Any Way You Slice It

Imagine you’re watching CSI, and they’re doing a Thanksgiving episode. One of the characters bakes a really delicious pumpkin pie and leaves it in the refrigerator. At which point, the wacky lab techs decide to do some forensic analysis on the pie.

Armed with all the equipment at their disposal, they proceed to slice, dice, and julienne the poor orange victim. They spread bits of it on microscope slides. They do chemical and genetic analyses. Heck, they even run it by the hospital and give it an MRI.

Two months after Thanksgiving, they are finally done. Except for one slice of pie they kept intact in the deep freeze for later analysts, no part of the original dessert is intact. But they serve up every bit that’s left as it’s been left — dished and slided and bagged and stained and chemical’d — with the sheaf of papers and computer discs and evidence forms as a centerpiece to the table. “You should really appreciate this,” they tell Brass and Grissom and Catherine. “The tests clearly demonstrate that this pie is a gourmet classic.”

They all hesitate. How do you eat this mess? Why would you want to? Brass looks down at the tiny baggies and stale fragments on his plate, then pushes it away. “I think I’ll just eat the whipped cream instead.”

This forensic analysis is, by and large, the way our culture teaches literature in academia. And why? Because since the 1800’s, this is largely the way the Bible has been studied and taught in academia, and it spread to the related disciplines. The other major technique of literary analysis, close reading, also came to literature studies from Bible studies, as far as I can tell.

The problem is that, although analysis of both kinds is a fruitful device for exposing certain facts, it doesn’t do much for those of us who are not terribly interested in analysis. It is an enhancement, an extra feature; but it is only that.

To continue using the analogy, I don’t mind learning to run a few cool tests. I am interested in reading the lab results, and I will probably keep them in mind from now on, whenever I eat or bake a pumpkin pie. But first, last, and foremost, I want to eat the pie in its pre-analysis form, when it’s still fresh and warm, fragrant and tasty.

But what if I sit down, start eating the pie, and am suddenly besieged by the baker and the other diners asking me not just whether I like it, but how? And what does that particular tiny bite mean to me?

How does the hint of cinnamon make me feel?

The secondary way our culture studies both literature and the Bible seems to have spread from literary circles and clubs of the previous centuries into both academic classes and Bible study groups. It is the method of sharing and discussing the group’s personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences of the book. Again, this is something perfectly useful and natural as a tool. Also, it’s both fun and useful for those who primarily experience the world in this way, and can’t really feel happy until they’ve compared notes with others. But it is useless and downright pernicious for another vast number of us.

To continue the analogy again, I don’t mind telling the anxious cook that I like the pie, comparing it favorably to other pies past, or providing a running commentary of “oh, that’s great crust” and “mmm”. But this is just a conversational gambit to me, and so it’s only pleasant when not obligatory.

First and foremost, I just want to eat the blessed pie. And honestly, I don’t care whether you like it or not. If you don’t — Oh, well. More for me!

I hope none of this sounds hostile. If you give classes (hi, Joy!), there has to be some sort of metric, and no metric will really tell you whether the students are learning. But the models we use for study of literature lead students away from the actual literature itself. That’s the intrinsic problem.

That’s fine if you’re aware (and they’re aware) that you’re taking a step back, and if you use it to look back at said literature — or better, if you alternate glances at the literature with orienting glances at your position in the universe and orientation towards God.

See, pie is good, but of course it is not everything. One must balance pie’s utility and art, and its place in family tradition, against one’s total caloric intake, one’s digestive health, the destiny of humankind, and God’s desire that you not commit gluttony. Furthermore, what values are expressed through the glories of pumpkin pie? What does it challenge us to do next? What eternal things does it foreshadow? And is there not a great deal of beauty and meaning to be appreciated in its true place in life, a dessert which recapitulates a good deal of human history and utilizes much art and science in the making, which is to say, a wonderfully skilled sub-creation by a creature in a world baked in the fires of the Sun from the leftovers of the Big Bang, by He is who both the Baker and the Bread of Life, and who snatches human pies from the burning?

You can also respond to literature. Do you understand it? Is the poem right? Is it wrong? Is it a new way of looking at it? How far are you willing to believe it? You can create an in-kind response: a paper, or better, another poem. You can be inspired to join a soup kitchen, or remake your life, or find out more about opera. You can also evaluate whether or not you’re planning to respond in a sensible way. (One remembers Origen again.) Does the pie give you not only sweetness, but vitamins and strength to go on?

But first, you have to read or eat the thing, or there’s no point.

So if you act as if the whole point is to do analyses or talk about feelings, you are no longer teaching literature, or the Bible, at all. You might as well be teaching close readings of the instructions on the back of the toothpick box, or asking people for their feelings and thoughts on the menu at Mickey D’s. You certainly are not teaching people to love or even value literature.

I mean, why should they love something that isn’t seen as important until and unless it’s stomped through in hipboots?

If the pie were any good, you’d just serve them the pie.