How to Read Novels Like a Professor: Book Review

• Title: How to Read Novels Like a Professor
• Author: Thomas C. Foster
• Published: New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008

About the Author[1]

Thomas C. Foster grew up in rural Ohio.  His early inspirations to literary works came from Robert Louis Stevenson and Mark Twain.  He taught literature from 1975 until his retirement in 2014 with his last 27 years at the University of Michigan-Flint.  He has written the following books published under HarperCollins: How to Read Literature Like a Professor (2003, revised 2014), How to Read Novels Like a Professor (2008), Twenty-five Books that Shaped America (2011), How to Read Literature Like a Professor—for Kids (2012), Reading the Silver Screen (2016), and How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse (2018).  Less well-known works include Form and Society in Modern Literature (Northern Illinois University Press, 1988), Seamus Heaney (Twayne, 1989), and Understanding John Fowles (University of South Carolina Press, 1994).  He is still active writing books and you can find his blog site at thomascfoster.com.

My Perspective

This book was an accidental find.  Meaning I was not looking for it and it was not recommended by anybody I knew.  As far as I was concerned it did not exist.  I stumbled upon it at one of my local library branches.  I have noticed the sharp decline of books in the 800 section in the library.  Where have all the classics mysteriously disappeared to?  I usually order books from my library app and have them email me when they come in.  This is a great service and I get a lot of mileage off this, or rather I save a lot of mileage.  Anyhow, I was perusing the shelves and the title caught my eye.  I decided to pick it up and give it a try.   I have no regrets.  I actually intend to read some of Foster’s other works.

The writer is not boring.  The material is presented in a light-hearted manner that draws the reader in.  My opinion is this would be great for future novel writers to read.  I think it captures enough of the characteristics of the novel to give a person an idea of what they might be missing. 

“Right from the top, a novel begins working its magic on readers.  Perhaps more remarkedly, readers also begin working their magic on the novel.  The beginning of a novel is, variously, a social contract negotiation, an invitation to a dance, a list of rules of the game, and a fairly complex seduction.  I know, I know – seduction?  Seems extreme, doesn’t it?”[2]

Foster looks at the novel as a two-way interface.  A novel is not some dead one-way communication device where you either got the exact message or not.  But rather it is something that is decoded by the individual reader.  It speaks to each individual in a unique way.  It is telling you a story about The Story.  That big story is all of life.  All that ever was, is, and will be.  That is pretty neat in my eyes.

Did you know there are at least eighteen things you can learn about a novel from the first page?  I was not really aware of this until Foster takes some time to explain it.  This book will definitely affect how I look at every book from here on out.  It is not that he his really telling me something I didn’t know at some level.  It is just bringing it out in the open and now I am aware of it.

We learn from a novel. I personally feel that those who are not reading are missing out on a great experience that will help you develop in ways you never even imagined.  Sometimes you just don’t know what your missing until you discover it.    Some people may believe there is nothing to learn from reading a novel, that it is pure entertainment and that’s it.  “Even so, we can and do learn things from them.  Not direct moral lessons, but more general implications about human behavior, the desire for justice, the need to be loved, or right conduct.  We can’t help it; we are an inference-drawing species.  Give us a particular and we’ll generalize from it.  So almost any novel can teach us, and the novel has one big lesson that lies at its very core: we matter.  A human life has value not because it belongs to an owner, a ruler, a collective, or a political party, but because it exists as itself.”[3]

I was disappointed with Foster’s portrayal of saints.  He states, “Because saints lack desire.  They don’t want anything and as such aren’t going anywhere we’ll be interested in watching.  Admire?  Sure.  Emulate? We’d do well to.  Read about with fascination?  Not happening.”[4]  Is this just ignorance on his part?  Or is he being malevolent?  I do not know.  I would like to think he was just being ignorant.  Think about that statement, “saints lack desire.”  Their life is completely absorbed in an all-consuming fire of desire.  It is the journey of the saints that we can see ourselves and then emulate them in hopefully attaining a similar goal.  I will let this rest.  Deep breath.  Prayer….

Back to the concept about an all-encompassing story that all of literature is tied up in.  Who was influenced by whom?  How do we trace it all back?  Is everything really connected?  I agree with Foster on this one and I think he is on to something important.

“(T)here is only One Story.  It’s always been there, is still there, is always the same, is always changing.  Every story, poem, play, movie, television commercial, and political speech – the whole shootin’ match – that has been told, written, remembered (no matter how vaguely) is part of that story.  What that means is that literature, in its broadest sense, is all part of one system.  You can be influenced by and can know a good bit about novels you’ve never read, stories you’ve never heard.  Why?  Because things you have read mention and make use of them.  Literature, in other words, is a system, a worldwide shared experience across millennia.  There are connections everywhere because everything is connected.”[5]

One can start to realize what they have been missing as they start to read.  The references you might not have understand, suddenly become apparent.  If you have never read Hamlet you will be surprised by how much will be familiar to you when you do.  The same goes for much of great literature.  Novels change us, actually experience with the unknown changes us.  We expand our definition of our own territory of what we know by exploring (reading) a novel.

Overall, I recommend this book.  I plan to check out Foster’s other works in the near future, so keep an eye out for my review. Remember, if you’re thinking of writing a novel, this book should be on your reading list!

[1] Thomas C. Foster.  “Bio.”  Accessed May 13, 2019.  https://thomascfoster.com/home/bio/

[2] Foster, Thomas C..  How to Read Novels Like a Professor.  New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008.  Page 21.

[3] Ibid., 115.

[4] Ibid., 178.

[5] Idid., 225.