lawyers and literature
James R. Elkins  

Read to Write    

In Lawyers and Literature, we use writing, to:

put the mind to work on the lawyer stories we read, to engage serious and troubling texts, and to use these texts/stories to say something about your own life and the profession you have taken up, indeed to focus on the possibilities and difficulties faced in linking the stories you read with stories you are living, the stories you read with the stories that you are now confident will not be anything like your own

explore interconnecting themes and motifs found in the stories

to recognize how, in literature, and in life, we deal with ordinary life by extraordinary means

engage readers by writing of your own making.

An Exemplary Student Paper

Instructor's Response to a Student Paper

Texts of Your Own Making

"An astonishing number of those who can read and write think that they do so rather well. I spent twenty years as a journalist, and I met all kinds of men and women who prided themselves on what they called their 'communication skills'; they would tell you, with an unconvincing show of modesty, that they thought they could write 'a pretty good letter,' It was my duty as an editor to deal with their pretty good letters, and I never ceased to be astonished at how badly people expressed themselves who did well in the world as lawyers, doctors, engineers, and the like. When they were angry they seemed unable to focus their anger; they roared like lions, and like lions they roared on no identifiable note. When they wished to express grief they fell into cliché and trivialized their sincere feeling by the awful prose in which they expressed it. When they were soliciting money for charity, they pranced and cavorted in coy prose, or else they tried to make the reader's flesh creep with tales of horrors that may have been true but did not sound true. I used to wonder what made them write as they did, and whenever I was able to find out I discovered that it was because of the dreadful prose they read and the way they read it. They admired cheap stuff, they imitated cheap stuff, and they appeared to have no understanding of how they cheapened their own minds and their powers of expression by doing so." [Robertson Davies, Reading and Writing 2-3 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, special ed., 1993)(1992)]

T.S. Eliot pointed out that "the individual cannot think and communicate his thought, the governor and legislator cannot act effectively or frame his laws, without words, and the solidity and validity of these words is in the care of the damned and despised litterati. When their work goes rotten . . . when their very medium, the very essence of their work, the application of word to thing goes rotten, i.e., become slushy and inexact, or excessive or bloated, the whole machinery of social and of individual thought and order goes to pot. This is a lesson of history, and a lesson not ye half learned." [T.S. Eliot, Literary Essays of Ezra Pound 21 (New York: New Directions Book, 1935)]

Albert Ellery Berg, The Universal Self-Instructor (New York: Thomas Kelly, Publisher, 1883) [Used with permission of the Florida Center for Instructional Technology]

Ways of Reading to Write

These comments are drawn from David Bartholomae & Anthony Petrosky, Ways of Reading (Boston: Bedford Books/St. Martin's Press, 4th ed., 1996):

The issue is not only what students read, but what they can learn to do with what they read.

We learned that if our students had reading problems when faced with long and complex texts, the problems lay in the way they imagined a reader—the role a reader plays, what a reader does, why a reader reads (if not simply to satisfy the requirements of a course.) [v]

Bartholomae and Petrosky want students to read texts "that leave some work for a reader to do," texts that require "invite students to be active, critical readers, that present powerful readings of common experience, that open up the familiar world and make it puzzling, rich, and problematic." [vi]

When you stop to talk or write about what you've read, the author is silent; you take over—it is your turn to write, to begin to respond to what the author said. At that point his author and his or her text become something you construct out of what you remember or what you notice as you go back through the text a second time, working from passages or examples but filtering them through your own predisposition to see or read in particular ways. [2]

Reading . . . can be the occasion for you to put things together, to notice this idea or them rather than that one, to follow a writer's announced or secret ends while simultaneously following your own. When this happens, when you forge a reading of a story or any essay, you make your mark on it, casting it in your terms. But the story makes its mark on you as well, teaching you not only about a subject . . . but about a way of seeing and understanding a subject. The text provides the opportunity for you to see through someone else's powerful language, to imagine your own familiar settings through the images, metaphors, and the ideas of others. [3-4]

Readers learn to put things together by writing. It is not something you can do, at least not to any degree, while you are reading. It requires that you work on what you have read, and that work best takes shape when you sit down to write. [4]

To write about a story or essay, you go back to what you have read to find phrases or passages that seem difficult or troublesome or mysterious. If you are writing an essay of your own, the work that you are doing gives a purpose and a structure to that rereading. [4]

The meaning of what you read is "something you develop as you go along, something for which you must take final responsibility. The meaning is forged from reading the essay [or story], to be sure, but it is determined by what you do with the essay, by the connections you can make and your explanation of why those connections are important, and by your account. . . ." of it. [8]

"What strong readers know is that they have to begin, and they have to begin regardless of their doubts or hesitations. What you have after your first reading of an essay is a starting place, and you begin with your marked passages or examples or notes, with questions to answer, or with problems to solve." [8-9]

"To read generously, to work inside someone else's system, to see your world in someone else's terms—we call this "reading with the grain." It is a way of working with a writer's ideas, in conjunction with someone else's text." [11]

"This is a way of getting a tentative or provisional hold on a text, its examples and ideas; it allows you a place to begin to work." [11]

"Strong readers . . . remake what they have read to serve their own ends, putting things together, figuring out how ideas and examples relate, explaining as best they can material that is difficult or problematic. . . . " [12]

Bartholomae and Petrosky encourage their students to be "strong readers" and to "actively interpret what you have read," "to use a story or an essay as a way of framing experience, as a source of terms and methods to enable you to interpret something else—some other text, events and objects around you, or your own memories and experience." [15]

You have been in school for several years, long enough for your experiences in the classroom to seem natural, inevitable. The purpose of [writing] is to invite you to step outside a world you may have begun to take for granted, to look at the ways you have been taught and at the unspoken assumptions behind your education. [755]

Each selection in Bartholomae and Petrosky's collection of readings is followed by a page (less or more) of text devoted to "Questions for a Second Reading."

The second reading questions characteristically ask you to consider the relations between ideas and examples in what you have read or to test specific statements in the essays against your own experience (so that you can get a sense of the author's habit of mind, his or her way of thinking about subjects that are available to you, too). Some turn your attention to what we take to be key terms or concepts, asking you to define these terms by observing how the writer uses them throughout the essay. [15]

The purpose of all these assignments is to demonstrate how the work of one author can be used as a frame for reading and interpreting the work of another. [17]

Writing—Some Ideas

Write About What Brought You to the Course. When you've finished see if you can identify the steady stream of cliches you've used in this simple writing exercise. "I thought the course would be interesting." Or, "I needed to take a break from the more traditional law school courses." "I needed a perspective requirement." "The course was being offered at a convenient time." See if you can get beyond the cliches and conventional ways of talking about the decision to take the course.

Try your hand at a paragraph or two in which you try to generate a "literary" response to the question. How could you write about your decision in a way that might provoke or entice the reader to want to know more about you? Or, you might want to say something about a hole or void or emptiness in legal education that you "secretly" hope the course might fill. Perhaps, you have an inordinate love for books, or a particular book, and it is this passion for books and for reading that brings you to the course. You might write a tribute to a former teacher, a teacher that taught you to read, or one from whom you learned to appreciate literature. Your tribute to this teacher might be a way to honor the person who set you upon a course of reading (and education) that prompted you to take the course.

The basic question is whether you can find a way to talk about your "interest" in literature and your desire to escape other law school courses, or follow upon on previous literature courses you might have taken without sounding like a great bore. Is it really the case that law students and everything they write must be boring? I assume not. I would argue that Sheila, the protagonist in J.S. Marcus, "Centaurs" offers a variety of comments about legal education and her fellow students, not a single one which I found boring. Indeed, I would like to meet Sheila, buy her an espresso at the Blue Moose, and hear more about her days as a law student.

Get Your Teacher Involved in Your Writing. Send me an email message and attach one of your early writings. Tell me what you want to know about the writing. What have you tried to do in the writing? What obstacles did you face?

If you don't want to share an early literary effort at writing, you might want to discuss your concerns about writing, what you need to know now to get your writing off to a good start. What concerns about writing would you like to address during the course of the semester?

Get A Colleague in the Course Involved in Your Writing. What most of us want as writers are good readers. Your instructor may or may not turn out to be a good reader for your work. Try your writing out on a fellow student. Ask for an honest opinion. Ask a fellow student about a writing: Was it well written? Was it interesting? Did it entice you to want to read further?

What you want (from a colleague or even a teacher) is what Peter Elbow calls a "movie of the mind." You aren't asking someone to edit your writing or instruct you on proper grammar. What you most want to know is what kind of effect your writing had on the reader.

Get Involved With Your Own Writing. It's never too late to become a writer, to develop a serious interest in writing, to make a commitment to the craft of writing. One might even assume that developing such an interest might affect the way you see yourself as a lawyer, indeed, might dramatically improve your skills as a practicing lawyer.

Interested in learning to write, here are some suggestions:

Write. Most writers struggle to learn the craft of writing. You might begin by writing a letter to the editor of the local paper expressing concern about something going on in the community. Or, you might write a letter to an admired teacher expressing appreciation for her contribution to your education. Read Kafka's parable again and write one yourself—it really doesn't look all that hard! (Of course, you may find that it's harder than it might appear.) Write a short exploratory essay in which you describe your first real sense of reading, your first awareness of books, or the first time you were in a library. Write about a difficult text you were asked to read and how you dealt with the difficulty.

Write about your experience in law school, about the difficulties you've encountered, the tests and trials you've encountered.

Observe what goes on in the classroom. Right an account of what you observe.

Keep a journal where you can write freely. Do a 10 minute "free writing" exercise every day in which you write about the course. Keep the journal with you during the day and make notes about things you observe, things people say that catch your ear, things that seem to have a connection to your reading in the course.

Write. Write. Write. Peter Elbow, one of my favor writing teachers, explains how we write better if we write in ways that are unconstrained, unedited, uncensored. Of course, the more "free writing" we produce, the more write we will have to edit and censor, writing that can be discarded as unfit to use. The more you write, the more you are willing to throw away the garbage you find in your writing. Elbow claims that in writing freely, writing without censoring, and writing often, you will indeed produce garbage but writing freely and extensively also produces the best opportunity to create ideas and writing that will reflect your best thoughts, your "voice," your depth, and whatever sparkle you might have in you. (Elbow does not ignore the importance of editing, but laments the way we try to edit as we write. Elbow claims that writing and editing are two distinct tasks and we mistakenly try to do them both as the same time and that doing so impedes our writing.)

Reading a Student Paper

The commentary you gave me to read is serviceable enough and it suggest you are willing to read a literary work and try to make some connections to your own life. The next move is to learn something about your writing, about its literary qualities, and something about yourself, something that the story makes possible.

Look carefully at the copy-editing I did of your commentary. What kind of pattern do you see emerging from this editing? Does the editing improve the commentary, or is it just a teacher being heavy hand with a student's work? And what did I think I was doing in the editing? I was trying to get rid of the dead-wood, the non-weight bearing words, the phrases that take the life out of the writing, the phrases that litter and don't do any work. (Don't worry, most of us "litter" writing in just this fashion. It's a common problem in writing and one that is relatively easy to learn to correct.) Whatever you want to say, you may find that you'll say it better if you shed the excess phrases. Is there some magic to know what phrases can be taken out or can you do something of a similar sort in editing your own work? Good question and I'll let you edit your next commentary and let me know! [If your interested in becoming a good editor, you might want to read Peter Elbow's Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing process (New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. 1998). It's the kind of book that can be read cover to cover, notwithstanding the fact that the title makes it sound like some kind of writer's manual. Elbow writes about writing in an engaging and thoughtful way, indeed, his writing is a model of clarity and human sensibility. It turns out to be nothing like any manual you've ever read.

You ask whether the Kafka parable (the subject of your commentary) can be related to your own life. In terms of the Kafka parable the connection of story to life may have seemed rather obvious to you. While finding the connection between the story and the questions and concerns in our own life is a worthwhile effort, you might want to see if its possible to get beyond pointing out the surface connections. The first question may be—is there a relationship between this story and my life—and if so, then the next question is whether the story text helps take you beyond the articulation of the obvious connections. You'll want to attempt to get from pointing to exploring. And how is one to do that? The question, put most basically is this: how does this story inform or shape your understanding of those elements in your life you think the story points to. If the questions you raise about your life and where your going (or not going) could just as easily have been raised in a conversation with a friend over a beer, or indeed are exactly the kind of questions that already occupy your time and energies, then how this story made any real "demands" on you? If the story doesn't shape/influence/channel/change/ challenge/provoke new thinking about the situation your in, then it's hard to see how reading the story really matters at all. And if the story hasn't made any difference in how you see the world, frame questions, confront questions, deal with questions, and try to understand your situation, isn't it fair to say that reading the story has been something of an academic exercise rather than a real learning experience?

Where do you go from here? 1) Rewrite the commentary and examine the editing work that has been done on it. Many writers take offense at editors playing around with their words. Other writers praise their editors. You might want to deal, up front, with whether you are the kind of writing (and person) who takes offense or offers praise. 2) When you rewrite the commentary see if you can, in some way, get from pointing to the questions and aspects of your life suggest by Kafka's parable, to showing (with as much particularity and detail as possible), how the parable changes (perhaps in the most nuanced way) your understanding of the questions/direction/purpose/life you outline. I don't mean to suggest her that reading a Kafka parable sets you off on a new course in life or in reading it you should re-invent yourself as a person. You might want to establish only that reading Kafka: 1) changed the way you word a question; 2) provides a new question; 3) helps answer a question you thought unanswerable; 4) helps you see as a wonderful mystery what you thought to be an annoying problem; 5) or, even leads to the nasty conclusion that the parable was simply inadequate to the task it left you high and dry, no answers in sight, no new questions, no alteration of questions you brought to the reading.

We have to admit, perhaps more often than we'd like, that the reading we do doesn't really change our lives at all. Whatever drives us to read, we may finally admit that life seems to always trump reading, and that one doesn't learn how to live (or figure out how to live well, better, different) by reading. If you have this notion about reading some of my commentary about how to read Kafka and how to write about your reading isn't going to make much sense. What we see I think is the rather different notion that we read not only to learn but to change, not only to know more but to put that knowing to use so that we understand ourselves in a way we could not in the absence of the reading. If you find this idea about reading odd, unusual, or threatening, you should try to make that clear. I don't want to assume powers (or pleasures) for literature it does not have.

Miscellanous Thoughts

"I am convinced that the only way to engage and test the minds of students is to have them write and write and write. But if they write, we should read their writing and comment on it for its ability to frame and sustain an argument, for the use of evidence, and for its capacity to define important issues concern the text at hand." [Richard Marius, "Reflections on the Freshman English Course," in James Engell & David Perkins (eds.), Teaching Literature: What is Needed Now 169-190 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988)]

"Reflective writing is the activity of describing one’s subjective world as the topic of a text . . . . This involves the attempt to come to terms with one’s own subjectivity by making explicit in writing, tacit or unquestioned attitudes and prejudices; as well as observing changes in personal viewpoints over time. These two requirements indicate that the two fundamental conditions for reflective writing are the author’s acknowledgment of subjectivity and historicity. Expressing these meta-perspectives is not easy, and while fostering reflective writers is an explicit goal of writing curricula, there is no pedagogical consensus for the optimal learning of these expressive skills in writing, as there is for other writing competencies. . . ." [Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Promotion of Reflective Writing in Educational Software <http://www.netcenter.org/FJR/pub/QP/QP-proposal.html> (link dead)]

"There is no direct address in literature: it isn't what you say but how it's said that's important there. The literary writer isn't giving information, either about a subject or about his state of mind: he's trying to let something take on its own form, whether it's a poem or play or novel or whatever." [Nothrop Frye, The Educated Imagination 46 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964)]

“By absorbing and responding to the story, we work upon ourselves, upon how we represent the world to ourselves, upon our values and our assumptions bout the things of the world, and upon the decisions we will ultimately make in response to those things. In the process, we become so deeply immersed in the reality represented by the work, in its events, emotions, and ideas, that we become collaborators in the act of creating that world, resonating in a metaphorical way to the conjunction of our lives and the words of the writer. The distance between self and other is diminished, reduced, and finally disappears altogether as we round out and complete the work in greater detail and complexity that any mere words on a page can hope to do. In a very real sense, reading becomes a literary event becomes a composing activity, and we become writers as well as readers.”Charles Anderson, “”Literature and Medicine: Whay Should the Physician Read . . . or Write?” in Stuart Peterfreud (ed.), Literature and Science: Theory & Practice 33-58, 49-50 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990)

Donald Murray, Expecting the Unexpected: Teaching Myself--and Others--to Read and Write (Boynton/Cook Publishers/Heinemann, 1989):

-- "An effective piece of writing creates the illusion of a writer speaking to a reader. The language, although written, sounds as if it were spoken. Speech is the glue that holds he piece together. The writing voice provides the intensity that captures the reader; the voice provides the music and grace and surprise that keep the reader interested; the voice communicates the emotion and the mood that make the reader involved." [35]

-- "[O]ur students must have the experience of writing what they do not expect to write. That is the essential writing experience, and if you do not feel that firsthand, you cannot understand writing." [45]

-- "The writer, in writing, uses language to find out what the writer already knows and also uses language to teach himself or herself what may be known. How? How may it be known? By making language, and then hearing what it has to say." [55-56]

Ways to Use Writing

Nurturing the Reflective

Turning Personal Experience Into Narrative

Turning Personal Experience Into Narrative—Advice from the Best

The Writer's Audience [pt.2]

Getting A Draft Written

Literary Anxiety: How to Write an Essay

The Narrative Essay

Narrative Essay

Narrative Writing

Personal Narratives in Writing Classes

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