repetitions of a certain kind of
object or activity for resonances. One mention of birds or flight is an occurrence, two may be a
coincidence, but three constitutes a definite trend. And trends, as we know, cry out for examination.
You can figure out fire. Or horses. Characters in stories have ridden horses and sometimes
bemoaned their absence for thousands of years. What does it mean to be mounted on a horse, as
opposed to being on foot? Consider some examples: Diomedes and Odysseus stealing the Thracian
horses in The Iliad, the Lone Ranger waving from astride the rearing Silver, Richard III crying out for a
horse, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda roaring down the road on their choppers in Easy Rider. Any
three or four examples will do. What do we understand about horses and riding them or driving them
or not? See? You can do it just fine.
Third, some suggestions. In the Appendix, I offer some ideas for further reading. There s nothing
systematic or even particularly orderly about the suggestions. I m certainly not weighing in on the
culture wars, offering a prescribed reading list to make you...whatever. Mostly, these are works I ve
mentioned along the way, works I like and admire for a variety of reasons, works I think you might like
as well. I hope you ll find them even better now than you would have a number of pages ago. My main
suggestion, though, is to read things you like. You re not stuck with my list. Go to your bookstore or
library and find novels, poems, plays, stories that engage your imagination and your intelligence. Read
Great Literature, by all means, but read good writing. Much of what I like best in my reading I ve
found by accident as I poked around bookshelves. And don t wait for writers to be dead to be read;
the living ones can use the money. Your reading should be fun. We only call them literary works.
Really, though, it s all a form of play. So play, Dear Reader, play.
And fare thee well.
Appendix Reading List
I VE TOSSED BOOK AND POEM TITLES at you, sometimes at a dizzying pace. I remember that sense
of disorientation from my very early undergraduate days (it took me years to figure out Alain Robbe-
Grillet from the passing references one of my first professors was wont to make). The result can be
intoxicating, in which case you go on to study more literature, or infuriating, in which case you blame
the authors and works you never heard of for making you feel dumb. Never feel dumb. Not knowing
who or what is ignorance, which is no sin; ignorance is simply the measure of what you haven t got to
yet. I find more works and writers every day that I haven t got to, haven t even heard of.
What I offer here is a list of items mentioned throughout the book, plus some others I probably should
have mentioned, or would have if I had more essays to write. In any event, what all these works have in
common is that a reader can learn a lot from them. I have learned a lot from them. As with the rest of
this book, there is very little order or method to them. You won t, if you read these, magically acquire
culture or education or any of those scary abstractions; nor do I claim for them (in general) that they
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