What does it mean when a fictional hero takes a journey?. Shares a meal? Gets drenched in a sudden rain shower? Often, there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface—a symbol, maybe, that remains elusive, or an unexpected twist on a character—and there's that sneaking suspicion that the deeper meaning of a literary text keeps escaping you.

In this practical and amusing guide to literature, Thomas C. Foster shows how easy and gratifying it is to unlock those hidden truths, and to discover a world where a road leads to a quest; a shared meal may signify a communion; and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just rain. Ranging from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form, How to Read Literature Like a Professor is the perfect companion for making your reading experience more enriching, satisfying, and fun.

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There have been many times I've read a book and just *known* the author is trying to impart more than I am taking away from the prose, and I hear about symbolism in literature, yet I have very little success finding it on my own. One time in high school I had a very good English teacher who would point out the symbolism in stories and novels, but he never told us how to do it, as this book does. With chapters on a wide range of topics (journeys, meals, poetry, Shakespeare, the Bible, mythology, fairy tales, weather, geography, violence, politics, sex and illness, among others) and a wide variety of examples, I found myself learning A LOT. Certainly this would not be of much value to a literature graduate student or professor, but for the rest of us this is a great introduction to getting more out of our reading (or viewing, as the author also touches on film, though to a lesser extent).

The book concludes with a test, in which you read a short story and interpret it using the principles put forth by Professor Foster, then interpretations by several students and Foster himself -- delightful and illuminating! Finally, the author gives a suggested reading/viewing list and an index.

Two problems with the book: first, as I mentioned, the style of the author is conversational, but sometimes to the point of being distracting; secondly, the topics covered are quite idiosyncratic, leaving out as many as are included, though the author addresses this. Still, I give the book 5 out of 5 because it was entertaining, accessible and it has improved my understanding and appreciation of subsequent books I've read and even films I've seen.

170 of 175 found the following review helpful:

A Practical and Amusing Guide to LiteratureMar 15, 2003
By Bookreporter
One thing's for certain: after finishing HOW TO READ LITERATURE LIKE A PROFESSOR, you will either praise the author for opening your eyes to the pleasures of literary analysis, or curse him for making you think too much. That's because Thomas C. Foster, a professor of English at the University of Michigan at Flint, gives his readers a lot to consider.

The short answer one comes away with is that nothing is as it appears to be. Symbolism is key. Weather, for example, is not just weather. Rain can be cleansing, cold is harsh but clean, wet is earthy and animal.

In case the reader doesn't quite get what Foster is saying, he succinctly states his meaning in a single, boldface sentence. "Myth is a body of the story that matters" reads one. "The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge" is another.

My favorite is, "There's no such thing as a wholly original work of literature," a theme that is repeated on several occasions. According to Foster, everything any author has ever read influences what he writes. Using the western film as an example, he suggests, "What's it about? A big showdown? High Noon. A gunslinger who retires? Shane. A lonely outpost during an uprising? Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon - the woods are full of them . . ." Not that he blames writers for lack of originality: "You can't avoid [repetition], since even avoidance is a form of interaction. It's simply impossible to write . . . in a vacuum."

As previously mentioned, some chapters get slightly repetitive. "It's More Than Just Rain or Snow" has many features similar to "...And So Does Season," while "One Story" mirrors many aspects of "Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before." That's okay, though; some things bear repeating.

There's also a great deal of religious symbolism in literature. "Whenever people eat or drink together, it's Communion," Foster declares (again ensuring the reader gets the point). There are also plenty of male and female "Christ figures" and chapters like "If She Comes Up, Its Baptism" (i.e., emerging from the water equals rebirth).

"Don't Read With Your Eyes," a telling chapter in an age where certain people still seek to ban books, reminds us that present sensibilities might not always apply to the realities in which the story was written. Just look at all the uproar over THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN because some consider it politically incorrect. In Mark Twain's time, however, that was how people lived, spoke and felt.

With the first novel I tackled after HOW TO READ LITERATURE LIKE A PROFESSOR, I found myself looking under the rug and in the corners for meanings that may or may not exist. As the saying goes, "Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke." One of the problems college students encounter is the spiel their professors weave. "A moment occurs in this exchange between professor and student when each of us adopts a look," Foster explains. "My look says, 'What, you don't get it?' Theirs says, 'We don't get it. And we think you're making it up.'" But the author maintains that writers do consciously render these symbols when plying their craft. "Memory. Symbol. Pattern. These are the three items that, more than any other, separate the professorial reader from the rest of the crowd," he offers. Just how can us regular-Joe readers recognize all these possibilities? "Same way you get to Carnegie Hall," Foster cracks. "Practice."

--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan

55 of 55 found the following review helpful:

Great for a wide range of readersDec 18, 2003

I was very pleasantly surprised by this book. I generally stay away from these types of "how-to" guides, but this caught my eye at the library and I took a chance. Yes, in several places he does greatly reduce and simplify some of the headier, more complex issues in literature, but I think most readers will be prompted to build on his basic information on their own. As I was reading it I realized I would have loved it as an undergrad English major - especially when he was discussing early 20th Century works. This probably wouldn't have helped me in grad school as a student, but it would have helped me break down and better explain some concepts to the first year comp class I taught. I agree with a previous reviewer that the book is very unpretentious and Foster doesn't insert too much dry criticism here. Should be appealing to most beginning lit students and those who do some serious reading for their own enjoyment.

44 of 45 found the following review helpful:

Cute. But it wasn't impressive.Oct 22, 2011
By Charley
Thomas C. Foster, author of How To Read Literature Like a Professor, writes 280-plus pages on--what else?--how to read literature "like a professor." Foster teaches his readers about analyzing and breaking down the many layers of literature to its core through the identification of archetypal elements. It is a guidebook for high school and college students to recognize the most basic literary themes in works of literature such as weather, violence, politics, illness, flying, sex, and Jesus. Is the book informative? Yes. Insightful? Slightly.

So he tries to get clever. Foster enunciates the word archetype on a very broad scale, explaining how every work of literature can tie to many others. To be even more vague, he bravely states in the first few chapters of his book: there is only one story. This "one story" concept of Foster's reverberates throughout all works of literature in such an indefinite way that almost every story can have the same archetypal themes. So can Harry Potter symbolize politics? Sex? Jesus? If it's Jesus, then that means Jesus can equal hero, can equal soldier, can equal violence, can equal death, can equal innocence, can equal Little Red Riding Hood, can equal savior, and can equal, once again, Jesus. And it all works...if you think about it in that particular Foster way.

From this point on in Foster's book, he brings a multitude of written works together, collecting bits and pieces of literary themes that might associate with an archetype and then vomits them into chapters. Not only does this book prick its readers here and there about symbolism and pattern in the most general and irritating manner, it also shoves literary examples down their throats. Each chapter consists of numerous paragraphs of analyses from a variety of stories in order to exemplify archetypal themes. His evaluations (which are mostly summaries) and examples consume a good three quarters of his novel, the rest being Foster's scant "how to" part of the book. Enlightening, yes, but is it absolutely necessary? Perhaps he goes through this extraneous book-interpretation process just to get his ten pages into every chapter. It's excessive writing that requires extensive reading. The reader can easily grasp the idea that Foster wants to convey the very first time he says it, there's no need for such vigorous detail. Besides, it's all one story anyway.

A ten-paged instruction manual on how to identify archetypes would have had a more beneficial effect. Dissecting a novel piece by piece in order to identify every can-be archetypal detail will not bring you into any more literary depth than by subconsciously recognizing one. If archetypes are something so universal that a reader can immediately relate to, then what is the point of purchasing a copy of How to Read Literature Like a Professor when Foster is only resounding our preexisting knowledge about literature? Am I already reading literature "like a professor?" As a writer and a reader, the information that Foster displays in his book should not be new to us. The basic principles that he stresses are nothing more than logic.

In all fairness, Foster has brought new dishes to my literary table. I can say that some of his teachings have contributed to my reading competency; however, I do not recommend this book to those who truly wish to enhance theirs. If you want to read about archetypes, try Google. An in-depth study from a 280-plus-paged book is nonessential when all that is required to understand archetypes and literature in general is common sense. And if you're interested in that, try Thomas Paine. (It's a political archetype.)

31 of 31 found the following review helpful:

He didn't just "make it all up"...Aug 28, 2005
By ewomack "ewomack"
If you're a voracious reader of novels or stories, but not an English Literature Major, and often find yourself thinking "there's more going on in this story, but I can't figure out what" then this book will provide a great starting point for expanding your reading. Foster takes the uninitiated on an easy to follow quest through literary symbology, allusion, and theory. It focuses almost exclusively on reading, not on writing (though one can vastly improve one's writing by becoming a better reader). And the intended audience is the beginner (though someone who has never read a novel might not fare too well).

Foster's ideas may strike some as "out there". He reads stories and symbols on a very mythological level. And this leads to his easy to misunderstand notion of "there's only one story". By this he doesn't mean "there's only one plot" or "all stories are the same story" but something more philosophical such as "all stories belong to and feed off of the one big story" (something ineffably akin to existence and history). Thus stories and symbols take on recognizable meanings over time. They get embedded in culture and interact with other stories. The best examples he discusses involve the Bible ("Christ figures", floods, etc), Shakespeare, Fairy Tales, and Greek Mythology. Stories have the ability to tap into these culturally embedded notions and heighten the meaning of a plot or a character. This only works because "we're all part of the same story" and, subsequently, because "there's only one story". Originality, then, becomes a measure of how well a story taps into this wellspring of meaning and exploits it for purposes of its own meaning.

Foster presents this idea of one story as the source of literary allusion. He gives numerous examples to support this theory with various symbols, including: quests, vampirism, eating, rain and snow, violence, flight, disease, the seasons, and geography. His approach isn't a tyrannical one, either. He doesn't, for instance, say "rain is ALWAYS cleansing!!" Foster accepts the notion that symbols only suggest meaning, they don't dictate it. Symbols have fluidity. Different people may interpret "snow" in different ways (though bad interpretations do exist, as Foster also recognizes). And irony also throws a wrench into the narrative machine.

Other topics that receive mention include politics and sex. Foster points out that many covert political stories exist (in defiance of the "don't put politics into your fiction!" dictum). He uses Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" to eludcidate this. As for sex, Foster finds symbolic literary sex far more satsifying than outright portrayals of intimacy in stories. Why? Because sexual intimacy typically carries symbolic meaning for a story. It carries the plot forward.

Foster's book most of all encourages the questioning of a story. Why is the main character short or tall? Why is the story set in winter rather than spring or summer? Why do references to birds keep appearing in a story? Such questions lead a reader down the path of reading a story in a more broad way. Which should heighten the experience of reading.

The book's final chapter presents a "test case" in the form of Katherine Mansfield's short story "The Garden Party". After reading the story (included as a whole), Foster asks the reader to consider some questions and return to the text. He then gives interpretations of some of his students and finally his own reading of the story. For those that have never taken a literature course, this chapter probably provides the most benefit, especially regarding the "tools" introduced in the preceding chapters. Here he puts theory to practice.

In the end, Foster claims that this book doesn't represent the only, or even necessarily the best, way to read and analyze a story. So those who already have a literary background may take issue with his approach. But for the beginner this book presents a possible new dimension for reading, understanding, and judging stories. It should help to dispell the notion that literary teachers and professors just "make it all up." Most of all, it should provide a good launching pad, not a landing pad, for further reading.

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