I want my students to grapple with being inspired by art without idealizing the person who created it, writes Janet Chwalibog. I want them to know that mere imitation is no way to build a life.
As I welcome college students back into my classrooms to study literature this fall, a familiar desire arises. I want to create a challenging, engaging environment with rich texts and stimulating conversation. But within that challenge, I want to present a vision of a hopeful world. I want to assure them that, after these last utterly catastrophic years in our shared history, something better lies ahead. But this is a fantasy.
All humans, even the most accomplished and talented in their fields, are flawed and imperfect, which is why it is vital to keep teaching Alice Munro’s work in my courses. We must attend to what in us pulls toward domination instead of mutuality. It is useful for some 18-year-olds to learn that the problem posed by Dostoyevsky in “The Grand Inquisitor” is not hypothetical. Evil is not “out there” or “back then.” It is now. It is here. Because I teach methods of literary interpretation influenced by psychoanalysis, many students want to read the artist’s life into the text. I find this simplistic and reductive.
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