Patrick James_Response ch5-8

[Sondra Perl]

#651

In this section of Borkowski’s memoir, he begins to fill in the gaps of earlier ideas that were sketched out in the initial chapters. For example, the details of his parents’ separation is vividly brought to life, as well as the bridge between his identities as wounded criminal and college professor. This section seems, to me, to be the nuts and bolts of Borkwoki’s narrative, the way his identity develops and progresses beyond the shocking gunshots of the first chapter. Before now, so much of his memoir has been preoccupied with the pre-gunshot Borkowski; and now, the reader gets to hear how this criminal emerged from his traumatic experience to become the writer he is today.

Personally, I find Chapter 8 to be the most moving section of the book so far, especially regarding Borkowski’s unfolding relationship with literature. This section resonates with me personally, and I love how he describes the slow seduction he experienced in his reading life, his progression from MacClean, to Hammett, to Doyle, to Poe, etc., It’s so interesting how Borkowski figures the reading process as one in which he possesses agency; he is empowered to do the kind of reading he is emotionally and intellectually invested in. In telling his literacy narrative, he compares the process to building a house: “Authors and texts were building on one another. The bricks were beginning to resemble a structure of sorts, not spread out willy-nilly, and the expanding edifice owed its existence to that first brick” (134). Because Borkwoski takes responsibility for his literary education, he is able to make imaginative connections that he’s invested in, and he will go on to apply this in his pedagogical work as well: “I’ve found that as a teacher, it’s essential to distribute bricks to students rather than insist they inhabit our buildings right from the start. They need to assemble their own places, just as I assembled mine” (134).

I find this incredibly moving, because I feel that the metaphor of bricks and buildings speaks to my own experiences as a reader. Like Borkwoski, I was not a very good student in high school, and a lot of this had to do with distraction as well. And like Borkwoski, reading became a way for me to step into another world, a space I longed to inhabit. Books were a way of constructing a building, or a place–what Virginia Woolf might call a “room of ones own.” Even today, my reading life allows me to construct a space for myself–a place that welcomes my identity, my aesthetic, my humor, my theology, my sexuality–an intellectual and emotional sanctuary from the storm. I identified with so many of Borkowski’s feelings in this section. His sense of autonomy, the sense of discovery–that there are unknown aspects of ourselves just waiting to be explored, simply by going to a local library.

I was also very interested in Borkowsk’s discussions about class and academia. Later in his chapter, he addresses a sense of posturing felt by many working-class academics. Borkowski writes of an internal conflict, one which “is categorized by editors Jake Ryan and Charles Sackrey in “Strangers in Paradise” as the ‘imposter-syndrome,’ the sense that working-class academics, like those Saturday Night Live characters from ‘Wayne’s World,’ are ‘not worthy’ of being in higher education. When it comes to genuine intellectual timber, many working-class academics believe they just don’t cut it, and it’ll be only a matter of time before the authentic scholars figure it out” (139). While I come from a very middle-class family, this point really speaks to me because of my educational background. As I mentioned before, I was not a very good student in high school, and in college i majored in classical music at a conservatory. My undergraduate degree was intellectually stimulating, but it was also not a formal, traditional education in any way whatsoever. It was very narrow; it was not well-rounded. As I went on to graduate work in english departments, I often felt like an impostor too, thinking that I didn’t have the requisite tools to be a scholar. Now, as I learn more about the nature of intelligence, I’m discovering that intelligence is a diverse, expansive, and inclusive category, one that resists limitations and strict boundaries. As Borkowski’s narrative indicates, literacy and a love of literature are not tied to class or background. There are various points of entry to the canon.

[Sondra Perl]

#684

Dear Patrick,
Your points about imposter (did your spell-check recognize that word? because mine doesn’t, which is disturbing) syndrome and the connection to literacy were really thought-provoking for me. I’ve sort of accepted imposter syndrome as something that most academics, for one reason or another, feel to some degree, but I’ve never really wondered what it is about academia that fosters this pattern. Your post made me connect that feeling of not belonging with David’s point about books and learning being used as obstacles over which only the privileged few may pass rather than treasures which everyone should have. That description of learning makes it easier for me to understand how so many different people with such different combinations of challenges and privileges can feel like they are imposters in academia: it’s not about any one set of privileges or disadvantages, it’s about feeling as though everything we do is an Olympic contest where only the top three go on to the next round and we, based on whatever disadvantages we came in with, can’t possibly be in the top three.

[Author]

Posts