What readers read

  The next background issue to consider is the type of stories which the theory and model focus on. From the beginning, my research has concentrated on the comprehension of ``real'' stories. This is a direct result of my commitment to the situated nature of the reading process. The research makes use of published short stories; these are used during the theory's development and continuing refinement, as well as during the evaluation phase. Given that the ultimate goal of the research is to produce a theory of creative reading, I have chosen the genre   of science fiction stories in which to orient my research.   Science fiction stories offer tremendous opportunities for creative understanding; indeed, science fiction forces the reader into a position of needing to perform creative understanding, especially if they are a novice science fiction reader.

The following story will provide the grounding for much of the discussion during the remainder of this dissertation; it is Lycanthrope ([#!story:lycanthrope!#]) and concerns the attempts of two friends to transform one of them into a modern-day werewolf.    

``I tell you, Norm, there really are such things as werewolves!''

``You're crazy, Ed. And even if there were any, how would you go about proving it?''

We were at it again. Ed and I. The same old favorite of his. Lycanthropy, the ages old belief that a man or woman could turn into an animal. According to Ed the kind of animal depended on the cultural background and ancestry of the person involved.

``A lot of people believe in witchcraft and werewolves, more every day if you believe what you read in some of these magazines. Why, I heard just the other day about a book that tells you how to do all sorts of things like summoning demons and casting spells. It's supposed to be as accurate as possible, even giving the reasoning behind each part of the spell as it goes along.''

``You believe everything you read in those crazy magazines of yours, Ed. If we had a copy of that book I'd soon prove to you that those spells won't work by actually trying them out.''

``I'll just call you on that! The book review in Playboy said that it's being reprinted in England and tells where to send for it. It's twenty-five bucks and it's going to be a good investment for me because if the spells work you'll be the one who pays for the book!''

``It's a deal! You look up that book review and I'll type up the order.''

The letter ordering one copy of Van der Camp's Witchcraft in Central Europe went out in the next day's mail, and Ed and I spent the next few weeks reading up on necromancy and related subjects in the library at State U. We kidded the librarian into letting us read some volumes from shelves normally closed to any but accredited researchers. The books were old and dusty, some of them in archaic English, but while they were very interesting in places none of them was very much help to a couple of beginners.

Then the book finally arrived. It was all that we had hoped for, and then some. It gave complete formulas, rituals, and incantations; correct times for gathering and processing ingredients; and most important the right phases of the moon to the minute necessary for reliable results. In order to give the spells a proper trial we had to follow the book's instructions in every minute detail, so it was some time before we were ready but at last we were prepared. The materials were at hand and we had rehearsed the rituals and incantations until we knew them by heart.

``Are you sure you want to go through with this, Ed? There's no telling what you might turn into if the spell should really work.'' I was really uneasy. The logic behind this spell seemed so logical, somehow.

``Of course I want to through with it. I didn't spend my money and come this far just to turn around and quit. Just think, I might become a lion or a tiger or an eagle. Anyway, no matter what I turn into I'm sure to be able to make the proper ritual motions in order to return to my original form.''

``Yeah, but what if you can't? Remember, these spells were devised back in the days when people lived close to the soil. They were supposed to change people into forms that represented the major destructive forces of their times. In Europe, and England they tried to turn into wolves and vampire bats, while in Scandinavia it was were-bears. In Malaya and India, it was were-tigers and snakes, but in Africa it was were-hyenas, buffalos, and leopards. In each case it was the creature that took the greatest toll of the common people's life and property,'' I reasoned with him. ``We have different fears these days than back in the Dark Ages, and different things to menace my daily lives.''

``And what if we do? Those old fears are ingrained into the heredity of mankind by a million years of fleeing in terror from animals fiercer and stronger than they were. What they feared then, we still fear today. I would be scared to death of a wolf or a bear, even though I've never met one face to face.''

It was a cold, windy night. A sickly gibbous moon gleamed fitfully through rents in the ragged clouds. We traced interlocking pentacles in the raw dirt of a new grave, lit the Coleman stove and began to concoct the unholy brew called for by the book.

``You're sure that you want to go through with this?''

``For the last time, YES!''

We hastily mumbled the incantation. Ed picked up the saucepan of evil-smelling liquid and quaffed it at a single gulp. There was a flash! A crash! An opaque cloud of smoke!

When people admire my new sports car I tell them that it's European, custom-made, . . . but where in Hell am I going to get spare parts?

 

Considering the above story, two things should be clear:

• When reading this text, you perform dozens of tasks. For example, you are retrieving word definitions, parsing the individual sentences, keeping track of the characters, following the actions which occur, and so forth. You are doing this while managing other cognitive behaviors (most notably, remembering that you are reading a dissertation in which this story appears). Since you do have so much to manage, there is a good chance that you did not actually read every single word--instead, you skimmed certain sections. Yet, even with all of these tasks to manage and to integrate, the story is comprehensible.
• Most of you reading this story had no preexisting idea of what a were-car is. Since this is the case, how are you able to comprehend the story--the were-car is not simply a peripheral concept in the story; it is the core of comprehending the tale. Furthermore, it is more than just an unfamiliar concept--if the novel concept was unknown but ``possible'' in your mind, then understanding can be achieved without much effort. Since this concept violates most people's view of the world, there is a limit to how much existing knowledge can be directly applied to the problem. Even so, you did not fail to comprehend the text. You were able to use your knowledge of somewhat related concepts to understand the idea of a were-car.

That is the problem addressed in this dissertation--how to produce a theory of creative reading that will explain those two aspects of the reading process. The theory must account for the coverage needed by the reading process as well as explaining how the understanding of novel concepts occur.