Rosenblatt's concept of "efferent" and "aesthetic" reading helped me categorize or make sense of the types of reading I end up doing everyday. The concepts are clever, but throughout this reading I kept asking myself, isn't it obvious that not all reading is the same? Does it need to be pointed out that there is a "ways of reading" spectrum? I guess maybe it wasn't so obvious in 1978 (back then people didn't have hyper-hermeneutics courses that addressed such issues. suckers.). Anyway, I had some major hangups with this book...

Although Rosenblatt says that it is possible to read the same text either efferently or aesthetically, almost all of her examples of texts that are "worthy" of aesthetic transaction are canonical (or what she considers to be "literary works of art"). For instance, she states, "To adopt an aesthetic stance toward the items in a newspaper or toward the directions for constructing a radio, is possible, but would usually be very unrewarding. And a Rod McKuen text offers less potentiality than a Yeats text" (34). It seems to me that she often tries to make her statements sound less elitist by using phrases like "would usually be very unrewarding." I don't buy it.

What I'm wondering is what Rosenblatt would think of Cultural Studies, which is founded on the "World as text" idea. Would she still find it usually unrewarding to read a newspaper or a candy bar wrapper or a cereal box? Would she have redefined efferent or aesthetic readings if Cultural Studies was a happenin' discipline in the 70's/80's?

This text is full of contradictions. On the one hand, Rosenblatt is drawing attention to the crucial role of the reader, who has been largely neglected in literary theory. She claims that professional critics, then, should not be looked up to as authorities. Ok, but then a few paragraphs later she writes, "Perhaps the solution would be for a critic to publish a list of the works that he has read and has found worthy of attention, with the understanding that his critical review or critical essay will appear after a suitable interval, during which readers will have done their own reading!" (149) She admits this is a utopian idea and that we should simply treat the critic as a fellow reader. But, there is still the assumption that these fellow readers know much more than us and that we still need their expertise. The "fellow reader" label is just a way to disguise the authority that still exists.

There are a lot more places where Rosenblatt's condesceding tone and contradictions distracted me from the main thrust of the book (pages 36, 53, 82, 125, 138, and 140 to name a few). I'm curious to see how the rest of you felt about it.

One last thing, I promise...what was the deal with the social statement that came out of nowhere in the last 3 paragraphs of the book? We go from transactional theory to democratic values in one giant leap. Where is this coming from?

- Steph