“Disliking Books”
Gerald Graff begins his academic article with the statement, “I have a certain advantage as a teacher of literature”. He began his literary career as a person who disliked and feared books principally history, philosophy, science, and social studies. Graff disliked history for the most part. However he is fond of science since it had a practical application and to him it was enjoyable to solve the problems in the textbooks. Literature in history had no apparent application to his experience. He grew up as a middle-class boy in a Jewish family, and was always in fear of being beat up by working-class boys. As a young boy, at the time, reading and loving literature, a boy was in constant fear of being called a sissy. Unlike