What’s the deal with reading guides provided by publishers? I know book clubs are important distributional tools, but these things are bizarre. I just found one for You Are Not a Stranger Here. I mean, some of the questions are quite perceptive, but others are really too much:
5. In “Devotion,” Owen observes that reading Othello in school did not help him to deal with his own jealousy. “What paltry aid literature turned out to be when the feelings were yours and not others’” [p. 78]. Should literature be an aid to understanding and controlling one’s own feelings? In what ways might You Are Not a Stranger Here make readers more fully aware of their own and others’ emotional states?
Isn’t that first question a head-scratcher? And the guide, in the SUGGESTED READING section, provides 1) Dubliners (I get it — they’re all short stories!) and 2) Girl, Interrupted and Death In Venice (they’re all about crazy people!).
All of these complaints can be boiled down to: I’d like a job writing these guides, thanks. It’s the only thing my academic career qualifies me to do.
