Want to dig a bit deeper, stretch a bit wider, discover unique insights in your reading? So do I! That's why we literary nomads explore beyond the comfortable beach read. Subscribe for podcasts and video, fiction and poetry, essays and online courses, unexpected freebies, and ways to lever your literacy into activism! For students of all ages, educators of all kinds, and just plain out litterateurs!
On Fantasy, New Offers, and Artists at the Crossroads
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3 August 2025 Education Platform OpeningReader, At last (though pretty close to on schedule for me!) the Waywords website has begun to open its Education section. Right now, it is a separate weekly blog which places most of the concepts from Literary Nomads Season 5 into tighter packages, offering a free download related to the talk. The first series is on the basic critical reading process I have promoted: Notice-Significance-Pattern-Coherence, which is based largely on Reader-Response criticism and the work of Wolfgang Iser. Later, I will move on to several other concepts, falling into these categories:
My goal is to make these accessible and valuable to teachers, to students, and to any interested in growing their critical reading and writing. Later as the site expands, I plan to include:
Waywords Learning isn't about imitating or replacing other resources out there. It isn't a "grab and go" education for literacy: quite the opposite, as you will see with the downloadables and blogs so far, it seeks to reframe our expectations for how we measure our satisfaction and success in literacy.
I welcome your feedback and ideas! What are you looking for? What do you or students need that you can't find? Literary Nomads: In Defense of FantasySo many of us see fantasy (and much else called "genre fiction") as guilty pleasure escapism. We, after all, are real readers: we don't spend our valuable time with immature books, but engage literature! This week I further explore the issue by offering some of Le Guin's active defense of fantasy as genre, but also an overview of the long history of fantasy literature, perhaps the first form of literature created. Not in the podcast just yet is some of my thinking on this escapism. First, I resent the phrase "guilty pleasure" because there is little to feel guilty about--that idea proceeds from a prejudice held either by the reader or by the audience of the confession: in either case, it furthers the notion that some literature is unworthy of us, that we could "do better." Undoubtably. But that also proceeds from the assumption that we must always read for high meaning and artistic or scholarly engagement. As mortal and fleshly humans vulnerable to stress, physical exhaustion, emotional and psychological fatigue, finding places to rest, to recover, to refresh, to recharge is more than needed. The panic our culture seems to feed upon means that our healthy and prepared (rested) engagement is needed. So take the time to rest! And if that means a workout, some meditation, socializing over nonsense with friends, simple sleep, or reading a bad book, there are worse choices. That's not guilt but strategy. --- At its best---like any kind of book---fantasy offers the kind of emotional and mythic rejuvenation that it has for millennia. --- Different, of course, if we retreat and never re-emerge--but that balance, knowing what works in the most healthy ways, is really upon each of us. And realize, too, that even our ability to do this--to rest and find some small pleasures---is itself a privilege that we must value when and while we have it. More, there is some kind of presumption that some reading universally provides no genuine value. And ultimately, this too is a matter of personal measuring. I may be the only one who understands what watching a 1970s B-movie does for me; why would the opinion of another change that or make me apologize for it? Story is powerful, and meeting it with pleasure can't be wrong. As the Waywords Reader's Manifesto says in its first point: Accountable to none, I choose to read for many reasons, among them pleasure, relaxation, personal development, learning, improving physical and mental health, developing emotional intelligence, broadening empathy, challenging my thinking, or inspiring imagination and joy. Fantasy literature too, then, offers such succor. Yes, much of it---like any kind of book---may be less well written, may follow too unimaginatively the conventions or tropes of its tradition. But at its best---like any kind of book---fantasy offers the kind of emotional and mythic rejuvenation that it has for millennia. We shouldn't treasure Le Guin because she is a rare exception to our prejudices against genre. We should treasure her and her work because she is a good writer and thoughtful artist.
Up ahead:
Arendt's Attack on Race-Thinking and Class-Thinking Arendt takes us into thicker discussions of race and bureaucracy, demonstrating how colonial expansion in Europe created unique circumstances that fomented and anticipated the coming catastrophe in Germany. At the base of this, however, was our simplistic thinking and thoughtless subscription to pervasive and arbitrary ideologies. Race-thinking for Arendt (one of several 'scientific' theories held by German Romantics) was bad enough; when it is turned into political policy, it becomes racism. All that remains, then, is for our policy to absent itself to compassion and responsibility. In Chapter 7, bureaucracy in Africa will provide the means to do that. Here is my response to Chapter 6 on Race-Thinking and why I can't be as forgiving of these poor thinkers as Arendt. Join in on the reading! We're doing about 25 pages each week, but you can choose any speed! Find more here:
A Humble Offering from 1977 Apparently, 14-year-old aspiring author me was already into political allegory. The Thickness of August Cookies, books, and spending time honoring folks! Pretty good couple of weeks! Some Recommendations Early Recommendation from My Reading: Mao II by Don DeLillo (1991)DeLillo is unnerving in his bald truth-telling. His characters perform their masks until they convince themselves they have compassion and love, arti and brilliance. And what happens when one artist is forced to engage the political world viscerally? Ahh . . . “I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.” "The future belongs to crowds."
The Artist at the CrossroadsAs we consider what literature to engage and what to set aside, take a moment to peruse the Moroccan based literary magazine which focuses on offering Arabic literature in translation. Here's a recent sample by Fady Joudah It wasn’t always like this,
says the artist to art. That’s why
I deploy you, says art to its practitioner.
And the masses are split in two
or four. Like cells.
Finally a week of better temperatures in Michigan, just enough to invite the smoke from the tragic fires in Canada to emigrate here. I welcome them as particulate reminders to maintain perspective. Steve What's Still Ahead?
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Waywords Studio
Want to dig a bit deeper, stretch a bit wider, discover unique insights in your reading? So do I! That's why we literary nomads explore beyond the comfortable beach read. Subscribe for podcasts and video, fiction and poetry, essays and online courses, unexpected freebies, and ways to lever your literacy into activism! For students of all ages, educators of all kinds, and just plain out litterateurs!